Ella was very happy over the weekend and very talkative.She seems to want to participate in our conversations When we talk directly to her she is usually quiet, however, if we talk to each other around her we find that she interjects with a particular sound that seems like an attempt at a word. This is wonderful and gets us very excited. Of course, with each tiny new development we start wondering in the back of our minds how the impending surgery will affect her. The fear is that there will be some losses; we don’t know what or for how long. That makes for alot of uneasiness. Thoughts of the surgery loom over us like a big black cloud. Got a call from the Perkins School for the Blind today. They will be assigning us a therapist to work with Ella on vision skills assuming that she will have a field cut. Sounds like they have many services over there that complement Early Intervention including parent/child/parent support groups. That was an effortless connection thanks to a referral from Dr. Mayer, the vision specialist at Children’s. Dr. Mayer is the most efficient person I’ve met over there. We got her medication levels results back from the blood tests she had last week. The pheno and dilantin levels are down. Dr. Duffy wants to go up now on the Topamax and not the other medications which could hurt her liver function. We are hesitant to even go up on the Topamax when she is doing so well but I understand his wanting to play it safe until the surgery.