Physical Therapy

Alright...Amber's not going to like hearing this, but I've been hit with a horrid head cold. I know it seems like we've been awfully ill around here lately, and all together we have been. But this is really only the second time I've been sick personally. I guess when I got the virus last weekend the head cold snuck in to take advantage of my weakened defenses. Ugh. At least I have 4-5 days to kick it before heading to Memphis. Adelaide....I won't come if I'm still germy! Let's all keep our fingers crossed...I want to see your cute mug and I'm getting some serious winter doldrums here.
So...here are some recent pictures of the kids (Clara mostly) while I tell you about her physical therapy.

(I love how in this picture Clara is looking at Henry who is looking at Linus who is looking at Clara.)

I'm not sure what all to report, exactly. Our therapist came on Thursday morning for an hour. Her name is BethAnn and she's very nice. I would guess she's a little older than me, maybe 40. She brought with her a bag of toys and a medium-sized exercise ball.

(This is Clara at Anna's birthday party a few weeks ago. She liked Anna's new glitter ball.)

Mostly BethAnn spent the time chatting and trying to get Clara to feel comfortable with her. She showed her several of her toys, let her play with them and watched how she moved. She told me some things and let me ask questions.

(Clara is very fond of feeding herself lately...and quite good at it.)

Her determination is that Clara has "low muscle tone" which is a term I've heard before. Usually I associate the term with skinny little babies, which Clara decidedly is not. BethAnn said it has nothing to do with that. She said there's no nutritional factor or other cause. She said it's just a body difference. She said "it's kind of like how some people will become Olympic atheletes and others won't". So...I guess I feel good that there doesn't really seem to be anything we did wrong.

(Here's a nice picture of Clara's hair.)

So she wants us to be doing exercises with her that will strengthen her rotational muscles in her torso (sorry if these aren't technical terms...) and eventually her hip extendors. We played a little with a stacking toy...she placed the toy to Clara's left and then tried to get her to use her right hand to reach across her torso to stack the rings. She wants to see her place her left hand down and shift her weight then reach across herself. She also showed me how we can get her to do this weight shifting by putting her on our laps and tilting her to the side so she has to try to stay upright....if you can picture that.

(Clara was fond of applesauce on this particular day.)

We also did some playing where we held a toy up so Clara had to really extend her arm as far up as she could to reach it. I think overall BethAnn seemed pleased with the things she's doing already...so it sounds like we're not going to have to be teaching her anything brand new...just getting her to use the muscles that she's been avoiding using a bit.
I guess that's about it.