Even princesses do PT

Addy spent a lot of the day today making sure that both Ariel and baby Cinderella did booty bumps, stander, and walking. (Booty bumps is an exercise from PT. To do them yourself, lay on your back on the floor with your knees bent. Raise your butt off the ground and rest it back on the ground, chanting "Booty bump, bump, bump, bump, bump.")

Camera shy

Nora has started giggling this week. Very cute! She's a little ticklish under her chin, so I can even make her giggle on command. Sometimes. When she isn't hungry. What I can't do is get it on video. She clams up and starts scowling when I try to get it on video.

Who's the alpha cat now?

Addy was playing with her Curious George stuffed animal the other day and managed to catch the attention of our enormous, opinionated cat, Merry. George has loops of thread that define his fingers and toes. More accurately he had loops of thread that defined them; he now has loose threads in a couple of places. Merry doesn't understand that George is Addy's special toy, even if he does have enticing, dangling threads that dance when Addy plays with him. So Merry attacked George and scared the tar out of poor Addy.

Unfortunately, each day since then poor Addy has gotten more and more nervous around the cat and keeps asking us to put Merry in the kitchen. Fortunately, Merry is too obese to jump over the baby gates (not that I like having her this fat--I don't--but it comes in handy for this particular situation). The whole thing actually kept progressing to the point that Addy told us that her surgery incisions from last month were actually scratches from Merry. I don't want her to fear the cat any more than she does, so I tried to just explain to her that Merry didn't scratch her; Merry had scratched George a little, but not her.

I failed. Miserably.

How did I fail? Because next came the inevitable follow-up question: if not the cat, then who? Mommy? Daddy? Miss C?

Her world made sense with the blame being assigned to Merry, but I don't want her to be afraid of the cat for something she didn't do. On the other hand I don't want her to be afraid of either the surgeon or the hospital (or any of the rest of us, for that matter). We managed to leave it at "the boo-boos just happened and they're getting better now," but only just barely. I'm sure the question will come up again.

On a more positive note, we went today and got the casts made for Addy's new AFOs. Yay! KAFO casts will be next week. Super yay!

Bleepin' cat

One of our cats knocked over a cup of water one night while we were sleeping and soaked the play rug (and the recliner) in the living room. The rug had a layer of foam floor tiles under it and duck tape around the edge to keep everything in place. Since the water soaked ALL the way through to the floor, I had to pull it up as part of cleaning up the cat's (or maybe cats') mess. I decided the rug had enough snags and ground-in dirt that once it was up, it wasn't going back down. I have another rug I could put down, but Addy The Wonder Kid has been pulling the letters out of the foam mat pieces and telling us which letter is which, what sounds they make, what words they start with, etc. The amazing part is that she usually gets them right, but it's really funny when she gets them mixed up :)

Pied piper

Add was looking for her "instrument" (a.k.a., empty wrapping paper tube) tonight and seemed to have noticed that I might have thrown it away. Here's the replacement:


I know you're especially jealous of the Hello Kitty Duck Tape.

Green thumb

We bought some zinnia seeds at the store today for Addy's first ever gardening experience. (When I checked the package after we'd bought it, I was glad to see they should germinate in 7-10 days.) We used an empty milk carton for a planter and had fun loading it with potting soil and a few seeds.

Overheard at dinner

Addy: What's outside?
Daddy: Lots of things are outside. What do you think is outside?
Addy: Cats and birds.
Daddy: Yup, we sometimes see cats and birds outside.
Addy: And dogs.
Daddy: There are dogs outside, too.
Addy: And treasure.

Standing

I had taken the seat out of the gait trainer last week so that Addy could use it without it irritating the incisions from her hip flexor release (works well since one if her Early Intervention goals talks about progressing to using the gait trainer without the seat--we just jumped ahead and won't put the seat back on once her incisions are all healed). Today during therapy I asked the therapist to help adjust the frame for us so Addy could use the gait trainer more effectively without the seat. She lowered the chest support to help stabilize Addy's hips, but the real key seemed to be putting on the knee splints to help keep her knees from buckling under her. She can't really walk with the splints on, but she sure had fun standing tall all by herself!

Bubble bath

Addy did, indeed, get to take a bubble bath this afternoon after her cast came off. She keeps calling it a "bumblebee bath," which is hilarious!

Cast-be-gone!

Cast is gone--hooray! Better news is that the infection at the incision site seems to be getting better. No fever today and the incision even looks improved over yesterday.

Next up is new braces. We got a prescription for both AFOs and KAFOs (knee-ankle-foot-orthotics). She'll wear the AFOs most of the time, but use the KAFOs for her walking therapy.

Bubble bath?

Addy has her scheduled post-op appointment with the surgeon this afternoon. I promised her a bubble bath if her cast comes off!

Two steps forward, one step back

Addy has been off her game for several days--low grade fever that comes and goes, kind of droopy--so we played battle of the doctors this week. The orthopedic surgeon is winning so far, with a diagnosis of surgical site infection. She's been a little perkier, but the antibiotics are doing a number on her poor tummy. Just 8.5 days to go on the meds. Yay.

Nora, on the other hand, is this close to rolling over from back to front. She's also tall enough that she's wearing 6-9 month clothes. Getting so big so fast!

A new perspective

Nora's take on tummy time: it's tolerable. She doesn't really like it, but she's happy to fall asleep on her tummy if you let her. Addy, as you might recall, HATED tummy time and pretty much used it as motivation for learning to roll over.