Power Wheels

It's very evident that Emma wants to keep up with her peers - she wants to go where they go.  We were lucky enough to get a KidWalk gait trainer for her in late November and I'm thrilled to report that she is starting to take a few steps independently in the KidWalk.  Everything she is doing makes me believe in my heart that she will walk one day.  Lately, though, I've come to the realization that day is a bit farther out into the future and will not likely be her main mode of mobility.

I've been in conversations with Emma's PT for about 2 years now around power mobility for her.  It all started with a research study at the local university that is studying the impact of power mobility on very young children with motor delays.  They have even demonstrated that children younger than 1 year old can benefit from power mobility if they are unable to get around independently.  I spoke with the researchers and they felt Emma would be a great candidate for power mobility.  Emma's PT agreed to start tsting Emma's power chair readiness with the Cooper Car.  You can see a video of her in it here.

Recently I've stepped up the conversation around a power chair for Emma.  It's obvious to me that Emma will not learn how to function a power chair by spending 10 minutes in the Cooper Car each week.  She is not learning stop because when she can only go for 10 minutes a week I think there is ZERO reason for her to want to Stop when we say so.  I really think she needs a lot of time with a power chair to learn the Stop/Go concept and demonstrate that she is ready for one so we can get the insurance to cover the chair.

I discussed this with some friends and the offered to let Emma test out the power chair they had for their son.  We met at the hospital because the halls and the space there are great for testing out power chairs.  Emma fit perfectly in the chair and seemed quite pleased to be sitting in it.  The controls were on the left side which is the worse of Emma's two arms, but she still had a lot of fun moving the chair around in circles.  I was able to get her to move up and down the hallway with minimal assistance.  While looking at the set-up, Emma might do even better with a different joystick set-up and possibly have the chair move forward when she pulls the handle back and go backwards when she pushes forward.  But, overall, Emma did much better than I expected.

I don't have great videos of Emma testing the chair out because I was monitoring the kill switch (it shuts the chair down when I push the button) in case Emma drove a bit crazy and I was trying to help her out and take the video with my iPhone.  Here is a brief video of Emma going in circles in the chair.



Emma will get a chance to give the power chair a more thorough test over the next couple of months because our friends are generous enough to lend it to her for testing.  I'm looking forward to seeing how she progresses in the power chair and deciding if now is the time to start the process of getting her one.

The one thing I do have to say is a power chair will require an adjustment to our lifestyle.  We will need to map out handicap access to all our favorite places because you cannot just pick up a power chair to go over a curb.  We will also have to determine the best way to transport the chair (minivan access in our future?) and a host of other issues.  But for now we're taking it one step at a time and looking forward to the possibilities for independence the power chair could give Emma while we continue to work with the gait trainer and her crawling.

Crawling

A while back I did a post on an affordable crawler Emma received.  Since Emma was too small for the crawler we made quite a few adjustments to make it work for her.  Emma did manage to crawl around with the modifications but the crawler was not ideal.

This week the crawler her school purchased (one a bit smaller than what we have) arrived and I was able to see Emma try it out.  Immediately, she started scooting all around the room and it was evident that the belly sling made it much easier for her crawling rather than the foam covered board we were using.  Not a big suprise :-)  When we got home I looked at her crawler again to figure out a way to make it work with the belly sling.  And then I got and idea!

I can't believe I didn't think of it before since it's so simple.  I did an internet search for a local machine shop and gave them a call before heading over there .  The reason we couldn't use the sling is because the bar holders the sling slid into was tall and the lowest setting was still too tall for Emma.  Well, the machine shop took off a couple of inches on the frame where the sling slid into and - voila! a crawler that is a good height for Emma when she uses it with the sling.  To use it, I put the sling into the holder bars and then move them to the lowest level hole and then go even further down so the sling is not in any of the holder holes but rather sticking out the bottom a bit.  This even allows her to use her hands a bit more to crawl and her palms are starting to open up a bit in this position.  The bonus is that it didn't cost a cent to have it modified thanks to the incredibly nice machine shop owner!  If you are still looking for an affordable crawler you might want to consider buying the crawler we did and having it modified a bit for size.

