Amy graduated from Schroth therapy!! She still needs to do the exercises at home, but she doesn’t need to go in to the Children’s hospital every week or two to see her physical therapist. This is huge. We are both so happy about it. I like her physical therapist very much, but it is a relief to no longer need to figure out childcare for Sarah for an hour on Wednesday afternoons, because the timing didn’t work well to bring her along to the appointments. Amy is ecstatic that she won’t miss any more science classes or rides home on the bus with her bestie. I am thrilled that I can start seeing some Wednesday afternoon clients or have that time to work on other things. I have a lot of book related tasks that need attention these days.
Amy has started wearing her scoliosis brace over her regular shirt so if she isn’t wearing a sweater then it’s not hidden at all. I love that she is this emotionally comfortable with it in general and especially at school. I think it has really helped to attend the Higgy events and zooms for kids with scoliosis. She also charts how much she wears the brace and that has meant I don’t need to remind her to put it on after she takes a break. I still remind her to do her Scroth, but she has gotten much speedier with that, timing the intervals between each exercise so the whole thing doesn’t take an hour.
This week, every morning when Sarah waited for her bus she did a verbal adaptation of Dinosaur vs the Potty by Bob Shea. Shea has several dinosaur books where it is the dinosaur vs something and involves lots of roaring interspersed with things related to the title. Sarah said “Dinosaur vs waiting for the bus” and interspersed her roars with various sentences about what she was doing. I wish I had recorded her but I was too busy laughing. Mainly her activities were exercise related, either with a large exercise ball or doing her version of gymnastics.
Tuesday’s bus situation was delayed because of the weather. When I woke I could hear the frozen precipitation hitting the windows so the first thing I did was check the news website for the list of school closures. At 5am there were 4 schools listed as delayed by 2 hours. Over the next couple of hours over 220 schools were added to the list. I got a text from Sarah’s school announcing the delay right as she was about to get dressed in her uniform. I contacted her driver, figuring he might be half way to our house by then. He wasn’t, but he was glad to get my update since he had not yet been notified. Amy’s school followed suit a bit later. Unfortunately, Amy’s driver was extra late because of going back to pick up two kids who had missed the bus, while simultaneously sending the Facebook message group of parents a reminder that if kids miss the bus then their parents need to drive them. Um? If that is the case then why did the driver go back to get those kids? On the one hand you can see that as nice. On the other, you can realize that that meant Amy and her bestie were waiting for half an hour in the snowy/rainy cold and wondering if their bus was actually coming. They were about to give up and contact their own parents for a ride when the bus finally arrived.
I am yet again a genius in a small way regarding making hydration a game for Sarah. One of the movies she likes to watch is Baby Babble 2 and it has many transitions between scenes. I suggested that she take a drink of water every time there is a transition. Not only does she do this, but she often repeats her favorite scenes thus getting extra sips.
This weekend Carl’s cousin and her family are visiting and enjoyed playing The Fairy Game with us. That is the cooperative board game that I turned into a drinking game, where everyone has some of their water when the Old Man Winter card is drawn.Yesterday despite the cold and wind, a good time was had by all sledding, followed later by a snowy nighttime exploration which Sarah deemed “hunting for the night bear.” Amy and one cousin made good use of my new shark blanket-bag thing, hopping around in it together so it really looks like a shark has eaten one or both of them.
Leave a Reply