Our Cerebral Palsy Girl Jumps!

We saw Lindy jump for the first time this week!  Actually jump.  With two feet off the ground!  She’s been close for a long time but we had never seen her get both feet up.  She usually leaves her toes on her right foot on the ground.  Our girl with Grade III and IV brain bleeds (IV being the worst) which in turn caused hydrocephalus and cerebral palsy has jumped!  We honestly had no clue when we brought her home if she would even sit up.  She has exceeded every expectation we had for her.  She might be pretty delayed – but she hits the milestones and that is all we care about!

We had another busy week that went by fast.  Don’t they all go by fast?

Monday I had another parent session with Lindy and her teacher but Lindy was NOT into working that day.  Her teacher said she had worked hard and was acting pretty tired.  We tried but she was not into it.  She was trying to get Lindy to say action words.  Sleeping, clapping, swinging, etc.  ‘ing’ words.  She said she cannot get Lindy to use them.  The thing is that she does say them at home.  Not all the time but we do here ‘ing’ words.  Her teacher also said she hasn’t heard Lindy say the ‘s’ at the end of a possessive, for  instance, Daddy’s chair, Mommy’s purse.  Again, we hear Lindy say this ‘s’ at home.  I honestly wonder if her teacher just doesn’t hear it.  Lindy has such a soft voice and is in a class with other kids which I’m sure gets loud.  Or she is just being ornery and not showing her teacher everything she knows how to do. 

One interesting thing her teacher showed me was some of the informal testing she has been doing on Lindy.  Her receptive language, what she understands, came out as 3 years and 11 months!  Wow! Her expressive language, what she says, was at 2 years and 4 months.  On one hand I think that is great seeing as she was hardly talking in May of this year.  On the other hand I think that is low because like I said, she won’t say things to  her teacher that she says at home.  In any case the combined score was 3 years and 1 month which is awesome!

Besides jumping, Lindy has FINALLY learned her colors.  I was really beginning to wonder if she was color blind like her daddy.  She has been able to match colors for awhile now but could not reliably tell you the correct color of anything.  I’ll give credit to her teachers because we’ve tried and tried to teach her and she never caught on. Now she tells us the color of everything!!  It’s so cute!  We’re so proud of our girl!

Wednesday I had an IEP meeting with Will’s speech teacher.  Because we moved from another county, they did a continuation of services to get them going in school.  We had to meet to get the IEP up to snuff for the new county and we also had to meet because he met all his goals on his old IEP.  His goals were to use one or two words to ask for what he wants.  Ummm, yeah, he uses whole sentences to tell us what he wants.  (He has stopped asking politely for things and has instead started telling us what to do.  Yeah, we’re working on going back to asking nicely.)  We got his IEP written with new goals, which include being able to name categories and a few other things.  We also did the paperwork to request testing.  His teacher is going to start testing him in the beginning of Nov. and then he can hopefully exit the program.

Thursday evening was a busy one for us.  Lindy and Will got to play with Uncle Ed and Molly for a little bit while Drew and I went to look for a new car.  Drew’s car finally bit the dust and we’ve been sharing a car.  They walked down to the park which I know they loved.   After picking them up we went to Lindy’s school because it was curriculum night.  We were the only parents there from Lindy’s class but that just gave us a chance to ask her teacher questions about how she is doing.  We also got to meet the principal, who apparently Lindy loves.  The first time he came in to do an observation on Lindy’s teacher the kids all clammed up and wouldn’t say or do anything.  He has started spending bits of time in there so the kids will all be familiar with him.  Apparently Lindy always goes and gets him and leads him around and has him join in everything they are doing.  One day she had him singing and dancing with them!  Crazy girl.  She is already brown-nosing! 

Friday evening we had two couples over for dinner.  Neither of them have kids so we fed ours early and then turned the TV on for them.  A special treat for them!  Lindy kept coming in the dining room and then would go play for awhile.  We were having an enjoyable conversation until Lindy came in and wanted to sit with me.  I picked her up and she wanted a piece of my bread.  The next thing I know she threw up a little bit on me and then she gushed all over me.  What a party foul.  It smelled so bad and I was so embarrassed  I hadn’t planned on giving her a bath that night but she had it in her hair and it smelled bad.  That will probably make them wait a little longer to have kids! 

This post was a little Lindy heavy but I guess there was just more info on her this week.  Will is doing fine.  He got to pick out the ‘perfect pumpkin’ at preschool this week.  He has turned into a bossy little thing.  Sometimes I miss the days when he didn’t talk so much.  You tell him to stop doing something and he always says, “But I just want……..”  Will, stop slapping your sister.  But I just want to slap my sister.  I’d be fine if I never heard, “But I just want to…..” ever again!

A few pictures of the week.

One of Will’s preschool creations. Lindy showing me her hand print apple tree. We tried painting this week.  I’ve never wanted to deal with the mess but I sucked it up this week and let them paint. Pillows are still the best toy in our house these days.  They love to ‘hide’ under them. Will and his perfect pumpkin. Get a load of this.  Can you stand it?  She’s SO CUTE.  I can barely stand it myself! Skull and cross bones pants, shirt, and bows.  Cuteness overload! After I took her picture she went and found Drew and led him back to the steps to sit and get their picture taken. Watch out, here comes the ‘Big and Bad’ werewolf.  Apparently Lindy was in a really good mood that morning! “I’m big and bad!” I’m a little scared around our house because I think it’s haunted.  I keep seeing ghosts.  I saw this one too. But the scariest one I’ve seen was the two-headed (albeit one much shorter head) ghost. Oh wait, they aren’t real ghosts.  It’s just Lindy and Will!