Look who's sitting up! (kind of)

We have been doing PT with Hope for about a month now. I have to admit, I was not convinced that they knew anything I didn't, but it has been such a huge help! Two different women come, once a week each. Miss Kim works with Hope on fine motor skills, and Miss Nancy works more on gross motor stuff. Hope will now reach for a toy and grab it, with either hand. She's not putting them in her mouth yet, but that's what we're working on next.
And as for gross motor, look at this!
This was about 2 weeks ago--her first few days in the Bumbo. She gets tired quickly, and her body position isn't quite how Miss Nancy would like it (she's curled over a little too much in the bumbo, not have to use her back muscles), so we don't use it too much anymore.


This was last week, transitioning to the high chair. It turns out our high chair is ideally suited to her--it curves around her sides, giving her floppy arms the support they need. In the high chair, she can play with toys while having her arms supported by the tray. This gives her longer eye- and hand- interaction with the toys. If she drops one, she can still see it to pick it up. Getting her eyes involved is key--we want her to learn the connection between hands and eyes. In the high chair, she doesn't have to work so hard and sitting up, and can concentrate on hand movements with toys.


And here's sitting in a tripod position this weekend! This is so huge!! When we're working on posture, we give her toys that aren't quite to interactive so that she can concentrate on holding her back straight and head up.


Isn't she cute? I like these pictures because her eyes are straight. She really doesn't cross all that often--mostly when she's tired, and it seems, for the camera. But here you can see her looking at you!

Her weakest muscles are across her upper back and shoulders. She tires quickly lying on her back and holding toys in the air. Her neck is also very weak, and she hates tummy time. She will tolerate it for about a minute. My mission this week is to get her doing more tummy time, even if it's only for a moment at a time to try to build up some more of those muscles. The therapist and I also worked on carrying her facing out in the Moby wrap. While facing out is not ideal for most babies (it encourages a reverse curve in the back), Hope needs to strengthen those muscles. So we will be doing it for short spurts to encourage her to get her head up and off her chest, and to be looking around and compensating for my movements.

Her progress in the past months with the PT has been huge. It is a very good indicator for her future development. When we started PT, she was so wobbly that she couldn't grab a toy, and she couldn't really hold her head up without wobbling. Now she can do both those toys without wobbling. Just imagine what the next month will bring? Maybe rolling over, maybe sitting up all by herself!

Happy Halloween!

We got about 6 inches of snow. Our power was out for about 12 hours, which is much better than a lot of the people around us, some of whom still don't have power, including the hospital where Hope was supposed to have a head ultrasound today. We have a dead tree in our front yard, which survived earthquake and hurricane, to finally succumb to heavy snow. About 1/3 of the tree came down--one of the main branches. It feel into the yard and street, though, not getting close to our house. How God has sheltered us through natural disasters this year!

Stop the ride, please, I'd like to get off...

This past month has had a lot of changes for us. I know--it can't possibly be as many as we'd had this summer, but David and I often get to the end of a day asking each other, "How come this state makes me so tired?"

Carver is now in school full swing, after a week's delay due to flooding from Hurricane Irene. It has been a little bit of a rocky transition for him and for us. While the past two weeks have been a little better, we have spent a lot of time doing homework, working on things like formatting your paper to take the spelling test correctly, and learning how to follow basic directions on the vocab test. He does not have good handwriting, and that is meaning that he has to redo a lot of stuff and make corrections. He has been up till 10 many nights finishing up homework, which is making him pretty exhausted by the end of the week. I saw some victory today, though, when he wrote a postcard to a friend, and the finished product (without my help) was neat and mostly in complete sentences. Success! And, lucky for us, he LOVES school, and doesn't seem to notice that he's doing an insane amount of work. We're really hoping that as he continues to figure things out, the homework will let up a little bit.

David is loving his job. The students are great, and he's getting some really good chances to interact with them and push them on issues they haven't thought about. I think it's fair to say that he's becoming known as the guy who will talk about Biblical manhood and womanhood without apology. We got the chance to go spend a Saturday out in PA at a retreat center with about half of the student body, and he taught a breakout session titled, "Why We Hate True Community." I spent the day getting to know some of the girls, and getting really excited about spending time with them. I will be going into the city every 2-3 weeks to participate in their Bible studies, and can't wait to get started!

Thanks to dear friends, we were able to get a 'stay-cation' without our kids last weekend. We spent the weekend eating out and exploring the city. It was so, so relaxing, although much too short. From that weekend, I've got a few pictures of Hope, which are the only Hope pics I've got for you today (sorry!):


It really was fun--we basically spent 3 days pretending we were tourists who didn't live in the suburbs with 4 other kids. We got lots of comments about how cute our baby was, and we'd always walk away laughing about how they'd have been so disgusted if we'd been trooping around with all of our kids (which we have done several times, and are getting much better at).

Ellie turned 6, and I don't have a single picture from the entire day. We decided to go meet David in the city and get Chipotle, but due to traffic at the Lincoln Tunnel, the 45-minute trip in turned into a 2 1/2 hour bummer. Fortunately, Hope was asleep most of the time, so it wasn't nearly as stressful as it could've been, but we learned an important lesson about trying to go into the city in the evenings during the week.

I've been learning my way around Morristown Memorial, meeting different specialists. I took Hope to the neurologist last week, and came home with a glowing report. She was so upbeat, she didn't want to see us again for 6 months! How sweet is that? We will be going to have our 6-month checkup with the neurosurgeon this week. But I'll continue my Hope update in a minute. The other specialist we met was a pediatric ophthalmologist, who gave Rosie some glasses ("gasses" she says). Rose has been crossing her eyes for about 6 months now, but she was finally doing it consistently enough to take her in to the doctor. Sure enough, she's extremely far-sighted, and has earned herself a cute little pair of glasses. They're pretty thick, and make her eyes look bigger than they actually are, but other than that, they're really pretty cute. After a few days of easing her into them, she's now wearing them full-time and doing very well with them. She asks for them in the morning when she wakes up, and doesn't give us trouble after that.




And glasses makers are getting smart--we get one completely free replacement, no questions asked!

Hope continues to do very well. She is now lifting up her head when we put her on her tummy, and attempting to support herself with her arms. Through New Jersey's Early Intervention program, we are now seeing a physical therapist once a week and an occupational therapist once a week. I like both of the women very well, and am excited to see what forward progress we can make with her. We have learned, both through them and the neurologist, that a lot of her wobbly movements are due to the damage to her cerebellum. She has a lot of muscle weakness in her neck and upper back, which has contributed to her tendency to prefer turning her head to one side. This in turn has caused her skull to be slightly lopsided. When I go to the neurosurgeon this week, I'll be asking her about this, and a possible treatment is a helmet. Hope's a chunk--she now weight 18 lbs, 10 oz. I still carry her around a lot in the baby carrier, but I'm not sure how much longer my back's going to put up with that.

The biggest thing that continues to make us feel unsettled, though, is the fact that we do not yet have a permanent church home. We have been going to a church for the past two months, but we are viewing that as a trial period right now, and now sure if we'll stay there. Not to be rude, but I'm not asking for recommendations--but I would covet your prayers on this issue. We are really praying that God would show us where He wants us, and where He wants to use us. Funny how you only realize what you had when it's gone, right? If you live within any kind of commuting distance from ClearNote Church (there's one in Indy, too), go! Don't waste another precious moment! We are so very, very excited about going back at Christmastime for a wedding, and we're even looking into the possibility of me and the girls going a week early to the Christmas concert, and then to spend a week being refreshed by dear friends.