Visitors, Dinos and Adele's latest trick!

My parents are visiting this week and we've been doing all kinds of fun things. Today we went to the Zoo to check out the DINOSAURS! I thought the girls might be a little freaked out by the moving and the roaring etc., but they thought it was great. I didn't bring my camera because I had enough to carry but here's a picture of Fiona sitting on the one in the playground area...

(This was a special one, the animatronic ones were definitely not for sitting on!)

And the girls posing as a dino-riding, club waving cave-person... totally historically accurate!

Than later we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house for swimming and picnic dinner. The swimming was wonderful because it was a HOT, HOT day. And the dinner was great because it involved Grandma's potato salad. YUM.

Later, Adele decided she was ready to start standing up on her own! Last week when her physical therapist was over she was super happy with the progress Adele had made over the last month with walking and we made a plan to work on teaching her to stand up in the middle of the room so if she is walking and falls over she doesn't need to crawl to something to pull up on. Well I guess Adele was paying attention because today she did it!! She doesn't have her braces on (and that makes it easier because she can move her ankles more freely without them) but this is a really great achievement nonetheless! She was so excited about it that she did it a bunch of times and it's fun to watch it get easier and easier the more she tries. Here's a video!!

Look at that big smile on her face! 

I guess she waits for Granny to be here to hit the major milestones we're waiting for because she was here for the first unassisted steps last time :-)

My parents are here until Sunday so maybe by then Adele will be hopping and dancing a jig ;-) Who knows what else she could do with that kind of motivation!

Adele's big day.

I know. I'm sorry. It's been too long. Turns out those two additional PT sessions took up way more time than I anticipated and combined with getting very little sleep lately, I haven't had much energy to get anything done in the evenings. If you think this poor blog has been neglected, you should see the state of my house...

ANYWAY, my Mum is visiting this week and that's exciting for us, so I was planning to try to catch up on this, and a number of other things while she's here.

Fiona is very excited!

A couple of weeks ago Adele got a new AFO (ankle-foot orthotic) for her left leg - it comes all the way up to under her knee and allows her foot to lift up, but prevents it from tilting down. This is to stop her dragging her toes along behind her when using her walker. Well, today the extra PT, new AFO, and wanting to show off for Granny all came together and she took.... HER FIRST STEPS!! I don't know about you but I wasn't sure she'd ever get round to it, and I can't quite believe it happened!

She was so proud of herself, it was really fun to see. She is old enough that she understands a lot now, and she really knew what she was doing and wanted to do it over and over again. She kept saying "walk more" then she wanted to see the movie I made of her walking. Needless to say, I have many, many movies of her walking, so here's one for your enjoyment :-)

In other news, this month I had a birthday. Not a big one... though next year you'll all be invited to a super party!

Fiona got very, very excited about Valentines day. Her class at daycare had a party and she made each of her friends a card...

And when not being exhausting, the girls played, watched movies, and were cute...

I don't really have any other news! I'll try to take pictures while my Mum is here at least. And as Adele takes more steps, I'm sure there will be many more videos of that!

December Events

I'm sure you'll all agree that December was a busy month! Well it flew past here and now it's January already. Happy New Year everyone!

We had a lovely month - my awesome cousin Catriona and equally awesome sister Ali both visited and Ali stayed for Christmas.

Gingerbread houses were constructed by Ali and Fiona...

Christmas photos in cute matching dresses were attempted, with partial success, but they never made it into christmas cards...

We performed a dramatic enactment of How the Grinch Stole Christmas in the annual Hamer talent show. There were many other spectacular talents on show this year too... here's 10 minutes of the most impressive talent showing you've seen.

Santa Claus stopped by and brought Fiona the backpack she wrote to him to ask for. She had what she described as "the best day ever" opening presents from all the kind and generous friends and family we have. Adele had fun too but was a little overwhelmed.

Adele had a big assessment at Shriners, which is an amazing hospital for children specializing in (among other things) orthopaedics. We are lucky enough to live very close by and they provide services for free to people who do not have insurance or whose insurance doesn't cover the treatment they need. She's been diagnosed as having mild cerebral palsy which almost exclusively affects her left leg, and we're going to be doing physical therapy there two times a week in addition to the PT we do once every 2 weeks through the Minneapolis schools early intervention program. There's no reason she won't learn to walk, it'll just take a while, but all the extra PT will be great.

