Directive?

Classified.

this is all i hear ALL. DAY. LONG.

Kaylen is currently addicted and i mean A-DICT-TED to the movie Wall-E. It’s nuts. I wish I could say she’s learning lots of good words from it but really, there’s like NO dialogue in the movie so its not even that! Kealey went through this same thing with Nemo at the same age as Kaylen so it’s not shocking in any way – its just…repetitive!

In Kendall news – all is pretty much status quo – which is to say that she is as good as she can be, but she still throws in random weird quirks that keep us all on our toes. Yesterday she had a GREAT day in Developmental Therapy and is on her way to meeting lots of “inchstones” (because with her, it takes a LOT of inches to add up to the MILEstones that other kids reach):

She reached into her sippy cup to get her binky. Well I should back up a bit – she actually let the sippy cup be NEAR HER was the first inchstone! In speech therapy we work with trying to get her caught up to age appropriate skills. And while the good Lord know that certainly none of MY children were ever weaned off of a bottle by one year, apparently this is something that happens for 99% of other children out there.  so we started working on getting her to accept/drink formula from a sippy cup. i kid you not I have tried no less than four different types of sippy cup and she hates them all. Like loathes them. My sweet angelic go with the flow of ANYTHING and still smiles through it all little baby goes absolutely Exorcist when a sippy cup comes near her. i have no idea what trauma has been inflicted by sippies but she HATES them. So we’re deep in the throes of “de-sensitization”. This means she has to have the empty sippy cup around her whenever she is playing, it is among her toys, we try to get her to touch it with her fingers at least once a day, etc.  (I know – it all sounds ridiculous!) And yesterday her mean mean evil (I love the way her mind works!) DT put her beloved binky INTO the sippy cup! Kendall was horrified. She just squealed with frustration that she would have to touch the cup, put her hand INSIDE the cup and that her binky had been “tainted” by the cup’s presence. (It was really hilarious to watch, especially if you’ve ever SEEN how upset she gets at the sippy cup). So that was a big step!

Secondly – she is finally starting to “pivot” while on her belly – meaning she tolerates tummy time long enough to not only push up on her arms, but see that she can get to other toys around her if she uses her arms.  She is also SLOWLY starting to pivot more often in sitting position, but since sitting is still such a new concept to her, she is pretty cautious about this one.

We are seeing MUCH more protective reflexes when in sitting position. She still “ring sits”, meaning her legs are frog-legged out to give her as wide of a base as she can get to maintain some balance. I think (for her assessment purposes) that she isn’t considered “independently sitting” till she can actually correct herself in all directions to maintain her position – and right now she is only about 50% on being able to catch herself on her sides with her arms, and 0% catching herself if she is falling backwards. But she IS improving! little by little every day! She is amazing I tell you! I think she will be strong enough to hopefully sit up in her highchair to have her first birthday cake!

She had her arms kinesio-taped in a new position on Monday at PT (physical therapy), and oh my gosh. WHAT A DIFFERENCE! We taped them as if they were “sub-luxed”, meaning partially out of the joint/dislocated. Her PT thought it might be too much, because we don’t think kendall actually has dislocated shoulders, but it was an IMMEDIATE difference not only in the feel/handling of her (as in it wasn’t like trying to dress a baby octopus to get her clothes on her!), but in what kendall could USE her arms for. They usually are flailing every which way behind her and/or bending in awkward positions, so the taping definitely helped. Now we pray that her skin doesn’t react to being pulled in by all the adhesive (she has some weird skin reactions to the tape sometimes), and that we can continue to teach her joints to stay in place with this therapy!

And – in a very good for the heart brief little moment, she was able to actually coordinate her arms WITH her legs enough to get into an ALMOST pre-crawling position. She is still nowhere near ready to crawl, and that is sad, but i saw a glimmer of what can come the other day, and it gave me hope

We (her therapists and I) are all encouraged by the massive progress we have seen in the past 3-4 weeks and are hopeful that if we can just keep her healthy, we will be able to really start building on some of what she has learned the past 6 months. Her PT is putting the order in for braces for Kendall’s legs, to help stabilize and strengthen them while she’s learning to stand. I am not sure what made her decide to do it, but I am guessing it is seeing Kendall try to stand and either locking her knees so hard they bow backwards, or the fact that she will stand on any body part that happens to touch the ground (top of her foot, inside of her ankle, outside of the ankle, toes under – it really doesn’t matter!) She is cognitively aware that she WANTS to stand up and see the world, but the rest of her body isn’t anywhere near being able to support her in that. It will still be a few months before we have them in, but at least the question of “IF” is taken care of. One less thing to worry about.

I forgot what else I was going to put into today’s post…

If you are here and reading – leave some love! (that would be a comment!) I have found that I am so very much more inspired to write more when I am getting interaction/feedback from you all, handful of you that there are! My awesome brother and his lackeys are working on an AMAZING new look for Terra Talking and i could not be more giddy about it! I am not sure when we’ll have it ready to roll out – but you’ll want to keep checking in. Maybe we’ll have some cool fun giveaways to celebrate the new look! And maybe, if we hit 50,000 on ye olde counter before Kendall’s first birthday, we’ll have to have a special prize for our fifty-thousandeth reader.

fun times!

ok gotta pack up for therapy round two today – Occupational!!! (aka, the room of wonders for kaylen. maybe i’ll try to sneak a few pictures of it today to show you…)

Love and hugs –

T-crest