Creative therapy

I bought a small child's stool at Target for $2.50.

Covered it with a thick blanket and tada, a cheap therapy tool!

It serves multiple use. Makes Emily hold her own head up, in turn will strengthen her neck and head control

It makes her bear weight through her arms and knees and engages those joints so that hopefully she will learn to use those joints appropriately one day.

She wants to keep her fists closed so I have to keep opening them and showing her that she can keep her hands open while do this.

Yay, open hands!

She really enjoyed this! When I took her off she fussed so I let her do it again for a little bit, such a go getter :)

adapting and playing

Since Emily is in her spica cast she cannot have a bath. We use an inflatable bath basin to wash her hair. It is not easy and she does not care for it either. I have a couple bowls of water and it gets very messy!

So I found this drip feeding bag and I found an old IV pole from when she had her feeding pump. Then viola!

I fill the bag with warmer than normal bath water, because it cools down fast and I can control the drip rate and wash her hair much quicker.

She got this stacking toy for her birthday and she loves it! She played with it tonight before her bath. :)

Emily's bed it attached to mine with the front rail off. I put on the little mermaid for her and tucked her into bed and within minutes she was out! We might have to watch the little mermaid more often!!



just cuteness

Things are still going well. I am amazed everyday at how well Emily has adjusted to her cast.

It is almost as if since she does not have to worry about moving her legs she can concentrate on her arms and vision more.

She is tracking and following our voices much more consistently.

She is addicted to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse! I can turn on cartoons and she passively watches but if we turn on Mickey she lights up!!



I know she is sporting some crazy hair. We just washed it and it dried that way lol!





She fell asleep waiting on me to change her :)





We lovingly call her our puppy. She is always licking!





Can you tell she is teething!?





She fell asleep with her mouth wide open, chewing on her pillow.





See, there's Mickey!





Watching Mickey

I can't believe we are almost 2 weeks into the casting already. Glad it's going by fast!





adapting

We are slowly figuring things out.

Emily is not in much pain during the day, mostly just at night. When she is uncomfortable it is eased with a minimum dose of Tylenol or Valium.

I am going to post the things that work and don't work while she is in the spica. I am so thankful to have found a few parents who have already gone through this. Jenny over at http://colofisch.blogspot.com/ has been so helpful! Her little girl Cici has had to have a spica and is going though it again soon.

Our hardest thing is to figure out how to get Emily setting up straight enough to eat without chocking. So for now she is only eating a few bites per day and the rest is going down her tube. She is not really interested right now for some reason too.

The way her legs bent she can not set in a chair or on the couch.

We are working with her therapist to try and figure something out.



Here we are using her boppy, a pillow under that to elevate her, a tummy time pillow behind her back to take the pressure off her cast on her back and a total pillow to support her head.



She loves to be outside. Emily's grandma and grandpa Johnson bought her a nice wagon for Christmas but it is not wide enough for Emily to use right now. She will be able to use that wagon once she is out of her cast.

For now we are using one a friend gave us.

We used a wedge pillow for her to lay on and a memory foam pillow under her bottom to keep her up.

It was warm that day so we did not get so stay out long but she liked it.

We got this inflatable shampoo basin from amazon. It is large for her but it worked well. She did not care for it but she got over it quickly.

I love this face that she makes!

She instantly started reaching up and grabbing the lights and toys. After this pic I added some more toys for her to play with. I am trying to get a video together when she was playing with this. She was talking and what we call singing. It was so cute!

She is really moving her arms so much more since she can't move her legs.

We are really going to kick up therapy the next few months and hopefully when the cast comes off she will retain what she learned!