2004 Christmas Letter
Here I sit, trying to think of a way to put an entire year of our lives onto a single piece of paper. Hurricane Emma, the drama queen, is on the floor by my feet screaming because she wants to push the buttons on the computer. Either that or she's tired. Actually, she might be thirsty... or maybe hungry. She may just want some attention. One would think that after fifteen months of this, a father would be able to figure these things out. I imagine that I'll be an expert on toddlers by next year's Christmas letter…
As far as Amy and I are concerned, not much has changed in our professional lives. Amy still works for the city of New Britain, and I am still trying to determine the best way to own and operate my own auto shop. I guess that's more than enough about the two of us, since few of you care when I can talk about Emma instead.
If I could speak for Emma, I'd say that she's had a pretty good year. Despite the fact that she has had to endure a few things that no little girl should, nothing seems to bother her for more than a few minutes. Like when she gets her immunization shots, she screams for a minute or so, just long enough to let everyone know that she really didn't want to do that, then all is forgotten and she acts as if nothing happened. In addition to her regular pediatrician visits, Emma is also under the care of a prominent neurosurgeon, and he has given us a wealth of information and a much better understanding of what we can expect in the coming years. He also ordered Emma's third MRI to make sure that the shunt was doing exactly what it should, and he had her seen and tested by one of the region's finest neurologists. Every test returned the best possible results.
In March, Emma started something that she continues to this day, swimming lessons. She loved the water from the moment her chubby little toes first touched it, and we have signed her up for every class since then. Unlike so many of the other wimpy babies in some of the classes, Emma never cries or complains, even when she is placed on her back or dunked (or dropped) under water. She has also shown tremendous progress, and even though she would rather drink the water than blow the bubbles like she is supposed to, she is now close to mastering the butterfly stroke and she’s going to start the ten-meter platform diving during the next class.
At some point early in the year, I imagine just to make our lives even more interesting; Emma was diagnosed with hypotonia (low muscle tone.) It's not a lack of strength, it's a lack of tension between opposing muscles around the joints. Older children and adults with this condition typically suffer no ill effects from it (we were told many gymnasts have it, as it actually aids in flexibility) but infants with it have to struggle that much harder to accomplish all of those wonderful things that we parents wait so impatiently for, like rolling over, sitting up, crawling, and walking. Therefore, as expected, Emma appeared to be falling a little behind in her gross motor skill development. We didn't notice any of this because we had nothing to compare her to, but her doctors kept mentioning it. In order to give her as much help as possible, we decided to enroll her in Connecticut's "Birth to Three" program. The program sends a therapist to work with Emma as often as we'd like. Right now, Emma enjoys alternating visits from physical therapists and an occupational therapist once a week. They teach us exercises that we can do with her to help her strength, balance, coordination, and confidence. The blessing for us is that we have such knowledgeable people pointing out these amazing advancements in her abilities on a regular basis, as many of them are advancements that we overlook simply because we spend so much time with her.
Emma may have been a few months behind most of her peers when it came to finally getting around to crawling, and she appears to still be a few months away from walking, but this causes such little concern with us. Her personality is so wonderful and she is so much fun to be with that the extra work that we need to do with her is a true joy. She gets cranky only under relatively extreme circumstances, she is inquisitive to a fault and happy to be led around for hours, pointing at and touching everything new to be seen, and she has that rare ability to occupy herself quietly for long stretches of time if given toys or other objects of enough interest. She is now at the point where frustration is rearing its ugly head because she is not able to aptly communicate to us what she wants. The good news is that it's forcing her to learn speech quickly. If she's in the mood, she will repeat just about any monosyllabic word, and that puts her language skills well ahead of any sitting president.
We hope that next year turns out much like this year: Emma got to spend ample time with her friends, her extended family members, and especially her grandparents. She enjoyed her first plane ride and a trip to California so that she could spend a week at Grandma’s house and spend even more time in a swimming pool. She even got a wonderful visit from her uncle in LA while we were there. We also hope that many of you can spend as much time as possible during the upcoming year with the miracle that is Emma.