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Sunday, January 8, 2012

And we're off to a good start!

Our life has been filled with hustle and bustle since the New Year began and I just want to take a moment to update on a few things going on so far this year.

  • Julia's swim birthday party was "THE BEST BIRTHDAY EVER" according to her.  That's just what this Mommy needed to hear ;-)  Note to self - always bring double the amount of drinks and order double the amount of pizza you think you will need so you don't run out!  Whew - those little children were HUNGRY!
  • Emma's secondary insurance approved for her "toileting" system after it was denied by her primary insurance.  That is just a fancy word for an adapted potty.  The one we are ordering is the Rifton Blue Wave in size small and is the same one she uses at school.  Or, I should say sits on at school but must have performance anxiety there.  Hoping to get the toilet training under control and well on our way to pull ups this year.  She is already doing great at home, just not so good outside of our house so that is where we have to make the most progress.  I'm very hopeful that the Rifton seat will help us get her going in the actual bathroom and avoid using the potty chamber all together because Emma is a big girl and eats like a big girl and using an actual toilet would be something great for my big girl (and her Mom).  Estimated time of arrival is 2 weeks, which gives me a bit of time to figure out where we can find room in the house for yet another piece of equipment.
  • In a move that almost made me faint, Emma's primary insurance approved her new wheelchair!  I think it is the first approval letter we have ever seen from them and Chris suggested we frame it - and I don't think he was joking, either.  That's how excited we were to get it!  Still likely to take a couple/few more months before we receive delivery of the chair because it - like many things Emma - is a custom chair with a custom seating system with a custom headrest with a customer seatbelt, etc. and so that takes a while to get it all together and ready for Emma.  Still, I'm super excited that (while it took 3 months to get the approval) it is one less fight ahead with me on insurance.  God is good!
Let's hope the rest of this year continues as good as it started!

2 Comments from readers:

Sandie-Matthew's Mom said...

Thank you for this post. I hope that your daughter is doing very well with potty training and using the Rifton toilet chair -- at school, too. I am the mom of a son with special needs and am considering which type of toilet chair/shower chair to get him. My first choice (that I keep coming back to) is the Rifton Blue Wave toilet system (roll-over the toilet chair/plus shower chair, all in one). I'm curious to know what you think of the Rifton toilet chair, if I can ask? Do you use the Rifton toilet seat that attaches right on the toilet or the full chair that rolls over the toilet? Any reviews, thoughts, pros, cons that you are able to offer would be extremely helpful and valuable. Thank you so very much.

Sandie

Kristina said...

Hi, Sandie.

We have the Rifton at home and at school and it works great for us. At home we keep it in the powder room on our main floor. That way I don't have to carry Emma up and down the stairs each time she has to go potty. We roll it over the toilet and then roll it out of the way when the rest of us need to use it - it is not a dedicated bathroom for Emma so we didn't want to mount it to the toilet. This system is really easy an works fine for us.

We do have a bath chair that we had before the potty seat, but I think that if we get another house and have a roll in shower that we would use the Rifton Blue Wave for both potty and shower. It would be much easier on our back to have a more upright shower seat but for now we are fine with our Leckey shower chair.

Overall, we really like this potty chair. I guess a con is that it's not very portable - for example when we are on the go - but then none of them are. The other thing is that it seems to attract dirt pretty easily so I wash it down a lot. Neither is a big deal. I have heard from others that they like the Flamingo seat but I really like this one and would buy it again if given the choice all over again.

I also have a couple of other posts showing our recent potty technique. It is more recent, so you can check it out if you want to go to Home and then just scroll down a bit. Potty training is working out better than we expected and I hope you find it works for you, too! Feel free to email me if you have any other specific questions.