into the new year.

Happy New Year, everyone!

I know I'm over a week late on that. Sorry. But I hope you all had a great celebration and the new year is starting out nicely for you all.

We've returned to life as usual after the holidays. Thankfully, even with the light schedule over Christmas and New Year, Maddy didn't really seem affected. She continued on her upward progress. That's a blessing.

We are charting her sleep - on week 3 of charting so far and there appears to be no major pattern that we're seeing. Though, it does seem that she will sleep slightly better when she goes to bed earlier. We did actually have one night that she slept through but at 2.5...MOST kids should be sleeping through. I know that it's "typical" for children with delays and/or autism to have sleeping problems. But I'm not going to leave it at that. Typical or not, I'm going to do my best to find out why. I don't know if we'll get an answer but there has to be some kind of solution. Not only for myself and Justin, but for Maddy. No one can possibly function properly on continuous lack of sleep. We will meet with Dr. MAL on Tuesday of this week to see what she thinks of it plus go over the progress charts from CARD on how she is doing.

We have finally been through all of the donations through the tree donation in our community. It was humbling to have such an outpouring from the community for us and for Maddy. We have been thrilled (the team included) by all the new materials. Maddy is most excited about the paint - what child wouldn't love to paint all day? Some of the money donations went to organizing her room. Isn't it great?

I wish I had a before picture to show you the less than stellar organization that was going on. Either way, it's been great to have everything organized and even Maddy was happy to see the shelving. The other money donations will go to the CARD Skills subscription, which will start in February at $250 a month.

The gas cards have been awesome. I think I'm most thrilled about the fact that you swipe the card and it automatically fills to the amount on the card. ha. The funny things that thrill you at this point.

But more importantly, all of this has been a true help. Not only with financial means or physical objects, but just to know that there is a community backing us and all that we are doing to improve her life. It's amazing. I don't hope that any of you ever have to go through what we are going through but if you do, I hope you will feel the amount of love that we have. To feel supported in the fight for your daughter's life.

You've all seen the news, I won't go in depth about findings that Dr. Wakefield falsified his findings in the link between vaccines and autism. I've never supported that belief in Maddy's case. I can remember (of what little I do remember of the twins' infancy) the subtle signs when Maddy was an infant that something seemed to be a bit different with her.

We are about 2 weeks from a big change in the team, Miss Melissa - aka the Organizer - will be starting her maternity leave. I wish her all the best and cannot wait to meet little Isaiah! Though I would be lying if I didn't say how nervous I am to be without her for a few weeks. I have great friends and great help and everyone of them has their special task they do for me and when I lose one, I'm lost! So I'm doing my best to mentally prepare myself for losing my right arm again for awhile (haha). And when I get her back, Miss Laurel will be off on her maternity leave (another baby boy that I can't wait to meet!) but I'll get my right arm back in time to lose my left. (And it just occurred to me that Laurel doesn't have a nickname....better work on that. Almost everyone else does...)

But there is prospect of newbies and that's exciting. (Interested in being a newbie? - email me: maddysvoice@yahoo.com or send me a comment on Facebook under Maddy's Voice)

I'm off for now. Just wanted to update everyone about the new happenings. Thank you for all the prayers and support! Love you all.