I can't think of a clever title for this number, sorry

It's the 22nd anniversary of Mia's accident today, and once again, like it did in 2003, it falls on Good Friday.  It is, as you can imagine, not really a good Friday for us, but such is life.

For the past several years, I haven't had much to write about with regard to Mia, because her life has been pretty stable.  She goes to high school, she goes to summer camp, she has some therapy, she watches television.  There's just not much to write about.  That's not a bad thing -- the less she has going on, probably the better for her health -- but it does make for fewer posts here on the blog.  Yes, I wrote about her Botox a few weeks ago, but other than that, life has been pretty calm around here.  She's in her final year of school, and she's going to "graduate" in about a month, which bums us out.  She's always loved school, so the fact that she can't go anymore is vexing.  I certainly get it, but it's still annoying.  As I've always noted, she does learn, it just takes a while, and we always notice when she adds new words to her vocabulary.  I heard her say "too" correctly recently, which she never used to do -- she was pointing out lights in her room that were not on (which she enjoys doing) and she said one wasn't on, and another wasn't on "too."  It may not sound like much, but it's neat because she remembered that she had already told me one light was off, so it wasn't a completely new idea.  She has started saying "gesundheit" when I sneeze, which she mangles but which is at least recognizable.  She has started using articles and linking verbs a little bit more often -- she'll say, "The light is off" instead of "light off," which has been the norm for a long time.  She looked at my Philadelphia Eagles sweatshirt this winter and started saying, "Bald eagle" without me prompting her, because they had talked about eagles in school and she remembered.  Little things like that make us happy, of course, because it allows her to interact a little bit more with the world, and we're hoping it can continue even if she's not going to school anymore.

She finished her summer camp last summer, which is also too bad, because it was always fun.  I asked them to allow her to attend this summer, but they didn't want to set a precedent for allowing graduates to attend, which I understand.  It still bummed me out, though, because Mia is not very big and she's confined to a wheelchair, so it's not like she could get into any trouble or bug the smaller kids.  It's fine, though -- I appreciated the fact that camp existed, and she always had a wonderful time.  Just another thing to miss!

Unfortunately, the upcoming year will probably be a bit more turbulent, as her leaving school means we're going to have to figure out what to do with her.  There are plenty of day programs, and we're looking into them, but haven't made any decisions about them yet. I need to get a job after two decades of not having one, so that should be fun.  We're working on getting her covered by the state, and once that happens, she have more options.  We want to make sure that she can go to a place where they at least do some education, because she loves doing things and if she can learn some stuff along the way, all the better.

There isn't much else going on.  Her weight is ok -- 90 pounds the last time she went to the gastroenterologist, which was up a few pounds from the previous visit, so he was happy -- and her seizures are largely under control -- she's had less than ten, I would guess, in the past year -- so she's doing well there.  She's still basically indestructible -- we get sick every once in a while, but she just skates on by -- and we remain happy about that, at least.  She's watching a slightly wider variety of DVDs these days, too, which is nice.  She's always all about the Wiggles, but we got her several of the Muppet movies over the past year and she's become big fans of those, plus we started showing her some of the movies that, in years past, she really hated, and she seems to enjoy them -- she never liked the original Disney Cinderella, for instance, but recently, she actually asked for it one time. It's nice to have a few more options, as it does get tiresome hearing the same Wiggles songs over and over (well, the first songs on the DVD, because that's when I usually get her feeding ready, and then I get out of there so that I don't have to hear the same Wiggles song all the time!).

That's about it.  She's doing well, and we're happy that she seems happy.  She still doesn't tell us a lot about what's going on in her head, presumably because she doesn't have the language to express it, but we talk to her a lot and check on her a lot, and she always seems to be doing well.  We shall see what the upcoming months hold, but I'm sure Mia will handle it with good humor, because she always handles everything with good humor!