Finnegan....just because

I took lots of photos of Finnegan for my photo class last week.  One came out particularly good so I wanted to share it.  To us, Finney is more than just a dog.  She is an integral part of our family. 

Just like everyone else in our family she has her quirks.  Finnegan is afraid of the kitchen floor in this house and won't come in the kitchen unless she is on her leash with no means of escape back into the living room.  Her paws just can't get traction on the laminate floor and she pretty much belly slides through to the back door.  This has done wonders for her weight and she has dropped 10 lbs. since she no longer cleans the scraps up from the floor.  It has also left me to do the daily kitchen floor clean-up without any pre-clean from Finney...sigh.  She also needs lots of encouragement to climb our stairs, runs from the vacuum cleaner, and requires a ridiculous amount of tries to jump up on our bed (when we are trying to convince her to sleep in a bit later on the weekends we invite her up on our bed).  But, her quirks are really all inside quirks.

Outside, she is all dog.  Brave, protective, excited to greet all the people we meet on our walks and less than excited to see the other dogs we meet.  She has never met a lawn she didn't want to sniff and when she senses a threat to her family (i.e., most little dogs passing by) the hair on her back stands on end.

She's getting a bit gray in her mouth and I think it makes her look distinguished.  She is 9.5 years young.  I hope she sticks around another 9 years because I just can't imagine our life without her.

We love you, brave Finnegan!

Now, please stop sneaking up on the couch and falling asleep on the pillow when you think I'm not looking.  You look cute and comfy and quite frankly it makes me want to join you.  I don't have as much free time to fritter about in naps so don't tempt me.  Thank you.

I love days when things just come together

Some days things go really well.  From the time you wake up until the time you go to bed everything works out great.  The thing is, though, is that those days are so...very...infrequent.

Most days I rush around trying to check off 2 items of my to do list.  Yes, you read right - 2 items from a to do list that is at least a couple of pages long.  The reason I have it set at 2 is because I think 3 is reaching too high most days.  Experience tells me that I just as often as not hit the 2 items so I see no reason to mess with a 50/50 record by upping it to 3!

Today, however, is one of those magical days when great things happen even though I'm not checking anything off my to do list.  It almost makes me want to stop the day now because I'm not sure it could get much better as the day goes on, but boy would it be fantastic if it did!  And I have a feeling it will....today is just one of those great magical days where a lot of things come together on the same day.

Emma went to school in her pull-up today.  Not a diaper, a pull-up.  This is a very big deal in our world.  She also went to school with a spare change of clothes just in case.  And guess what?
She came home in her pull-up!  She used the potty at school and did not require a diaper change.  Her aide left me a message telling me how proud she is of Emma.  I like her new aide, and now I like her even more for her kind message with italics and smiley face.  I like smiley faces :-)  Emma does not come by smiley faces or stickers for good work all that easily.

When Emma was settled in the house I looked in her notebook and read how great she is doing with a quick response on her listening check each morning and that the team is now introducing her eye gaze device for her to select the LING (listening) sounds.  She even picked one correctly with her eye gaze device on the first try.  In her notebook I also saw a note that our trial of the eye gaze device was extended until Feb. 22!  That gives us almost another month to see what Emma does with it, which is really helpful in our decision making process of what device to purchase.  She is just warming up to knowing how to use it - and at the age of 4 it still amazes me how quickly she catches on to all the technology we show her! - so handing it back next week would not really give us an accurate trial of the device.

On Martin Luther King, Jr. day we stopped by Emma's hospital to drop off her non-working loaner power wheelchair.  Chris had the day off and was able to help me get it there because it is hard to load/unload it from the car when it has power and even harder when there is no power.  It hasn't worked since we moved and I've really been itching to get Emma back to working on learning to drive a power chair to give her a taste of increased independence.  I was thinking about the chair today and received a call from her hospital that it is all ready for her!  The battery was just too low that it wouldn't charge.  It is now charged and ready for Emma to drive it about.  I'm planning to pick it up on Monday so we can have it for her PT evaluation scheduled next Tuesday.  Emma needs extra PT in addition to what she has at school and one thing I want them to work on is driving a power chair.  The timing of the fixed power chair is just perfect.

Today I haven't checked anything off my to do list and yet it's already been a great day.  I think I'll save my to do list which includes calls to make appointments, insurance referrals, getting insurance to cover some of Emma's essentials, etc. for Monday.  Today is a great day and I want to just enjoy it while it lasts for they don't come around that often and when they do they are meant to be savored.

Potty training update

There are a few people who asked for more information on the potty training, so I wanted to post an update on how it is going now that we have the new supported toileting seat.

The potty training is in full swing!  Emma seems to love her potty seat, loves going in the actual bathroom, loves washing her hands afterwards, loves helping me switch the light on/off, loves the praise she is getting.  She really is ready for this stage of her life and I'm happy that we are able to support her in meeting such a huge milestone!

