Iliana in the spider cage. She stood for 20 minutes!

Still in the spider cage. Did I mention 20 minutes?

More spider action, but this time in a crawling position. You can see there

are no hands helping her. It's just her and the spider.

I put this picture in here because Dwight and I keep telling people how much she has changed. What do you think?

This is during her walking exercise. Iliana is not being supported by me at all. If you look closely, you can see she is holding on to me. Lauren is helping to keep her from falling down. She is the closest that she has been to standing in this picture.

This is at the end of the day. Normally, Iliana is able to sit holding herself up with both arms. The interesting thing about this exercise today is that she shifted her weight to her left arm and picked up her right arm to play with the ball. It may sound silly to some, but I was so excited that it brought me to tears.

Today has been a rewarding day because I was able to see her do some things she wasn't able to before. Iliana worked very hard yesterday. She did a lot of upper body strengthening exercises. I wasn't sure what she would be able to give us today. About an hour into the session today she got very mad. Normally Iliana has a quiet cry, a lot of people can't even tell she's crying. Today, however, there was no denying she was mad. She used it to her advantage to help her with some tough moves on the ball. Later on she did some leg lifts in the "cage". (It's not as bad as it sounds) There is a noticable change in how she is doing the leg lifts now compared to when she did them her first day. Later on she went to the spider and stood for 20 minutes!! AMAZING!! After all of that hard work she had to take about a 10 minute nap. When she woke up she kept on working. She did some crawling and walking exercises, and then finally some sitting. Today was another physically tough day for her. She continues to be seizure free and eating really well.

There is another little boy, Garrett, that is doing the intensive therapy treatments. He is 2 and began the same day as Iliana. I was able to see his first unassisted steps today. It was such a joy and a blessing for me to see him. It was such an encouragement that I thought, one day, we too will celebrate Iliana's first steps.