For July 4th weekend we took a short trip down to CO Springs with the camper and went to the zoo and The North Pole again. We met up with Jamie's friend Cindy and her 2 daughters at the zoo and Kinsey really enjoyed having some friends to play with for the day. She wasn't crazy about feeding the giraffes this year, but she really got into feeding the little birds and watching the gorillas. Our day at The North Pole got rained out, but after the weather cleared up, we went swimming at the campground and Kinsey had a great time "swimming by herself" for the first time using a small inner tube and arm floaties! It was amazing to see her enjoying the pool all by herself! The other exciting thing that happened on the trip was watching Kinsey climb the stairs of a playground all by herself - she can climb stairs as long as she has hands to hold or handrails on both sides and this playground had the perfect handrails for her.
Here's a link to the pictures from that trip: https://gangestadjuly2015.shutterfly.com/pictures/8
Kinsey is finished with summer school now and has about a full month off before returning for her final year of preschool. She really enjoyed attending school over the summer - not sure how I'm going to keep her entertained for the next month!
Since Kinsey's on Medicaid now, we finally got her set up for some speech therapy in addition to what she gets at school. I've been wanting to do that for a while since she only gets about 30 minutes of specific time with the speech therapist at school, but insurance was an issue. Anyway, last week she had her evaluation and now we're set up for 2 sessions a week. Right now I have to take her to the office in Fort Collins, but starting in Sept. they have a therapist who will be able to come to the house instead, which will be great so I don't have to drag 2 kids out for an apt twice a week. We're hoping the speech therapy will help her start talking and also help with the drooling, which has already been improving lately, but it sure would be nice if she could stop needing the bibs!
This week Kinsey got a new pair of glasses! The old ones weren't reaching all the way behind her ears anymore so it was getting really hard to keep them on her face. She also needed a slightly stronger prescription for the left eye. These glasses are totally different than before - no nose pads for her to bite off anymore! (Although she has gotten better about that lately. In fact, she pushes her glasses back into place when they slide down her nose and she hands them to me when she takes them off now instead of just chewing on them or throwing them on the floor.)