So simple, yet so powerful.  She is still learning how to crawl a bit with the sling because it allows her to flip forward a bit and doesn't make her keep her feet/knees on the ground, but she is learning fast!  Yesterday she was crawling around the house for about 45 minutes before I thought to take some video of her.  She gets slower and her feet don't move as well the longer she moving with the crawler - it takes a lot of energy to move! - but even after 45 minutes she was still moving so I decided to take some videos to share.

Here is the video I took.  She starts to crawl around 45 seconds into the video.  Enjoy!

Hopeful Parents

I'm happy to report that my monthly post is now up at Hopeful Parents.  It's titled Finding Time.  Click HERE to read it.  

Faith

This year I read about Ali Edward's One Little Word - the idea of picking a word as your personal theme for the year.  Since I've never been a big fan of New Year's Resolutions, I thought the idea of a word might be perfect to ground me this year.  I already had the perfect word:  Faith.

The word Faith actually found me.  In December I found a gift card that I had won for Silpada jewelry and I decided it was time to use it (you know, since it expired at the end of the year)!  I picked up my catalog and found a couple of items that interested me but when I flipped to the back for the order information I came across a necklace that had the word Faith engraved on the inside of a concave disk with a mustard seed charm attached.  I knew that was the item I needed to get with the card.

I don't think it's a coincidence that I discovered the idea of One Little Word right now.  Or that Faith showed itself as my word for this year.  So, now that I have my word, what am I supposed to do with it?  According to Ali Edwards:

        You live with it.  You invite it into your life.  You let it speak to you.  You might even follow where it leads.  There are so many possibilities.   

I have my one little word.  Faith.  I actually LOVE it!  I'm looking forward to the journey the little word will take me on in 2011. 

New Year

It feels like it's been AGES since Christmas day, but really it's only been about a week and a half.  We even still have our tree up and it is always lit when we are at home.  I think all of us, but especially Julia, will be sad to take it down this weekend.  We didn't decorate the house too much this year - mostly just a tree inside and a wreath on our door - because of it being up For Sale and it has made both me and Chris surprisingly happy.  The less is more idea really worked well for us this year.  Our stress level was quite low and I haven't tired of the tree at all like I tired of our house being taken over by Christmas decorations in years past.

We celebrated New Year's Eve with dinner at a local steakhouse along with hundreds of other perfect strangers.  We phoned for call ahead seating at 3:30pm for a 4:30pm dinner slot and I figured we would beat the rush with such an early dinner.  Nope!  Apparently everyone headed out to dinner early and there was a 75 minute wait at the restaurant around 4:20pm when we arrived.  Thankfully we had done the call ahead seating and within 10 minutes we were shown to our booth and were all happy as could be.  I loved the fact that I wasn't cooking, Chris loved that we were at a place that served great steaks, Julia loved eating the peanuts that came in a bucket on the table and Emma loved that we were at a booth in the back giving her the best view of everything going on around her.  Have I mentioned that she is a busybody?  Well, she was in busybody heaven that night.  Having an early dinner put us at home right around 7pm, giving us plenty of time to give the girls a bath and shower and let them curl up on the couch to watch High School Musical 3.  It's so funny to see them so interested in a movie for the entire length of it.  I find it especially great that Emma loves watching it with Julia.  It's a nice activity they can do together and both of them seem to love snuggling on the couch watching a musical.  I think the key to their attention is breaking out into song every 10 minutes or so.  I might have to remember this and just break out in song next time I need their attention.  

When the girls went to bed, Chris and I put on our own movie.  We have been watching the Band of Brothers series for most of the holiday since Chris received the box set as a gift and it was nice to take a break for the evening and watch a very light comedy.  I managed to be sound asleep when the New Year arrived and I think Chris abandoned watching the ball drop and rung in the New Year watching a basketball game.  The best part of the night was that everyone slept through it!  Over the holiday there were very few continuous nighttime hours of sleep so a good night's sleep cannot be underrated in my book. We spent New Year's day with some close friends that we see all too infrequently and just had a great day.

The new year also brings with it Julia's birthday.  My big girl is now FIVE!!!!!  Oh, boy!  Because FIVE is such a special birthday (really, aren't they all at this age??!!!), I will do a post on Julia's big day all by itself shortly.  I'm just pulling together the year in photos video to go with it and then will get it up.  I am optimistic that this could happen as early as this weekend :-)