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. 

July Intensive PT

We just finished our first week of a 3-week intensive PT where she goes 4 hrs/5 days a week. This is where she lifts weights for 2 hrs, gets a short break, and then puts on a suit that has a lot of resistance to it, so it is difficult to walk and do functional activities, but as she works against the resistance she gets stronger. Alex did a GREAT job and worked really hard! The only time she really resisted was today towards the end of the session during sit-up time (her least favorite activity). She had quite a meltdown, but it only lasted 5 minutes or so, and she did a great job working through it and calming herself down. When she did choose an activity, she worked just as hard for the last half-hour as she did all week. We are very proud!

The hammock is Alex's absolute favorite thing--especially these "creepy spirals" she calls them. This is how we are ending every session.

Spider is not all fun and games. When the ropes are lower, they help Alex do exercises like squats and flamingo standing.

Fishing with Olivia

We went on a really cool outing for "special needs" kids at a fish hatchery in Washington last weekend. We got to fish out of a giant pool and the fish were quite large--Alex's biggest fish weighed in at over 6 lbs! We met up with Alex's friend Olivia there, who is 3 years old and also has CP. The girls are pretty similarly affected by their CP, so it is kind of cool that they have both similar abilities and challenges. And as an added bonus, her dad is a big hunter/fisher and was more than happy to do the dirty work for us! :)

House Pics

We are loving the new place! Alex walks around most of the time (as long as one of us is behind her) and seems to really like it.