Stepping up

Emma has a huge desire to get moving.  She also loves to stand.  So, getting her in a gait trainer has been in the forefront of my mind for over a year now.  It was last November that Emma first tried out a gait trainer during her PT session.  I did a post on it here.  

Since that time I've been working to get a gait trainer for Emma in our house.  There is a lot of talk about gait trainers in the CPMoms group that I am on and the KidWalk by Prime Engineering came highly recommended.  So, in addition to the Rifton Pacer that we tested during PT I wanted to have Emma test the KidWalk.  It took months to get a demo KidWalk to test and while we were waiting we kept putting Emma in the Rifton Pacer and she kept not walking in it.  When we finally were able to test out the KidWalk for Emma she took some steps!  I was soooo excited for her.  The rep. even lent us the KidWalk to take home for Mother's Day weekend this year and you can see a picture of that here.  By the time we returned the demo we knew that was the right equipment for Emma.  We've been working on getting Emma her own KidWalk ever since and I'm extremely *hopeful* that we will have one before Christmas.  Pretty please, Santa Insurance Man.  

In the meantime, we were gifted a Pony walker from a local family whose daughter outgrew the Pony a while ago.  We've put Emma in in quite a few times (you can see a couple of photos here), mostly when we are outdoors, and she stands well in it but hasn't really tried walking in it.  Then, in mid-September one of Emma's friends received a new gait trainer and lent us her Rifton Pacer to use while we are waiting for the KidWalk to get approved and arrive.  We have been putting Emma in the Pacer a bit since the wheels are a bit easier to get moving than on the Pony walker we have and she amazed us last week by taking her first few steps.  Below is a short video of the first two steps, but in total that afternoon she walked about 2 feet!  All on her own!  The next day she walked from the hallway all the way into the bathroom until she ran into her potty seat that was leaning against the bathtub - a total of around 3 or 4 feet!  

Notice how Emma "listens" to me to move her foot forward and then her other foot forward.  Following directions on motor skills requires a lot of things to come together for Emma and she can't always make her body do what we ask her to do.  So, I love the video for both the steps and the following directions.  My girl continues to amaze and inspire me!

In addition to taking these steps, Emma has been sleeping differently the last month or two.  She has always been a belly sleeper with her arms at her sides and very little movement through the night - unless you count when she wakes up crying and gets moved into our bed (ha!).  Lately she has been all.over.the.place in her crib.  She rolls from side to side, scoots to the top, turns her body 180 degrees, gets caught between the slats, moves her covers all over and generally causes quite a commotion in there.  It's WONDERFUL!  But at the same time it's been horrible in the sleeping situation as it's causing her to bump her head or get her foot caught or get cold - all of which usually ends up with her (and us!) waking up several times during the night.  I know we need to find a different sleeping situation for her rather than her crib but we don't have anything figured out on that just yet.  We'd love to go to a full mattress to give her more room but the girls share a room right now and there just isn't enough room.  Maybe when we move.....whenever that happens!  If anyone has any ideas on good bed options please leave me a comment.  I really would love some input.

It seems like quite a bit is starting to come together for Emma's independent movement right now.  I'm so excited for her accomplishments and hope they continue.  I have seen Emma accomplish something amazing only to make me wait months to see it happen again - I hope that is not the case this time!  

Oh, and FYI - In my next post I'll give an update on Emma's crawling.  I know some people might find the information on the crawler Emma is using, so check back soon for all the info. on it.

Embracing Differences

My monthly post is up on Hopeful Parents.  Click here to read it.

Some inspiration

Today I put a video up at the Kidz blog.  It's very inspirational and worth a look if you have a moment.  

"When I let go of who I wanted her to be, and just let her "be," she completely flourished, and I reveled in knowing she's perfect just the way she is!"

The message in this video is so inspiring to me.  I love to come back and look at it when I need a gentle reminder in the incredible possibilities that are achievable when we embrace our differences.  


If you liked that video, you should also take a moment to read this post on Hopeful Parents.  Because, after all, we could all use a reminder of how incredibly perfect our children are every now and then.

