field trip

jovie went on a field trip with preschool yesterday!  since all the parents had to transport the kids themselves, it was more a very organized playdate with her class.  but it was fun.  who knew they would organize “field trips” for 3 year olds!

we went to a local farm and she enjoyed herself.  she surprised me a little, and surprised me not at all a little too.

we rode a hayride. (this one complete with hay) and the cows came really close to us- she didn’t mind that so much.  watching the other animals through fences- neh, not interested.  (except the bunnies):

we walked through a corn maze:

i (finally) convinced her to jump on the GIANT pillow-thing.  then i convinced her to do it again so i was able to get some great pictures!**

Y'all- that's AIR! under her FEET!

she also rode a “cow train” and she didn’t need me to go with her!  so i was able to take more great pictures:

she picked a tiny pumpkin (the tiniest one she could find, of course) & ran through some flowers.  she saw animals up close, far away, & being silly:

sure, they swim. but do they FLY?

and even ate ice cream….. before lunch!

i think her favorite part of the day was when we came back & had lunch with DADDDDDYYYYYYY!!!!!!!

it was a great day!

 

**her therapists (both PT & OT) would be amazed with the fact that she was able to jump with so much force, and knees bent.  we work on this constantly!  i’m still amazed when i see her jump.  it’s still a relatively new skill.  now i try to get her to jump forward- and this picture i think was a forward-moving jump. so WOOHOO for her!

PT-squared

PT has been a useful acronym for Jovie thusfar.  For the past year+ it has stood for Physical Therapy.  Recently, i have been using it for shorthand to discuss her Potty Training.

Let’s talk about both.

As for PT (physical therapy)… ummm i really can’t believe how much i didn’t write about it.  i looked at my “therapy” archives, and it is quite lacking.  it’s been about a year since i updated on her progress there, and we’ve even seen the orthopedist since then.

i guess when it just came down to it, i wrote about other things that were going on.  and i know some days i wanted to write about her therapies, but there was kinda no way to write about it without it being some kind of book report.

between PT and OT (occupational) there was a period of time last summer we were going to therapy twice a week.  then for a long time, we went to one each week.  then we went 2ce a month.

we have now been dismissed from PT.  it was exactly a year after she began therapy.  from her initial evaluation, here are results of her growth:

skill	March 2010- 20 months	May 2011- 2 yrs, 10 mos  (34mos)
Stationary  (ie: leaning, reaching, bending)	11 mos 16%ile	42 mos 75%ile
Locomotion  (ie: walking, running, climbing stairs)	16 mos  5%ile	32mos 37%ile
Object Manipulation (ie: throwing, kicking, catching balls)	17mos16%ile	25mos16%ile
Overall Gross Motor Percentile	5%ile	47%ile

So, you see, it was pretty dismal to begin with.  The locomotion is understandable, as she was walking only a month by this point of the initial eval (in which the therapist- not the one we used- didn’t really even try to warm up to her to begin with!)

After going to therapy for one year, she gained 2 1/2 years in stationary, 16 mos in locomotion, and 8 mos in object manipulation

We see no real gains in the object manipulation.  but truly?  it’s because she could CARE LESS about a ball.

we still go to OT, weekly (schedule permitting) but we have changed ‘formats’ (for lack of better term)

i know we haven’t even discussed OT yet.  i should do a post on that, too.    soon….

now for the other PT progress:

in less than a week, she was potty trained…..          did you hear that?   i mean…  WOW.  she’s so friggin’ grown up!  definitely a big girl  now!

so, the long of it is that in early march, she decided (not me) that she wanted to sit on the potty.  she has sat on it a few times at school. nothing ever came of it, but all the cool kids were doing it; so there ya go.

sometime in april we bought some big girl undies.  (ummm do you know how difficult it is to find some w/o characters on them??) and she was proud.  so a few times, she decided to wear panties.  it all was short lived.  after she went potty once, it kinda freaked her out.  (we didn’t use a child-potty, so it was kinda loud)

each time it was her own initiating.  always back in diapers.

until i bought *the!LAST!pack*.  i hid many, but she saw it dwindle down.  and wouldn’t you know- “coincidentally” after school ended and we had OT last thursday, we wore the LAST diaper to rest time.  so she hasn’t worn a diaper since Thurs @ 3.  and she hasn’t had an accident since Monday!!

