Birthday Party!

Pics from summer

                                                         Alex loves her ant farm!

                                                     At a "First Responders" event

                                          

Trip to Baltimore

Berry-picking

                                                                Multnomah Falls

                                                Alex loves playing in the fountains at the park!

    IKEA is very close to where she had her Intensive PT, and we stopped there for lunch after one of our sessions.

                                                  At the beach with her friend Olivia.

                                                     

UCP Walk 'N Roll

Jim, Alex, and I are doing our first Walk n Roll for United Cerebral Palsy on Saturday.  Alex says she is game to walk the 2.5 miles with her walker (we'll have a stroller back-up). Wish us luck! And if you'd like to give financial support in Alex's honor as well, her donation page can be found at the following website: http://walkrollnrun.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=482646&supId=332974858

Progress Post-Intensive

As a present for doing such a great job cooperating with her intensive we got Alex a trampoline with a bar.  We were hoping that all of her jumping skills learned in the spider would translate to the trampoline, and wow!  She exceeded our expectations!  And probably her own.  In this video, she is saying, "I am jumping super fast, Mommy".

Just in the past week or so (maybe 3 weeks post the end of her Intensive), Alex has rediscovered her kitchen toy.  She is really into feeding us things that are not food (instrument toys and wind-up toys are the current favorites) and making it into a very silly game.  But for the first time, she is willing to walk completely independently with no spotter!  Keep in mind, that this is the only time and the only part of the house where she will do such a thing, but it is SO COOL for her to begin testing her skills!

More Intensive PT videos

As she got more and more practice with the weight-lifting, Alex started doing more and more of the work herself.  This is one of the harder exercises for her, but you can see her muscles activating the movement some.  It was neat to see her visually get stronger as the weeks went by.

The whole 3 weeks went a lot more smoothly than I had hoped.  She got crabby toward the end, yes, and had definite opinions of what she would and would not do, but she really only had one out-and-out meltdown the entire time.  She seemed to understand that she was working hard to get stronger and  bought into what we were doing.  Also, Erin did a great job of keeping things fun and novel and working with whatever Alex was interested in that day. 

 

Alex LOVED dancing with Erin's dancing Elmo toy.