I know its been awhile since my last update on Jessica, but honestly not much has changed. Its hard to tell if the meds are working much at all for the Gastroparesis,  because she still has the same symptoms. Some days she eats really well and others she just can't eat. Another reason its hard for us to tell is because some of her symptoms can also be related to her liver disease. Jessica has a routine liver check up at the childrens hospital in January, so I'm going to request a repeat Gastric Emptying Scan to see if there has been any change since being on the meds. She is stable at the moment and doesn't seem to be losing weight but not really gaining any either. She still complains of stomach pain and discomfort, but this can also be liver related. I feel so helpless at times, because there is nothing I can do for her pains, nothing I can do will make her liver disease go away. Its a horrible feeling for a parent to watch your child going through something like this and knowing there is nothing you can do to fix it. A kiss won't make it go away. All you can do is sit back and hope and pray the doctors or specialists have all the answers and if they don't you just have to accept that too. Its not easy.

We started putting our Christmas tree up today. We got all of the branches put on the tree(its a fake one), so now its waiting for me to fluff it a bit, make it look more realistic. Jessica is so excited about anything that has to do with Christmas(or any other holiday), especially baking cut out cookies, doing crafts, and decorating the tree of course. We are going to make some bird seed ornaments to hang outside soon. Hopefully the squirrels will leave some of the ornaments for the birds(lol). I'm not too sure what else we might do; hmmm, maybe make some paper snowflakes to hang from the ceiling.

Homeschooling Update:

We are so proud of Jessica! She is reading so well now. Using the BOB books with 100 easy lessons book has been great for her. Jessica really likes the LLATL also. We have been very pleased with the curriculum choices we have made this year, except the spelling. We were using Spelling Workout, but I don't feel Jessica is really getting much out of it, so I have been making up my own spelling tests and wordsearch puzzles using Dolch sight word list; this approach is working great for her. Jessica wanted to try to do cursive writing, so I gave her the cursive writing workbook early; I'm so surprised by how fast she is learning cursive; she loves it. I'll have to buy her another cursive workbook soon(lol). For creative writing we leave little messages all around the house for each other; this is so much funand she doesn't even realize she is doing school work(lol). She is still enjoying Saxon Math, so I feel confident that we will stick with Saxon for at least the next few years. Everything else is working out great curriculum wise.