Catching up

The girls had an excellent therapy appointment today. The therapist said again that we are clearly doing a lot of work because the girls are leaps and bounds ahead of where they were 3 weeks ago. This is really important to me for two reasons - 1) it means the girls are catching up and 2) it means that the decision to quit my job and be home with the girls was the right one. I've joked about the therapy being a part-time job, but it isn't a joke. I spend hours everyday working with them. Our assignment for next week for each girl is 2-3 hours/day of tummy time, 20 sit-ups/day, forced rolling 2-3 times/day, and baby massage. This is all in addition to neck stretches, visual tracking, and hand grasping exercises that we are also working on. I'm not kidding - it's a ton of work. And we're working on eventually getting tummy time up to 4-6 hours a day (or approximately half their waking hours). It's exhausting! My back hurts from being on the floor all day long :)

It was good to get the positive feedback. I think I really needed it to make myself feel better. If they weren't making such nice progress it would be improbable that I would keep up the pace. So, basically, here's where they're at - both of their head lags (that head hanging back thing that happens when you try to lift them) have improved to about 90% of where they should be chronologically. Evelyn, whose side preference to the left has been pretty severe, now has a nearly full range of motion in an upright and tummy positions. She still struggles when she's flat on her back to look to the right.

The therapist said to reasonably expect them to be strong crawlers by 12 months and caught up completely by 18 months. That is huge! Usually you hope for a complete catch up between 2-3 years. I mean 3 weeks ago they were tolerating ten 2-3 minute sessions on their tummy a day and now Evelyn can do 30 minutes at a time (Clara more like 15-20) without even fussing. It's fantastic. She also said that it's important for the motor stuff to hurry along to make way for some of the other important developmental milestones. So, the sooner the better.

One last thing about therapy - she said that with each visit she's looking for indications of neurological problems and so far hasn't seen anything at all. She said they are really just "catching up." It actually brings me to tears (of joy) to think of this. The past year has had some really deep lows and to see a light at the end of this craptastic momo twin tunnel is astonishingly exciting.

Oh, I also keep meaning to mention that Greg's Co-momo-tion blog has officially ended and made way for That Tree is Far Away (see link to the left). I understand it will be a place for him to try to be funny or to reveal to his reading public how much of a curmudgeon he is becoming :) Anyway, check it out. His most recent post is interesting (to me, anyway) because it adds up all our medical bills to the cool sum of nearly one meelion dollars. Thank God for insurance!

Take care,
Kris