EG Makes it to PT

Ella had her first PT appointment this afternoon. It was just an initial assessment, but the Physical Therapist, Andrea thinks that Ella would benefit from services from what she's seen. We'll be following up with a more detailed evaluation. The detailed evaluation will involve a total evaluation with not only pt, but also occupational therapy, speech therapy, etc. It'll be really interesting to go through that and see where Ella falls. After that, she'll start receiving regular physical therapy services. I'm guessing she'll get an IEP - and as a former teacher, yuck, I feel bad someone has to write one of those on Ella's behalf!

Andrea agrees that Ella's muscles are well formed. Basically, Ella likes feeling stable and will do whatever is necessary to stay stable. She locks her little knees when standing or sitting and doesn't like to shift her weight off of center. So, in the meantime, we get to challenge Ella's comfort level - while playing. Basically, we'll work on swaying her back and forth, getting her to relax her knees, bend a knee while she's sitting so her weight shifts and bicycle her legs while she lays on her back. Most kids will challenge their bodies and balance to see what else they can do, but Ella would rather not. So, she's losing some of those skills because she's not trying them. Once we help her realize how much her body can move, she'll be more apt to try doing new things on her own. Our first goal is to get her to move from sitting to her tummy - but in "millimeters", nice and slow so Ella doesn't freak out, but eases into it.

This afternoon, we had a lot of fun playing with our new exercises. Ella was all smiles and laughter. It's nice to have a starting point.

In the end, I'm not worried about her walking, she's well in the time frame for that. Some kids never crawl, so I could care less about that. But, I do want her to learn how to pull up into standing and move from sitting to laying and vice versa. She deserves to have the quality of life that every 13 month old should have - discovering new things and getting into a little trouble!

Photo Bonus
We have leftover birthday cake in the freezer. We thawed some and tried to give Ella a second chance at cake demolition since she wasn't feeling well on her birthday. The verdict: she still won't touch it. She just looks happier to not touch it! Someday, she'll be bummed to find out what she missed. It was good cake.