Physical Therapy, haircut, dog crate and crushers

Siena had her follow up physical therapy appointment this morning. He had wanted to see her when she was walking or at 14 months, which ever came first. He was super impressed with her mobility and she even hit a new milestone while there! She can now get into a standing position with out needing help of a couch or table.

Cole got a hair cut today. As much as I love his long hair it was too long in the back and was getting mullet like. He has the cutest shaggy hair but when it is cut short like this it is much longer between hair cuts and I like that!

Today was a beautiful day! Close to 80 I think. We played outside for awhile in between nap times. Siena enjoyed the dog crate a lot! She kept going in and out and trying to lock herself in it.
She also discovered her brother favorite snack. At Trader Joe's they have pureed apple carrot sauce and they call it crushers. They come in these little packets that the kids can suck on. Cole loves them! They have an apple only one as well but I don't buy it because I think the added carrot is much better for him. Well miss Siena discovered it and is now addicted to them. She carried it around for over an hour. She actually did make too much of a mess either!

MRI Results and the next step

So on Monday I called to get the results of Siena's MRI. The lady that answered the phone told me it would take 1 1/2 to 2 weeks to get the results read. I told her in so many words that I was not waiting 2 weeks to find out if my daughter had a brain tumor. I got called back with in 30 minutes. HER MRI WAS 100% NORMAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So that's the good news! But we still don't have any concrete evidence of why she gets the head tilt. Her last physical therapy appointment was this morning. Once she starts walking or if I think she is not progressing in the right direction with motor skills, we can take her back in for a check up.

So the conclusion we all came to was that her head tilt is growth spurt related and when she has a growth spurt it takes the muscles in the left side of her neck about 1 1/2 weeks to stretch out. So we will see if this pattern continues on. If and when the tilt comes back again we will just work on her stretches.

Physical Therapy Update

Because Siena looked like this last week and wasn't 100% better today, we are going to be continuing on with therapy for the next month, twice a week. We are also taking her to a neurologist to have another opinion on her neck. Neither the pediatrician nor the physical therapist is quite sure why she continues to tilt her head to the left. I for sure feel like this is all related to the pregnancy. I mean how can it not be. She was an IUGR baby and I don't see how it wouldn't at least cause one issue. Let's hope that there isn't any significant findings with the neurologist and that maybe this is just tight muscles from the pregnancy.

Physical Therapy Update

Physical therapy is going very good! Siena is now in it twice a week because her torticollis issue turned out to not be an issue but she has weak shoulders and a weak trunk so we needed to correct that problem. She has been doing her exercises, ok I have been making her do them since she has no clue what is going on. The only thing she knows is that she likes Dan, her physical therapist. She is the biggest ham with him. It's pretty funny.

Siena has finally learned how to sit up from a lying down position! Which is exciting and all but now it means that instead of falling asleep when I put her in the crib, she gets up and cries and cries and cries. I am still not ready to let her cry it out at night but for nap time I will.

The physical therapist expects her to pull her self up to a standing position at least once this week. Exciting stuff. Siena is booked though the end of the month for sessions and we will judge from there is she needs any more help. She is a pro crawler but just very slow moving. Her hips are super tight so they are slowing her down a bit.

***While I was typing this post Siena pulled her self up on the music table!!!!!!!

More milestones

I don't have any pictures to prove this just yet, but today Siena pulled her self up on the coffee table and then immediately fell over according to my mom whom was babysitting at the time. And just now Mike came into the office ( I am editing photos, what else is new) and told me that Siena was lying flat on her belly and pushed up, tucked her legs under and got into a sitting position! Last night she did a few consecutive crawls!!!! Physical therapy has really benefited her development! We have one more session tomorrow morning and then we will decided from there if she needs any more.

Physical Therapy - Day 2

Siena's second day of physical therapy was really good. She is already improving with rolling over and pushing up on her arms. We have to work on her core because she doesn't know how to correct her self when tipping over. She automatically arches her back and falls backwards instead of using her stomach muscles (ha!) to correct her self. We also discovered that she does not like to flex her legs which had it not been caught early on that she would have difficulty learning to walk in the future. So even though the torticollis diagnosis was incorrect, going to physical therapy has in turned discovered a problem we had no idea needed attention. I am excited to see her progress!

Physical Therapy - Day one

Siena had her first physical therapy visit this afternoon. She was a great sport and only got mad at Dan (her therapist) a few times. The good news is that Siena does NOT have Torticollis!!! He said that her problem is lack of muscle strength in her shoulders and trunk. I was so happy to hear this. He thinks the head tilt happens when she gets tired which does make a little sense and would explain why the head tilt changed directions.

So this "lack" of strength comes from her "limited" amount of tummy time. That of course is my fault but Cole has always been pretty unpredictable when is comes to sudden movements and after he stomped her a few months back it made me scared to leave her on the ground. Anyways, Dan gave us some different things to work on with her to help build strength and loosen up her legs. She is 2 months or so behind on consistently rolling over. She can do it but chooses not to. The reason she is not rolling over is because she is actually making it difficult for her to get over because she is not using her top arm to direct her body. Instead the arm is going the opposite direction limiting her movement.

To experience what she is going through sit with your back up straight and try to pinch your shoulder blades together. Now try and turn and reach for something while keeping your shoulder blades in the same position. Not to comfortable huh?

Her therapy routine at home so far will consist of no less than 3 hours of tummy time a day with exercises on getting her to roll over both directions and getting up on to her knees in an all fours position. She is already loving the all fours stuff. He said we should be seeing results pretty quickly!