it was hard.  we had battles and tantrums.  a few “i don’t wannnnoooo….. this isn’t funnnn anymoooorrrrr—-WAIT i’m going potty mommy!!!”  and of course a few accidents.  i did get lucky that most accidents were contained on the tile floor.

but i also know that we came out rather lucky in the potty department. i know i dreaded it and feared it to be worse (take longer)…  by no means do i think we are completely in the clear, but i do think she will most likely tell me and stop what she’s doing in order to take care of things herself.  she’s demonstrated that now for a few days.

i know we’ll have a few accidents along the way- but WOW am i proud of my big little girl!  Especially because we went against the grain.  She sat on a potty seat, not a potty chair in the living room.  She got no m&m’s, skittles, stamps or stickers.  just a lot of praise and pats on the back.  i think that actually helped her to feel proud of herself as well.  she does it all mostly independently.  i go in just when she calls for me at the end to help her get things squared away- but she does so much by herself, i’m pretty impressed.

here’s a picture of her in March at the beginning of it all…    tacky, i know. not sure what’s tackier- posting a potty pic of my gal or the tacky wallpaper.*  i thought the pic was tasteful enough, though.  if you don’t want to see- please close your browser window

——–NOW—–

(you wouldn’t believe how many stupid pervs have searched this blog for that picture -which was soooo innocent- that i just had to remove)

*if you’re still here, hi!  and, if you know of anyone willing to come take this crap off our walls today, we’d gladly pay you on tuesday!

**(it occured to me that most of jovie’s audience [and jovie herself] [and prob’ly The Mr] may not have gotten the Wimpy-of-Popeye-fame reference. )  but really, i would consider paying someone dearly for this project.

progress

oh how i’ve lagged in the blogging department. 

topics for me to write about either come and go, or they get saved for later when i can adequately post about them…    and then i forget to.

so, yeah- about a month ago we went back to the orthopedist for a check-in. we saw the (original) physician’s assistant as well as the orthopedist.  not exactly sure why that was, but OK.  both were pleased with how much jovie was walking, standing, etc…   both were pleased to hear our report of the fact that she stumbles less and had been climbing more.

in fact, this was a rare occasion that they got to see jovie in action.  she was walking all around, and getting into nooks & crannies in the room.  usually in a setting like that, she wants to either:

1. cry
2. sit in our laps  or
3. cry in our laps. 

so i believe they got a true picture when they both said she doesn’t really need to wear her braces anymore.  which made me happy because- hello! sandal season!!.  i felt a little guilty everytime i wanted her to wear a cute outfit that defied sneakers.

we went and got her new shoes because the other ones were so very worn.  (being a stumbly new walker will do that, i suppose!)  and oh! was i horrified.  absolutely horrified to realize that we had been cramming jovie’s feet (and braces) in a size 6 shoe.  she was clearly a size 6 1/2 now…  and upsizing to a size 7 for growth.

and whatever is growing her feet may also be in her hair.  because i know you can’t tell from that picture, but she is straight-up 80’s styling it with the pony on top of the ponytail.  y’all- her hair is at her shoulder blades. 

we call this the "afternap" look. it's all the rage!

oy vey.

i should also mention how her therapy is going, but she’s actually waking up from her nap now, and instead of saving this for later- i’d better actually just post already!

braces & shoes

jovie is a walker.  funny how “new” that still is to us.

she was fitted with her braces last week, and she wasn’t too thrilled at first.  but then, she was having a contraption put on her foot (error #1) that was re-aligning what she normally feels (error #2).  she handled it very well, though.  we were surprised at how little she fought.

problem was that her cute tennis shoes she’d been wearing- which were less like tennis shoes and more like cute- were a tad small to fit all the velcro and plastic on her feet.  besides, those shoes were for the “not yet walking” set.  she now needs something more sturdy [regardless of the braces].

so they offered some huge-ass shoes that were as bulky on top as they were on the bottom.  these are not as horrible as you can imagine, but they still had the look of ‘cement blocks tied to your feet’ in a “cuter” fashion.   *note to company:  maybe next time, don’t make these huge-ass shoes in the color cement block grey, ok?  it was a little too distracting.

