This Little Momma is Walking!!

My mom suggested I put shoes on Maisy because she thought it’d make her more stable so she’d walk better.  I rolled my eyes.  Vicki agreed with my Mom.  So I packed a pair of shoes for Nana’s today with a “I’m telling you guys she’s going to hate having shoes on her feet, everything online says to let babies learn to walk barefoot now, you’ll see” look on my face, and guess what…these Grandma’s actually know what they’re talking about!  We picked her up today, she had shoes on her feet, wasn’t screaming about it, and she was WALKING!  Imagine that!  (okay okay I’m sorry for rolling my eyes.)

Oh my goodness she is such a Daddy’s girl, can you tell?!?!  On top of being a Daddy’s girl, we realized today that she is a little Momma!  We got her baby doll out and she was being so nurturing!  Patting her, rocking her, kissing her…it brought tears to my eyes…all I kept saying was “awwwww she’s a Mommy!  Look babe, she wants to be a Mommy!”  Then I hear Daddy hugging her saying “you’re going to be a good big sister, yes you are…”  ummmm, wait, wait, wait, wait, I don’t know about all that!  ha.

CIT Week 3 & The Cast is Off!

Week 3 of having the cast on flew by and before we knew it the time came to take it off!  This week we tried to focus specifically on his hand and fingers.  I did a lot of textures with him, trying to get him to use his pointer finger to touch different things…he only seems to have control over his thumb on that hand, so he mostly used his thumb.  I’m not sure what kind of feeling he has, as he gets older I think it will be easier to figure out if things feel different on his left hand than they do his right hand.  Trying to get his pincer grasp working is one of the toughest challenges…but even being able to grab something as small as a penny is a huge accomplishment for him!

I definitely feel that this therapy works wonders for him…even though it might seem a little like torture.  If we didn’t challenge him with things like this, his body would just shut that side down and he’d live in a one-handed world forever.  So anything we can do to help right now while he’s young, we’re up for it! 

I think he is starting to understand why he has to go through some of the things he does. He still manages to keep his silly side through it all.  Here he is telling me to take a picture of “his balancing!”  Miss Stacey would be happy to see that he was practicing his PT skills during his OT visit!

We rode over to his Orthotic Doctor and Dr. Jim was so kind to take his cast off for us.  This worked out great because Ryder is used to Dr. Jim molding his legs and then sawing off that cast when he needs new orthotics, so this was no big deal for Ryder (abby says her saw would have traumatized him for sure!).  I love when God sends little blessings down to us, like Dr. Jim offering to do this at no charge at all, just because he wanted to help out.  Afterwards Ryder felt free as a bird, literally, he kept flapping his right arm and even said to me “Mommy, I’m flapping so hard, will I fly away???”

So this weekend we’ve just been enjoying having 2 hands!  He has resorted back to fisting Lefty a lot BUT when he needs two hands for something he has been doing such a good job of remembering to include Lefty.

We are SO SO proud of him, he really has come so far.  Abby really wants to enforce his new skills and put the cast back on in a week for another 3 weeks.  Right now we’re fighting really bad eczema all over his arm, I think he had an allergic reaction to the casting material, so we’ll see if we can get that cleared up in time.  Keep ya posted :)

What Is That??

Maisy – What is that grumpy face for??

Why have you had that grumpy face on all week??

Oh wait…what is that I just felt in your mouth??

Could it be??  Could it really be???  A TOOTH!!!!  It finally came through!

Maisy you are 11 months old and your first tooth just cut through your gums today…HOORAY!

      

Now we’re happy :)  This is the face I get when I say “Maisy let me see your teeth!”

 

CIT: Week 2

Friday marked Ryder’s second full week with his cast on.  Week 2 was eventful since the cast fell off and a new one had to be put back on the same day.  Then Saturday he came down with a fever and was feeling pretty bad all day and night.  Other than those mishaps, he has been doing so well with the constraint therapy…having the cast on is completely normal to him and he’s doing great using Lefty for most tasks. 

We’ve worked a lot on stability with Lefty this week, getting him to be able to pick things up and carry them without losing his grip, and trying to strengthen his arm and shoulder.  We know that once the cast comes off he will go back to using his right arm/hand for everything, but if we can get his muscles stronger and more coordinated then he’ll be more likely to atleast try things with 2 hands.

Some challenges he is having are using his pincer grasp, picking up flat or small objects and keeping a grip on something he is holding.

Last Friday during therapy we worked on eating with a fork.  We had to hold his elbow, pulling it up so that the fork could point straight down to poke something, then pushing it down to get his wrist towards his mouth to take a bite.  This was something I honestly didn’t think he’d get on his own…buuuttttt…Sunday morning when he was up and feeling better from being sick the day before, what do ya know, he wanted to eat his scrambled eggs (with ketchup, gross!) all by himself, and he wanted me to get it on video!

He’s working so hard, I couldn’t be more proud of him.  The cast comes off this Friday, we’re taking a week break to see how he does and it might have to go back on for another 3 weeks.  We’ll cross that bridge when we get there!

Ryder’s Playlist

The Fireman Sam Theme Song – sung in Welsch (a language spoken in Wales and Argentina…I had to Google it!).

When I say that this boy can memorize any song he hears, I’m not lieing!  He stumbled across this on You Tube (notice how he’s figuring out how to manipulate his tablet with Lefty!), watched it over and over a few times, then started singing along! 