We headed to the U.P. for New Year and stayed in a log cabin in the woods with some friends.

Minneapolis has been eerily warm and almost totally snow-less so far this winter, so Fiona was very excited to stomp around in the snow up there.

Adele doesn't like to wear her mittens so didn't last long but enjoyed rolling around in it and observing for a while.

We had a great time hanging out with friends, and Fiona and Adele loved making two new friends of their own.

Today (and I did initially plan to just write about this before feeling a need to summarize the whole month) Fiona requested that I paint her fingernails (for the first time). She noticed a girl in her class at daycare had hers painted and asked me to do hers for her. She asked for red, which, luckily, is one of the two nail polish colours I own (the other being clear) so I painted them for her. I'm guessing that this is only the beginning of many requests for things she'd like because her friends have them...

She was so happy she kept bouncing around and it was very hard to get a picture in focus!

So that's the excitement for today. And who knows what tomorrow might bring!

Working on Walking

Adele is doing well with her new shoes... she likes to wear them and is more stable with them on. They are kind of clunky with the orthotic and the larger shoe on top so she has trouble with things like climbing the steps for the slide, but on the whole she's doing a great job.

She is tired of being carried around and really wants to be able to get around on her own, and today when the physical therapist came over she brought this!

We have a push-along toy that Adele likes to walk with but it causes her to hunch over forwards and she needs to be standing more upright. The walker goes behind her which encourages her to stand up straight. As soon as she got going she really loved it and was laughing and so proud of herself for getting around on her own.

In the afternoon we went to the tennis court to give her a large space to practice in. It was really cold so we didn't stay long but she walked around a bit. Here's a video of her practicing...

And here's one of her watching Fiona (speed demon).

I'm glad she seems to like it and I'm sure she'll be running around in no time :-)

Lazy Vegetarian: Day 20

Breakfast! Toast!! How exciting! And Latte!!

Today's mug was brought from Aberdeen. It is cute and has my name on it. I try not to use it too much because it already has a couple of chips out of it and I would be sad if it broke. So today was a special day :-)

Lunch... I happened to pass by the Co-op on my may home from work and couldn't resist the lure of fresh, delicious soup. They usually have at least 2 vegetarian options and one of them today was.... Borscht!! I've never had it so I gave it a try. It was pretty much like vegetable soup but slightly tangy. It was good.

I was also unable to resist the muffins today, but I chose a bran one to be healthy and only ate half.

But I did eat the other half a few hours later. So imagine the same picture a little later.

After I picked up the girlies we headed over to Shriners to have Adele's orthotics fitted! I'm so excited for her to have these finally!

She's interested in them. She doesn't like for me to take them off. She wears them half an hour on, half an hour off all day, moving up to more time on progressively. After a week or so she should have them on all the time.

She wears regular shoes over them because they are slippy and thin so could be damaged walking around on them.

Here's a video of her walking on them. In the past her left foot was twisted off to the side and she put her weight on the inside of her foot and ankle, but the shoe helps to straighten it out and point it forward. I was warned that there would be a big adjustment but so far she is doing great!

After they were fitted we hung out and played on their playground for a while. Fiona played "baby sloth needs to be rescued" and Adele played "stand there and look adorable".

Dinner was teriyaki veggie stir fry with noodles. It was yummy though a little overcooked.

This evening I had a lovely time going to see Footloose (yes, really) with one of my favorite friends. The movie was ok... the dancing was really great but the story was a bit cheesy. I kind of expected that though. It was fun :-)

Man, I wish I had that half muffin still... I'd like to eat it now.

I'll announce the winner of the big cheeto competition in the next few days. If you haven't cast your vote yet, better get on that! Also, for you British readers - cheetoes are like wotsits but fatter. Crunchy cheetoes are like 100 year old rock hard wotsits that got all messed up looking. Now, which do you prefer?! ;-)

Lazy Vegetarian: Day 5

Today has been exhausting.

Breakfast with Adele and Fiona, both in good moods because Daddy promised waffles with syrup and Mummy delivered.