not having a choice, because they don’t recommend walking on the braces w/o shoes (what with the plastic bottoms), we put those shoes on her (that i swear, even tho they weren’t high-tops, they seemed to come up to her shin!)

jovie stood up…..    and promptly fell over.           TIMBER!

so we tried again…………   TimmmmBER!

luckily, they’re not required.  so on friday, i took her to get some tennis shoes that are also bulky, but only as compared to her other shoes.  and we went up to a 6 wide — and boy are they wide.  what with holding everything in. 

the PT had suggested that once wearing the braces, she may decline in her walking, since she had to get used to a new feel/position. 

but not jovie.  once her tears dried up (there’s a lot of shoving over the velcro straps) she was all over that store! 

and has pretty much been all over the place even still.  so she’s not apparently bothered by having the braces on. 

as far as stability- it’s hard for us to truly see how much it affects her walking.  the first day, we swear she was more stable.  but since then, we don’t think she’s less stable, for sure.  but it’s not as evident. 

all i know is she looks like your typical toddler learning how to walk.  she walks and walks and walks. (and walks and walks) then she’s on the ground. so she gets up and walks some more.

we wonder why she’s not sleeping longer after such long days of walking!  truly—  her toys are so much less played with these days.  and her favorite thing to do is “walky in the grass”.

she’s 20 months old today.  which i wouldn’t normally report, but since it is the actual day, i thought it worth mentioning.  and on sunday, she lost the last semblance of baby when we got her a car seat that turns her around.

and boy, does she enjoy her “big girl car seat”.

hmmmm, i think i’m going to go look at my archives now.  because a year ago was so VERY different!….

(sorry, no picture of her walking, because she spends much of her time walking away from me.  ….    but enjoy her new seat:)

"squeeeeal"

other developments

well, i’ve talked a ton about how jovie talks a ton.  now i guess it’s time to move on to other developments….   

and the lack thereof.

i can’t believe it was in september that i mentioned jovie letting us walk her for the first time!  (14mos).  because here we are 5 months later…  and still not walking. 

we even thought maybe the addition of the new shoes would get her geared for this next big challenge.  my friend becky even gave her the cutest clemson squeaker shoes…  i thought maybe she’d walk in them just to hear the squeaks.  but no.

her limit for letting us walk with her is quite, um, well, limited.

when jovie was a year old we were mildly concerned at how little she seemed to be advancing in this area.  but we also know that jovie has her own “timing” about things.  for instance: we were also mildly concerned at that time because she didn’t have any words yet.  and i was concerned b/c she didn’t make her first consonant babble (other than /d/ dadadada) until 9mos.  … HA!  haha!

so, instead of accepting the help that could’ve been offered at a year old, we wanted to “wait & see”.  because, like i said, jovie seems to blossom at her own rate.  so, we waited.  and we saw. 

she enjoys walking w/ her walking toy.  and cruising.  and she has stood up on her own a couple of times.  & we also got to watch her take her first steps unaided on the day after she turned 1 1/2!

but that is pretty much the extent of it.  she walks (on her own) about 8-10 steps in a day.  and in the past few weeks, she has taken to walking on her knees.  (poor poor purple knees!)  she knows crawling is MUCH faster.  so that’s her preferred mode of transportation.

so we looked into (and are continuing to look into) the why-nots.  and what we learned is that it really does pay for me to be over-neurotic about all of her skills & nuances.  in fact, i should’ve spoken up a bit more about this “funny gait” as i liked to mention.  & maybe i should’ve questioned more when the feet would become less flat.  the books have told me all that fixes itself when she’d begin walking.

but she’s not walking b/c it seems as if she has forefoot pronation. basically, the funny gait i’ve witnessed is her almost standing on the inside of her ankle.  her feet are extremely flat, which i think is contributing to this. 

so, now— we are going to look into this & how to best help her.  we are going to begin physical therapy & she will be fitted with special shoes.  and apparently, once that takes hold— watchout! 

we shall see….

<I. O. U. a cute video of her taking a few steps in front of a giant exercise ball…   i couldn’t get the thing finalized & uploaded in time for this post.  just imagine how cute it is.>