Ice Skating

We live near an ice rink that many olympic figure skaters use to train at and have not really spent much time there.  Since we are trying to move away from this area we thought it would be a good idea to check out what they have to offer while we are still here.  When we found out there are ice skating lessons for all levels of skill we let Julia choose between swim lessons or ice skating lessons for her Fall activity.  I may have led her in the direction of choosing ice skating since I thought it might help her with her sense of balance.  Let's just say that she takes after her Daddy in the falling down department.

I'm happy to say that Julia chose ice skating and absolutely LOVES going to lessons.  She is doing much better than I expected on the skates and hasn't complained once about falling on the ice.  Her teacher told us that she has the perfect hip motion for the skating moves they are doing and Chris did not really like to hear that at all even though it was meant as a compliment!  I think out of the small group of children in Julia's class she is probably the one who stays in the upright position the most.  I won't comment on how shocking that actually is to us.

The lessons have followed the same routine each session.  Before getting on the ice each session they practice how to fall (to minimize the hurt) and how to get up from a fall.  Julia has this part down pat.  Then, the kids skate out onto the ice and pick a stuffed animal from the instructor's bag of tricks.  Julia always picks the kitty cat.  They then throw the animal away from them, skate over to retrieve it, and skate back to the starting line.  They do this a few more times before the instructor shows them new moves and then she uses a dry erase marker to create a skating path for them to follow.  This usually has some parts with forward, side and backwards skating along with a bit of a circle skate.  This takes the longest for all the kids to navigate and there is usually a few falls.  Emma finds this all VERY entertaining to watch.  She even seems very interested in getting out on the ice so I have to contact the building manager to find out if they have any options for getting Emma on the ice.  

Ice skating has been such a big hit with Julia that she asked to sign up for the Fall II session.  This session has all the skaters perform in a show before the holidays which would probably be a lot of fun to watch since the skaters range from very beginner like Julia all the way up to very good skaters with personal coaches.  I think we may just have to enroll her to continue the fun!

    

 

Oh, and when we get there a bit early we are able to see the Zambonie getting the ice ready for everyone.  Both girls love to watch the machine in action making the ice shiny so we have been working on bucking our trend of being just in time to a tad late for a bit on the early side.  So far, so good.  We might even make a harder effort to try and carry our less frazzled appearance over to other areas of our life.  

Birthday Fun!

We've been getting ready for Emma's transition out of Early Intervention Birth to 3 for a while and completed that with her first day of school last week.  All the change was quite stressful for me and I just kept focusing on Emma and thinking about how lucky I am to be her Mommy and I wanted to make her birthday special for her.

Since she LOVES being with people we celebrated this milestone with a party that included great friends, face painting, pumpkin painting, cake and good food.  The day was picture perfect so the party was mostly held outside, which was very welcome after all the rain we have had cooped us all up inside for a while.  Not to mention the fact that our house is small and getting outside gave the kids more opportunity to spread out and have fun!



I want to take a moment to talk about the gifts Emma received.  We usually don't focus on presents at birthdays since it is a celebration of life and not of presents.  But, this year Emma received some amazing presents!  I mention this simply because Emma can be a bit hard to buy for with her motor challenges but this year EVERY SINGLE present was just perfect for her!  If you are interested in ideas for presents for children like Emma, here are some that really hit the mark:

• a large musical keyboard with buttons that have different tempos and keys that you can bang on use to make beautiful music
• plush turtle constellation nightlight like the one found here.  Julia even loves this one and keeps trying to take into her bed at night, so I think that means Emma won't grow out of this anytime soon.  She is sleeping a bit better at night so far since I put this in her room and I hope this could be the reason and we all start to get a bit more sleep around here!
• leg warmers.  We used these the day of the party and every day since!  They are perfect for keeping her little legs warm since she always tends to be a bit colder than other children and they are awesome for potty training!
• a remote control car.  That is, if she can wrestle it off of the other people in the house since we all like this one.
• an outfit for Emma and a doll with a matching outfit.  adorable :-)
• iTunes gift cards.  This will let us have lots more fun getting apps for her iPad.
• a crawler so she can move herself around a bit.  She actually got this a month early and LOVES it. I'll do a separate post on this soon.

I could go on but you get the idea.  It seems like buying presents for Emma was no problem at all.

Happy Birthday my sweet little Emma!  You have lost every inch of your baby look and are now pure girl.  Our lovely little girl that brings so much joy to our lives.  Thank you for being you!

If you want to see a slideshow I put together of Emma's year in photos, click below.