Latte, toast, raspberry jam.

After reading my post from yesterday Ben turned to me and said "do you have toast every day?". Ah, marriage.

Shortly after that my phone froze and then wouldn't turn on again so I felt strangely lonely all day (and at one point it would have been nice to be able to use the GPS, so that was annoying). Luckily the third technology store we went to this evening was able to get it up and running again and Ben was kind enough to put all my apps and contacts back on it so yay for that.

Lunch: Leftover quiche, salad, bread.

That afternoon Adele had an appointment at Shriners to check out her left foot. As most of you know she has some gross motor delays and does physical therapy every 2 weeks. In addition to that her left foot has not been developing normally and is twisted to the side and rolls inwards so when she stands on it the weight is all on the inside of her foot. This is impeding her walking progress and her therapist thought she'd need some kind of corrective footwear to help her put weight on her foot and learn to walk. However, our insurance doesn't cover that, which is nuts, but luckily we live right by Shriners which specializes in orthopedic care for kids and provides free services for people who are not covered by insurance. They were kind enough to accept us as patients and immediately made a cast of her foot to construct some orthotic shoes to help straighten her foot out. The shoes should be ready in about 2 weeks so that will be exciting!

Exciting and exhausting. After trying to keep both kids entertained and under control for hours in a confined space I was ready for a nap and a big glass of wine. Luckily I made a pot of soup last night when I was cooking anyway so we had that for dinner along with more leftovers.

Quiche, potato and corn chowder*, mac and cheese and bread.

Real Recipe!

This is the recipe from the book, italics are my changes...

1 small russet potato, peeled /2 large baking potatoes, not peeled

1 tbsp canola oil s/plash olive oil

1 small red onion, chopped /regular onion

1 small green bell pepper chopped and de-seeded

1 14oz can creamed corn

1/2 cup frozen corn /1 can regular corn

1 cup fat free chicken broth /2 cups veg broth

2 tsps fresh/half tsp dried thyme

pinch cayenne /seriously, that stuff is HOT

4 ounces hot-smoked salmon, flaked /(I've made it with the salmon before back in April 2010 and it's REALLY good, but to be vegetarian I skipped it.)

Today I also added enough milk to thin it out a little because it got thicker overnight.

Cook potato. In another pan, heat oil. Cook onion, pepper. Add creamed corn, frozen corn, broth, thyme, cayenne. Bring just to boil. Add potato, stir in salmon if using. Season. Eat.

She Sits! And the other one wees!

Adele had her first visit with the physical therapist for early intervention this week, and by the next day she was sitting unassisted for much longer than ever before! The PT gave us some different techniques to help her practice sitting and tummy time, and it looks like they work!

She still has work to do, but this is huge progress for her! She is using her muscles to balance more and using her hands for support and to push herself more upright. She's a super star!

We're working on having more tummy time, which strengthens her muscles and helps her to sit and roll over from back to front. She is not a fan of tummy time and rolls over to her back immediately. One of the things the PT noticed was that she prefers to roll to the right (Zoolander, you are not alone!) and to prevent this, suggested that we lie her against the couch to either force her to practice rolling left, or just work on being on her tummy more... she's not super impressed with this, but it helps!

The variety of things that the therapists want to see her doing that she's not doing yet is kind of overwhelming, but I am so incredibly pleased that she's already making progress. In addition to this, she has also begun using the 'pincer grasp' to grab little pieces of food. She's been choking frequently on non-pureed food recently so the only tiny chewy foods I give her are puffs, which dissolve really fast, but as soon as she discovered them she was a big fan. Sometimes she even gets them into her mouth!

Fiona is going through a non-cooperative phase, so it's been really hard to get any good pictures of her. Her big news though is POTTY TRAINING!! She has been in underwear all day for a week now and has not had any accidents. The liquid kind anyway. We won't talk about her poo issues :-/ Still, despite needing to work on that a little, I am so proud of her! It's been a long process, but she has suddenly developed the self control of a camel, and can go for far longer than Ben without going to the bathroom. It's still terrifying to take her out in public, but she's doing great!

Also, I made her a hat :-)

They are such amazing little girls!