New Year New Starts....

Been a busy beaver. Which is pretty much the norm for me as well as most parents of a special needs child.
We had a awesome Christmas, although my baby girl did miss alot of school between appointments and being sick and the weather!! We've had an unusual cold and snowy winter so far for the South.
Well our good news is that yesterday we got the new AFOs (leg braces) that my baby girl has been needing. She outgrew her other ones just around the beginning of December which meant no walker time and that is not good. Fortunatly we use a local place that does an awesome job in getting leg braces in rather quickly. I think our longest wait was three weeks. This time we went with cute bumblebees on the cloth straps. And as usual, with new leg braces comes new sneakers to fit with them. Which can always be a tricky thing, cause you never know how the leg brace will fit them until you get them. Most often we end up pulling out the foam sole inside just to give the foot orthotic a wee more space.
I was also amazed to find that childrens shoes now go up to size 6. Before it seemed like they only went to size 5 before having them move into an adult shoe. And yet little kids shoes go up to size 13 before they move into the bigger kids shoes.
Anyway, when searching for a shoe to fit a leg orthtic keep in mind a few things. Get a sneaker that ties. Makes for easier on and off. Also look for a sneaker that the tongue and laces go closer to the toes. So you can loosen up the laces more and pull the tongue out more. This also helps in getting leg braces on and off with more ease. And then try to find a sneaker with a bit wider toe. Something like a basketball sneaker. This gives the toes more room and more room to fit the end of the leg orthtic in as well. When baby girl was little I found that StrideRite shoes worked VERY WELL with leg orthtics!!
Our other good news is that the new Dynavox Maestro that baby girl was so captured with is coming!! We got approval from insurance and we should have it as early as in two days!! My hope is that is comes friday morning before we leave for speech therapy so that we can bring it with us!!
One of our new goals this year is to try to get baby girl to transfer from the sport bottles to a sippy cup with a hard spout. Part of Phelan-McDermid Syndrome is chewing and baby girl has proceeded to keep chewing the plastic spouts off the sport bottles. Not only is it frustrating, and a small fortune being spent each month just on sport bottles, but its unsafe. She has already once chewed, and started to choke on one she bit off. Fortunatly she swallowed it and cleared her airway on her own rather quickly. But it was a very SCARY ordeal!!
Well, that is about it so far. My New Years resolution was to spend more time writing! Let's see if I can stick to it.

~Kat