You should read this, you'll like it :)

My husband emailed me an article about a girl with hydrocephalus and cerebral palsy today. I'm keeping a copy of it, I think this girl is inspirational, and she gives me high hopes for Avery :)
Find the whole article here.

"It really bugged me when I was little because I couldn't run as fast as the other kids or do some of the things that they did," Allen said. "One of the biggest effects of cerebral palsy is balance. When we were little, someone brought in a balance beam that was just an inch off the ground, and it was easy for the other kids, but I had to step on the ground a couple dozen times. I've had to wear glasses my entire life and I've always been picked on a little bit. But I've learned to cope."

Encouraged by her mother and older brother, Ray, Allen began running cross country and track as a seventh-grader at Memorial Middle School. She had to walk part of the course to complete her first cross country race, but she's been hooked on competitive running ever since.

"That sparked my interest to get strong enough to run a whole race, and I've never had to walk another race again," Allen said. "After I got good enough to run the whole race, my goal has always been to get out of last place, and that's something I've clung to my whole running career."

It gets even better!!

So, since writing that post this morning, Avery went to physical therapy and did something else really spectacular. I tell you, this girl is an absolute miracle.
So we were working on independent standing and stepping. Lisa was helping her learn how to get up to standing by herself, and then once she was up and balancing she was having her take 2 steps towards me to put some pieces in a puzzle. Avery was doing what she normally does - she balances, then she takes a couple of steps while falling towards me, if you can picture that. So she did that, and then I helped her stand up again and Lisa gave her the puzzle piece and I held up the puzzle. Avery must have though the puzzle was too far away, so without even any prompting, she took two little steps closer to me and then stopped, still standing!!

Without any help!!

My baby took her first completely independent steps!!!!!!

Lisa and I both about cried!

Big achievement

Okay, so maybe I haven't decided for sure about whether to continue this blog or not...I keep changing my mind...maybe it will be a gradual thing....! I just had to share something Avery did yesterday.
So Avery started hippotherapy again yesterday. It was supposed to start last week but it got canceled because of the cold wind and rain. Yesterday it was just raining, and they have a covered area, so we were still able to go! Avery was so excited! Anyway, Lisa is "testing" all her kids throughout the course of the 10 weeks of hippotherapy so that she can show that it really does help, and what she decided to do with Avery was to test her before and after each session to see how long she could stand up unassisted. So that's what we did when we first got there yesterday. Avery stood up on the mat, and Lisa sat behind her and handed her the pieces for this puzzle which I was holding in front of her.
Of course, we were expecting her to stand up for maybe a minute before she lost her balance. Her record up til then was almost 2 minutes, and that had only happened maybe 2 or 3 times. So Lisa started the stop watch and started handing Avery the puzzle pieces, and I held the puzzle and made sure she wasn't holding onto the puzzle for support. A minute came and went, and she was still standing very steadily. She finished the puzzle. She took out all the pieces one at a time and gave them back to Lisa. She finished the puzzle again. She started taking the pieces out again, and finally lost her balance and fell backwards onto Lisa's lap after

6 minutes 14 seconds!!!!

It was amazing!

So of course we thought that would completely throw off Lisa's testing, because she'd never even come close to standing alone for that long before, so she wouldn't be able to stand for nearly that long after hippotherapy! But we were wrong! After 30 minutes of riding the horse, we went back to the mat and the puzzle, and this time, Avery stood for...

7 minutes 4 seconds

In case you weren't certain before, my daughter is absolutely amazing.

Busy Busy

I just thought I'd let you all know why I've been such a slacker with my blogs recently! We made an offer on a house on Friday! We've been looking for a few weeks, and it's been taking up pretty much all our time, and now that we've made an offer, we've been spending all our time organising and packing up boxes! It's pretty exciting! The house we are in right now we've been renting from Gabe's uncle, and although its been such a blessing to have it, it's just not going to work anymore, especially if we want to keep any friendly feelings towards each other. But the new house (I'm trying so hard not to think of it as ours until our offer has been accepted...!) is great! It was built in 1962, and I don't think it's been redecorated since then (!!!) but I think it's going to be perfect for us! And it's a split level, so it will be wonderfully accessible to Avery since there are only 5 or 6 steps between levels. I love it, but I'm not going to talk about it anymore until I know it's ours....
Another thing I've been debating about for a while, and have finally come to a decision to is this: I am going to stop updating this blog and just use my other blog for new news from now on. The reason for that is this: it's getting more difficult to decide which blog I should post some things to, and so I keep on just not blogging about them at all! I will still be posting to this blog, but it will only be to catch up, since there's a lot of Avery's first 3 years of medical history which I haven't yet blogged about, because I'm a slacker. So I would like to invite all of you to my other blog to keep up with Avery, but please keep an eye on this blog too as I try to fill in all the blanks! And please forgive me if I don't post much for the next little while! We're hoping to close on this house by the end of April (if we get it....I hope!!!), and we'll need to do some work on it before we can move in, so we'll probably be very busy for the next little while!! But I will still try to post!