Every day there are small improvements that are a big accomplishment for Emily and really add up over time.

Yesterday, Emily had a fairly productive hour or so with her occupational therapist. Angela is such a dynamo (and a dear) - she's so gentle with Emily and so supportive of me. Since Emily seems to have adopted that "teen sleeping thing" that she was never able to as a member of the WP Freestyle team, Angela is constantly fighting Emily's drowsiness in the mornings. Still, she's visually tracking, counting on her fingers - I've seen her do that on her own at least twice since Angela introduced it yesterday, and working on saying "yes" by putting her thumb up. Today, minutes after Angela gave up keeping her awake, I looked at Emily's left hand and the thumb could not have been more up.

Yesterday she did side-of-the-bed with her physical therapist while her speech therapist was working with her. She ate ice chips, apple sauce and tried her hardest to drink from a glass. She's very good at moving her head from left to right to track things visually, but still struggles with holding it up. One interesting side note - the whole time she's sitting up on the side of her bed her left leg is swinging front to back just like we all do when we're sitting on a stool or bench that doesn't allow us to touch the floor. Today she did over 20 minutes on the slant board making it to 30-degrees without any problem - compared to just 5 minutes last Friday! Since she'd slept all morning, she was still alert and responsive when Terry came in to do speech therapy. She continued her ice chip work, learning to hold a spoon and guide it to her mouth, and drinking, which was much better today. We got Terry's approval to give her ice chips when she's awake. Imagine how good that must taste!

Ken and I have the assignment of playing thumb wars, working with her to make a fist, and trying to ask her simple questions that she can answer with "yes" and a thumbs up. I'm going to meet with the Director of Nursing first thing tomorrow to work on her schedule, so that we have consistent times for everything.

Please don't forget - visitors are welcome Mon-Fri, 5-7, and Sat & Sun, 1-3 and 5-7. The specified times are to give her time to rest and eliminate stimulation for a couple of hours - following high stimulation, like visitors and therapy, with low stimulation, will help her brain heal.

Special side note to our friends at Metro: Holy smokes! Are there any snacks left at WalMart? Hannah thinks she's died and gone to heaven - she's never seen this many cookies and chips in this house. It took our neighbor Julie, her two sons, and her next door neighbor to get it all to our house.