Diabetes Schmiabetes

This weekend Emily did some travelin! It was a girls weekend with her three caregivers Nicole, Jamie, & Kinzi. We road tripped down to Rochester, MN for the JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes. We got a fancy hotel, a Marriot with a third floor pool! Kudos to all of our recent hotels for having lifts to get the kid in & out of the water! We walked down the street to dinner at a place called Dooley's Pub. As we were eating a balloon man approached us and asked Emily if she would like some balloons. He made her two flower bracelets and then made Nicole, Jamie, & Kinzi stethoscopes. Very creative! The walk was on Sunday. It was forecasted to rain, but we actually lucked out and got a beautiful day for the most part. When the walk was over it started to sprinkle a little bit but then stopped right away. Our team name was Sharp Shooters and we got team shirts made. Emily had a lot of fun!

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Epilepsy & ER visits

Emily has had a bit of a rough weekend! On Friday, May 10 Emily started to have multiple staring seizures. Quite simply this means her eyes are staring off to one side for a given period of time usually ranging from 5-60 seconds. She has occasionally had these before, but only one or two in a single day. Well by noon on Friday she was already up to 8 of these episodes so we were on the phone with her doctors trying to make a plan of action. It is very difficult to get into a neurologist for an appointment and our general doc couldn't help us. We eventually made our way down to Children's Hospital Emergency Room. We sat in the ER being monitored for about 6 hours when they made the decision to admit Emily to the Epilepsy unit of Children's Hospital. To determine what was going on she had leads hooked up to her head for an EEG (electroencephalogram), a heart monitor, and a video monitor. They watched her all night long using all of this equipment. Over the course of this entire day Emily experienced 20 staring seizure episodes!! The next day she had 9. And by Monday she was back to only one, or even zero, in a day. We are not exactly sure why this happened as the doctors found no good explanations on the EEG readings.

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Bikes & Basketballs

Emily finished up therapy and returned home to normal life. She is very happy to be back at school with all of her friends! She has taken full advantage of the few days of nice weather we got. She played basketball with her big bro Nicholas, went for bike rides, and spent a lot of time outdoors.

She got her new wheelchair! We spent the day at Gillette getting it perfectly fitted to her body. The completed product is exactly what she needed!

Emily got to go see her big sister Rose and her PCA Jamie at their senior prom.

Puppies & Picnics

Emily is doing an amazing job crawling. She is going greater distances than Mel had even set goals for.

This therapy dog, Bentley, came back to Euro-peds again today. Emily loves him. He is very soft, calm, and friendly.

 

Rochester Park again today! The weather was absolutely beautiful! It was a really great Emily Momma bonding day :) They had a nice little picnic lunch and walked the walking paths.

We have been FaceTiming friends and family back home to keep in touch. Tonight while talking to Josh she got a little distracted watching herself in the mirror :)

Walkers & Walking trails

Emily's new thing all the time now is hugging and snuggling Mel to get out of work. She thinks this is quite clever! She is rockin' her walker!

 After therapy we went to Rochester Municipal Park to feed duckies and walk along the river. 

Surprisingly, the ducks loved the peanuts as much as the squirrels! The ducks ate right out of our hands today!

Make-up & Manly Motivation

Today was a pretty laid back day. Emily got ready with Momma this morning. They did make-up together and then Emily showed off her independent teeth brushing skills for about 15 minutes. She was so proud of herself!

 In the afternoon we went swimming in our hotel pool. There were some guys outside the pool area so Emily was showing off for them and kicking super hard in the water. This girl LOVES the water!!

Movies & Malls

We went to the Great Lakes Crossing Mall again today. We had hoped to visit the park again this weekend but it was pretty cold and started snowing. So alas, we spent the day inside. We ate lunch at a place called Mac n' Cheeze and Emily got two milks! She was pretty serious about quenching her thirst.

 There is a movie theater in the mall so we went to see the new animated film, The Croods. It was so cute! Emily loved it. She danced and clapped the whole time. 

On the way home she unpacked Mom's shopping bags and tried wearing the clothes on her head. She was hiding from us.

Hollywood Happiness

After a nice warm up Emily got to work on her peanut ball. She is a rock star at crawling herself over the ball and then getting back down to kneeling. Today she pushed Rachel around in the cage for motivation!  It is absolutely amazing the energy and excitement these girls have to keep things fun for Em!

Emily was such a cuddle monkey with Mel today. She kept giving her hugs and wiping her face on Mel's shirt! We put a mirror in front of Emily today so she could have "spa time" while we did her hair & nails. She loves watching herself.

 Mel is making instructional workout DVDs for us to take home and Emily loves the camera! She was a Hollywood girl today. It was a long hard-workin week for Emily. She was absolutely worn out at the end of therapy today. She needs to get nice & rested this weekend so she's all ready to work again next week.

Target Trips & Tornadoes

Emily's morning massages are helping to improve her circulation. EVERYTHING is a game for Emily including stretches. She likes to kick people and knock over Barney toys for her leg work.

Mel was putting Em into position for a stretch and she decided to practice her face-down planking with her friend Katie.  Then they got cozy and had a nice moment looking at each other :)

She was working on tailor sitting as per us[ual] so we snapped some pics and sent them to her classmates back at school. Then she got all slouchy on the wall and thought she was soooo funny!

After therapy we made a Target run. We went in search of some groceries but came across other fun things. She picked out different hats and sunglasses to try on and we texted out pictures to friends! Mel's birthday is coming up next week so we also picked out some birthday cards for Emily to give to her. Emily is so thoughtful.

We are having some strange weather. We can't complain too much though because at least it isn't snowing here! Yesterday was in the 40s/50s and then today it got up to 79 degrees. Such a temperature change brought on down-pouring rain, thunderstorms, and tornado watches!! Emily thought the rain was all well & funny when we were in the car, but as soon as we got out and it started to hit her she was NOT diggin on it anymore!