A First...a second time!

Oh my gosh! It's too bad she isn't cute!

This smile says it all!

Okay, so she's stood in her crib before. But, this is the first time since her feet have been corrected! She doesn't have the strength to pull herself up or even to stand there alone-note the way she hung herself over the rail, but she wanted to be up there so I helped her. She is having to rethink how she does everything. Her brain wants to put that right foot down, top first, the way she has done it before. I actually had to show her that her feet have to be positioned bottom-down. Then she sat there and used her hands to put her feet in bottom-down position before she tried to stand up. It was so cute!

She spent a lot of time "practicing" her standing this weekend while my parents visited.

Now that her casts are off we can see just how much work we have ahead of us before this monkey is going to walk. She lost a lot of the little bit of muscle tone she had while she was in casts. Of course she was in them for over 13 weeks so she was bound to lose it! Unfortunately, it looks like she more nerve damage than I thought she did. She never moved her toes on either foot, and still doesn't and she always seemed to have reduced sensation in her feet. But now she also doesn't move her right foot at all. It just sort of hangs there and flops around at the end of her leg. I guess this could partly be lack of muscle tone, but it looks suspiciously like nerve damage.

I still think she will walk, not because I'm living in the clouds, but because she was so close before that I can't imagine she won't now. But, I do think it's possible that the road to walking may be long and uphill, and possibly full of potholes! Our prayers right now encompass being able to discern and make the decisions about this that will best benefit Claire. We will not know the extent of her handicap or the route to take until after October 7th and 8th when she has appointments with some specialists. She has a great cheering squad, thanks to all of you!

In the mean time, we are just enjoying watching her try to use her legs and feet. She re-mastered crawling and going up the stairs this weekend! She is totally enamored with her toes and wants you to see them and kiss them all the time, especially the purple one! She has some lovely bruising on that foot but she thinks the purple toe is wonderful! Thankfully, the swelling went down enough that we were able to start using her Dobbs brace at nap time and nights. At first, when she saw me get the brace down to put it on, she started saying "no fit, no fit!" but after I got it on and showed her that it did fit she was fine. Since then, she has given us no trouble putting it on and she does not attempt to take it off, though I know good and well that she is smart enough to get it off! She "help" to put it on! Today, I put her in the crib for nap without the brace, on accident, and she began to cry and call out "brace" and a bunch of words that I could not discern. The gist of it was, "hey lady, you forgot my brace and I want it now!" Did I tell you, she is very routine oriented! Don't deviate from the routine LADY! OKAY!