Maggie -- Colorado Springs Senior Photographer

You may recognize Maggie from the family/maternity session a few posts back. She is GORGEOUS and a complete joy to work with! We had so much fun just the two of us on her senior shoot. She loves nature, and worked at a nursery last summer, so we were very excited to head over to Red Rock Canyon Open Space for her shoot. I hope my girls are as nice and friendly as Maggie when they become teenagers!

Hello Again

I've been a horrible, horrible blogger, but I do have a good excuse. I've been busy. Ok, you deserve the long answer. This past year has been a tough one for my family. Emma, the "younger" twin, is most likely autistic, so it's been a year full of tests, doctors, assessments, specialists, and therapy. Since January, we've been through a 2-hour developmental evaluation, an ABR, a neurologist, a school district screening and an evaluation, an EEG, a screaming eye exam, and weekly speech and occupational therapy. I'm sure there's even more, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head.

In the developmental evaluation, we met with a developmental pediatrician, an occupational therapist, and a speech therapist. They each took turns playing with Emma and asking me a million questions to determine whether or not she's autistic. The answer: we don't know. At the time, she was 30 months old (to the day), and she tested as 11 months for verbal language, 12 months for receptive, and 20 months for fine motor. Since she was only 2.5, they were hesitant to officially diagnose her as autistic, but all signs point to yes. She started therapy shortly after (end of February), and has been doing really well! They will reassess her at 3, and that's when we'll get the diagnosis.

Before they would do the evaluation, she had a standard hearing test which she failed. The next step was the ABR (don't ask me what it stands for because I've blocked it out). This test required sedation (eep!), but she passed with flying colors so that was a relief. She also passed the eye exam a couple weeks ago, so no glasses. Phew!

During the evaluation, the developmental pediatrician noticed Emma tends to space out, so there's a fear that she might be having small seizures. She referred us to a neurologist, who recommended the EEG. She had to be sleep-deprived and sedated, so it was a tough, tough day! The EEG was last Thursday, so we still haven't received the results. Hopefully tomorrow.

They also recommended she start preschool with Cora in the fall, and take advantage of the services offered through our school district. The school district did an initial screening to see if she even needed the evaluation to determine if she qualifies for the program. They decided pretty quickly that she did, in fact, need the eval (duh) so that was held Friday. We met with a couple speech pathologists (one of whom specialized in autism and was FANTASTIC with Emma!), an occupational therapist, a psychologist, a nurse, an audiologist, the district coordinator, and a special needs preschool teacher. She did qualify for the program, so she'll hopefully be going to the same school as her twin, Cora, and older sister, Abby. *fingers crossed*

On top of ALL this, I had cancer two years ago. Last Monday, I had my mammogram and chest x-ray. Everything was clear! Last week was probably the most stressful and emotionally gut-wrenching I've experienced since we went through the tests and surgery for cancer 2 years ago. I'm so, so glad that week is behind us!

I have several sessions to post here, and I'll hopefully get to them very soon now that there's a little break in all of this. I feel awful I haven't kept up!