11 Months!!

I couldn’t get a normal 11 Month picture in her crib because as soon as I set her in there she was thinking I was putting her to bed!  This totally sums up how different she is this month, because she has figured out what is going on around her!  Okay so lets move the little grumpy face and try this again…

The recliner makes her happy because she feels “older”…typical Maisy, she thinks she’s like 5!  But no, she’s only 11 months and here is what she’s up to:

• She is officially on whole milk and sippy cups!  She made this transition way too easy.  She wants to be a big girl and do what her big brother does so she’d much rather have a sippy cup instead of a bottle.  Nana has been giving her milk during the day instead of formula for the past month so I decided to hop on board and switch her to milk in the morning and at night too and she is loving it!
• She eats table food now for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!  She has no problem chewing up foods even though she still has NO TEETH!
• She’s in a size 3 diaper and wears a range of 6-9 month, 9 month, and 12 month clothes!
• She’s taking 3-4 steps at a time and will walk like a pro as long as she’s holding your fingers.  I feel like any day now she’s going to just take off, but little miss speed crawler knows she can get there way faster on all fours.
• She is such a climber!!  She climbs on chairs, tables, inside Ryder’s car, on his bed, onto his 4-wheeler, and actually turns around to sit the right way or grab the steering wheel like she knows what she’s doing!  She even knows how to turn her feet around to climb down off of something.
• She is a stair master, going up and down like it’s nothing!  She will even hold onto the railing on the porch with 2 hands and go up and down on standing up!  She amazes us when we watch her moving around.
• She points at everything (with her thumb!) and grunts, everything is called a “uhhhh” to her.  She has her select words that she’s sticking with for now, Mama, Dada, Nana, Pap-Pap, Bubba, and I reeeeallllyyyy think I hear her trying to say “big brother” but that could just be me trying to make sense out of her gibberish!
• She loves to sit in Ryder’s chair and watch Praise Baby!  Brings back so many memories of Ryder doing the exact same thing.
• She has started throwing this lay on the ground temper tantrum when Daddy is around because she knows he’ll come to her rescue.  Their bond is probably the sweetest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life time.  Alan totally takes advantage of it.  For example, I caught him terrorizing her with that big scary dinosaur Ryder has (you know the one i’m talking about, the same one he terrorized Ryder with!).  I walked in the room to see him making the dinosaur bite her foot, she’s crying, and at the same time he’s holding her telling her “It’s okay baby, Daddy won’t let that scary dinosaur get you” as she’s nestling her head in her Daddy’s neck making him feel like the big protector…he’s a mess!

One more month until she’s going to be the Birthday Girl!!!!  I really can’t believe it! 

Oh The Craziness…

This weekend was jam-packed with action and fun for us!  First we went to our little cousin Peyton’s first Birthday party.  No pictures but the kids had fun celebrating with him.  Next we headed to The Matteson’s for Jaxon’s 1st Birthday!

I really don’t know how this little guy turned a whole year old already, but it happened right before our eyes!  Nicki hosted an awesome 49ers party and we all had a blast. 

 

We were out pretty late that evening, but there was no time to rest the next day because we had even more fun things to do!  We headed over to the highschool to see Daddy and all the other bikes that rode in the Frazier-Mason Memorial Ride.  I love my view looking down at these two in their cool ride:

And although it made me nervous, I liked the view of watching these two of my favorite boys…my husband and my brother…riding to our next destination.

Yes I was snapping pictures in the car…I was bored because these two were trying to catch up on sleep so I had no one to talk to!

Wow, safety first, Mother of the year over here, I’m totally telling on myself with this picture.  Okay moving on…

Our next stop was to Carter’s Birthday party!  Of course I didn’t get any pictures of the Birthday boy, but the kids always have fun playing over there!

We had so much fun partying it up all weekend, but then it was back to the serious stuff on Monday!

Monday afternoon we headed to Richmond for Ryder’s routine kidney check-up.  They took a sonogram of his bladder before and after going potty, they showed me on the pictures how thick and muscular his bladder wall is…this is a residual affect from his blockage prior to birth.  The sonogram of his kidneys came back great as he didn’t see any dilation at all!  So basically his kidney’s are healing perfectly and his bladder issue is something he will live with and learn to control.  He is going to have the ability to hold his pee for a long time and then not really feel the sensation of completely emptying.  Right now he tells me pretty frequently that he has to go, so it’s like he only lets enough out to where he doesn’t feel it anymore, so it fills up a lot sooner and he has to go again.  His kidney doctor was happy to hear that and said it’s better for him to go a little bit a lot than to hold it for a long time because that will give his kidney’s a chance to resort back to what they know and start to reflux again.  He said we’re at a crossroads right now, everything looks so great and could be on a great path to no issues from here on out, but we have to pay close attention for any unexplained fevers or bad smelling urine because now that Ryder has a choice on whether he’s going to go or hold it…it could mean trouble.  He said “I see he has some contrary in him, so let’s hope he doesn’t start to purposely hold his pee and not go”…haha yeah I’d say he has some contrary in him!

What’s today, Tuesday?  Losing track here.  Today Ryder had 2 back-to-back therapy appointments scheduled, OT and then PT.  Just as I was getting ready to leave work to go get him I got a call from Nana that Ryder’s cast had fallen off!!  I called Miss Abby and she rearranged her schedule so that she could put a new one on immediately.  This led to the “Day 1 of casting” emotions all over again, so it has been an interesting evening.  I know he’ll wake up tomorrow in good spirits though and we’ll just keep on moving…

There’s never a dull moment!