This week in pictures

Hello again, I hope there are some of you blog readers left. We have been quite busy the past few weeks and my good intentions to update the blog more often went by the wayside... along with grading, lesson plans etc.

I did want to include of couple of recent pictures of the kids. The one of William is from Thursday night. Like many other little boys his age William is so busy doing that he frequently forgets to pay attention to where he is going. Thursday afternoon at daycare he was running from one part of the playroom to the next and BAM! He tripped over one of the toys and landed face first in the "Marble Castle". As you can see by the image he ended up with scratches under his right eye and left eye too. When I picked him up from daycare I asked William who he got into a scuffle with and if the other kid looked as "good" as he did. He told me "Noooo, Mommy. I trip and hit my face." Yes, William you did. He likes to stay busy, keeping us on our toes.


Miss Katie is doing really well with her DOC band. I included the link to the company that manufactures her cranial device. When Katie was 4 months old her pediatrician and I talked about her head and we were both concerned that she was developing a flat spot on her right parietal/occipital region. The pediatrician suggested repositioning exercises, more tummy time and limited swing/bouncy seat time. After researching plagiocephaly and treatments, I began rigorous repositioning (changing her sleeping and resting positions often) and lots of tummy time. I kept joking with others that Katie was in "Belly Bootcamp" and needed to be working on tummy time as much as possible. But honestly I did not see much if any improvement of Katie's neck control during tummy time and her flatness was not improving either. So when she had her 6 month appointment and the pediatrician recommended getting Katie evaluated for a band we were not terribly surprised. We went to a Cranial Tech site in Madison at Dean Health and had Katie evaluated for Plagiocephaly (flatness of one side) and Brachycephaly (flatness in the back). She was diagnosed with both and her asymmetry was considered in the severe category. Her asymmetry was 4 standard deviations above the mean (translation - it was quite severe). So we started on our journey of haggling with the insurance company to get her device covered. At this point we have been denied and had to pay out of pocket for the band, but are going through the appeals process to try to get it covered.


In the meantime along with Plagiocephaly and Brachycephaly Katie was also diagnosed with Torticollis. Sometimes called Wry Neck or Stiff Neck. What most likely happened was that when Katie was in utero (during the pregnancy) she had a "restricted environment" (not a lot of space) so she grew with her head tilted to one side causing one of her neck muscles to develop shorter than the other. Katie HAD a subtle head tilt to the right. A physical therapist from Early Intervention of Illinois diagnosed her with torticollis this fall. So we have been working with Katie to strengthen her neck and consequently upper body. Because of the weak neck muscles she was developing slower than average with some of her other large muscle movements, like pushing up from a tummy position, rolling over, etc. All of which were influenced by her limited range of motion of her neck.

Recently, Katie has made some fantastic progress. She has graduated from "Belly Bootcamp" and is eager to conquer "Crawling College". She can roll over (when she wants too), can transition from sitting to tummy and tummy to sitting. This week she has started to take a couple of hesitant movements forward while in the crawling position. My guess would be that she will be confidently crawling by Christmas!

Take care,

Heather