The biggest issue with our potty training is that she still is not able to tell us when she has to go.  She does have a sort of fuss, but it could be a general you're not paying me any attention fuss or an I have to go to the bathroom fuss or any number of other reasons why she might want to be a bit fussy.  Each time she does fuss, though, I ask her if she has to go potty and give her the Yes/No hand gesture to tell me and each time she does respond.  Truth be told I wasn't so sure in the beginning if she was saying Yes/No with intention when it came to the potty questions.  But, she has totally made a believer our of me!  Emma knows when she has to go - and always picks the correct hand.  There were a couple of times when I thought for sure she didn't have to go but since she said Yes I put her on the potty and sure enough she went!  I shall doubt my Emma no more - it's completely evident to me that she does not want to go in a diaper anymore and would chose the potty if given the opportunity.

The other issue with the potty is that Emma can't sit or stand independently, so it makes potty training harder than wearing a diaper on her caregiver (i.e., usually me).  I had her in diapers but today switched her over to pull-ups.  Our bathroom does not have a changing table in it or anywhere to put Emma to put on her diaper that is pretty much always dry.  So what winds up happening with the diaper is that after she goes potty I take her to another room or lay her on the kitchen floor to put on her diaper.  Then, I take her back to the bathroom to wash and dry her hands and mine and then take her back into another room to continue whatever we are doing.  With the pull up I basically pull down her pants and pull up, put her on, take her off and pull up her pull up and pants, wash our hands and then go about our business.  This is much better on my back so I decided to implement this method sooner rather than later.  I think the switch to pull ups is a good one and hope that it continues to work out for us.  For now, though, when she is not at home we will continue with the diapers.  We are not trying to potty train in public right now (the only exception is school) since Emma is not very cooperative in public restrooms and we don't have all the logistics of it figured out just yet.  One step at a time......

And I'll leave you with a couple photos of Emma working on kneeling while watching Sesame Street.  She loves that show and I let her watch a bit after school while I position her to work on certain skills such as sitting, kneeling, pull to stand, etc.  It's quite sneaky of me since she has school and therapy in the morning before she comes home for lunch and a bit of tv followed by a nap.  This week she was interested in kneeling....that is until she wasn't!

Interested in kneeling and talking to Abby Cadabby

I think she is saying "Mom, give me a break!  Can't I just get a little snuggle while I watch the tv????"

Notice that she was doing so well that I felt OK to move away from her to take a photo?  Way to go my Emma Bean!

Not so wordless Wednesday

I mentioned that I'm taking an online photography course.  As you may have guessed, this requires me to take lots of photos.  Not that I needed a reason to take lots of photos...the main different is that now my photos are looking better!

Here is a photo from the other day.  Emma was in her walker, playing ball with me while in her KidWalk and I snapped a few photos of her in full on happiness mode.

**LOVE** my Emma.  Love this photo!  Love how all her hard work is paying off and she is able to move around a bit more in her equipment.

Little updates

The other week at school Julia's class was studying the letter L.  They had an activity where the children finished this sentence:  "Love is ...."  and then they illustrated their sentence and it was put on the bulletin board outside their classroom.  Julia wrote:  "Love is making crafts for my sister!" and her illustration is a picture of her and her sister with a heart and the word love.  My heart melts every time I think of this picture and sentence.  Julia is such a special little girl.  How lucky we are to be blessed with such amazing little girls!

In other news, Emma received her new toilet seat today!  I've posted on here before about our goal to potty train Emma this year - or at least get her into pull-ups most of the time.  She is doing really well at home and is mostly dry and using the baby potty instead of her diaper.  She started doing well at school, too, but she now has a new aide and is giving her a bit of a hard time and is refusing to sit on the potty seat at school.  I tried to get her on the seat with her aide at school and Emma refused me, too!  She can be quite stubborn when she wants and her legs are really hard to bend if she doesn't want them bent.  Once Emma gets more comfortable with her aide she should start to cooperate more with the potty training.  In the meantime we are working hard at home to move from diapers to pull-ups.  

I'm thrilled that Emma's Rifton potty seat arrived today!  It's the same one she uses at school so I'm hoping using it at home should make her more comfortable with using the same model at school with her new aide.  Here she is - fully clothed - testing out the seat settings while watching her beloved Sesame Street.  She looks like such a big girl in her potty chair, right?!!!  

The most exciting part of this chair for me is that it can be rolled over the toilet so I don't have to empty the chamber - score one for me!!!!!  Or, it can be used anywhere in the house with the chamber attached.  As of now I think we'll mostly use this in the bathroom because Emma is a big girl and needs to get used to going in the bathroom and having a bit of privacy.  

I think we'll have to take the baby potty we've been using with us when we are on the road because right now we don't know of any fully supported portable potty chair.  Anyway, we'll figure it out as time goes on like we always do.