Whew! And Belly Update

That's what I have to say about how fast time is going these days and how busy we have been.

Last weekend I took my parents to PA to see my niece in her high school musical. (She was awesome). It is about a 10 hour drive so I really, really, really did not want to take Ayden Jane. Jen (our PT) was planning on keeping her while I was gone, but her own little kiddos got sick. It was a sick, sick that I did not want to take a chance on AJ getting. Her active, healthy little ones took a week plus to kick it so I was not interested in finding out just how much it would wipe out Ayden Jane. I was to leave Friday morning and I spent Thurs. morning preparing to take her. Then, Thurs. afternoon I discovered that my sister was not making the trip! A loss for my niece, but a gain for me.

Now, lets put this into perspective. On Sat. night, I would be 10 hrs away and Gary would be over an hour away. Next in line to know all things AJ is Kayla, but she was with me in PA. The only other person to ever watch AJ for a significant period of time was Jen. Gary took care of shots before he left for work (remember he works night) and I wrote out whatever directions I could quickly think of. I did not prepare much for aunt Bev because I had started working on plans to take AJ and it was a late reversal. It seems all went well. When I ask AJ about it all, mostly she is just distraught that Aunt Bev does not have any balls to play with. Funny.

As for the hanging belly, it seems the tape has worked it's magic. We also have a new (used) car seat that AJ seems more comfortable in. Jen came yesterday and agreed she looked much better. She was able to get to some of the fine motor stuff we are beginning to work like scissors. Ayden Jane did okay with it, remarkably better than a few months ago when we tried. She also had her putting some teeny, tiny beads on a little heart. Ayden Jane struggled with this and tried to avoid it, but Jen convinced her to keep at it. Jen said that she is much more stable in her shoulder girdle so she is keeping her hands in better position.

As for gross motor, our homework was to learn to jump up on things. Mission accomplished. Now all I need to do is give myself an extra 10 min. for every errand I run! Every time we come to a curb, single step... Ayden Jane must jump down off of it, turn around and jump up onto it, jump down... until I can get her to come with me. It is adorable as long as I am not in a hurry!

One last thing of note. Ayden Jane had been wearing her crocs quite a bit lately just because they are easy and she can put them on all by herself. Tue. I decided we needed to get back into our 'jump highers'. Those are her tennis shoes with her orthotics in them. She calls them her jump highers because from the moment she first got the orthotics she started jumping over and over. We would be in the store and she would stop, feel them in her shoes and jump up and down... Well, we have had the same response. It is very cute!