Walking Ruthie around the lake.
I just had a conversation with Daphne’s PT, who is working on her upcoming 6-month progress report. Since we get to keep Early Intervention services until the end of August, PT wanted to go over her progress and come up with new goals for the summer.
D has made a lot of progress in the last 6 months. Some of this progress is subtle, like stair management by alternating feet on steps and walking down steps without support. But, in more exciting progress, just in the past week or so, we noticed that the girl can jump! She has been pretending to jump for a while by bending her knees and sort of propelling her legs back up straight, but now she can get both feet off the ground. Super exciting. Also, her endurance has come a long way. This past weekend, we took a walk to the little lake near our house. It was the first time D managed the walk there and back, AND the trail around the lake, which is uneven and hilly, without asking to be picked up. In fact, in the last block on the way home she was galloping and “racing” Lucy.
Speaking of racing, the one goal she has not accomplished is running properly. PT thinks she has some ankle instability that gets in the way of her impulsion.
A while back, PT had requested a physiatry evaluation for this issue. After months of the EI service coordinator ignoring her request, we finally got it done. The Dr. who evaluated her thought she was borderline. In his opinion, she is slightly knock-kneed, and he would put in a recommendation for orthotics with the understanding that he did not think they were absolutely necessary. In fact, he thought the heavy custom AFOs may hinder her locomotion. Needless to say, we decided to do nothing at all, at least for a while.
I knew PT would want to follow up on that, and was sort of dreading the conversation. When I told her what we had decided, she suggested a lighter-weight insert, for which she will measure D and we can order. We can definitely give those a try. She also suggested sneakers and sandals that have arch support.
We went over plans for preschool, and activities we should try at home. This year I’d like to get my act together and enroll in a swim class with D. Someone please hold me accountable.
She was throwing beads on the floor, and I asked her – several times – to stop doing that, because Ruthie could eat the beads and get sick. After I changed my tone from patient and understanding to I’ve-had-enough-stop-throwing-beads-on-the-floor- NOW she looked straight at me and dumped the whole cup.
