Update on Olivia's Progress and the Anat Baniel Method

I feel like every time I start a new blog the first sentence goes something like "It's been a long time since I posted to Olivia's blog, sorry about that, I'll try better in the future to post more frequently." We this post is now different...It's been a long time since I posted to Olivia's blog, sorry about that, I'll try better in the future to post more frequently.

I've come to realize that while I want to provide everyone with a periodic update on Olivia, so many other things come first. Most of that time, that's something for Olivia so I apologize if we don't post as much as we could, but we're trying really hard to!!!!!!!!!!!!

Since our last post, Olivia has been getting more and more accustomed to her cochlear implant. Our daily struggle is keeping the magnet on her head, something we expect to get much better when she starts sitting on her own more regularly and for longer periods of time. Olivia have been doing great; to me, the implant has been the single greatest aid for her. For a short time, she wasn't making many noises when she has her magnet on but recently she's been talking like crazy. Leslie and I can't stop saying how much she "talks" with us. We've even noticed that she starts fussing when it falls off. If that's actually the case than her implant is working incredibly well for her! We continue to talk with her as much as we can and expose her to new and interesting sounds. Olivia really like music too, so far her favorites are "Toddler Radio" on Pandora, "Rammstein Radio" on Pandora (this is NOT a joke, for some reason she loves death metal - it makes her smile all the time) and "Zac Brown Band Radio" on Pandora.

Again, she really loves Death Metal...no idea why, but every time I take her to Bayou City CrossFit, which plays pretty loud and intense music, she loves it! In fact, I had her at Bayou City last Friday and the Saturday before that, she had a blast! She loves her Uncle Vic and Aunt Katie and all the other great folks there who like to catch on world events with her.

We've also started Olivia is another therapy which integrates teaching Olivia movements with nueral mapping. It's a really interesting method called the Anat Baniel Method (ABM) and is based on the work of Moshe Feldenkrais who was apparently a renowned movement expert. We took Olivia to San Rafeal, CA last month to spend a week at Anat Baniel's center and saw great results...it was the first therapy that Olivia didn't consistently hate. In fact, she was smiling quite a bit. We saw results too, I feel Olivia has become better organized and was sitting for long periods of time (so awesome). Since then, we've been seeing an ABM practioner in Houston. So far, so good...we'll see how it goes in the long run.