Five Month Update

Jokingly having her sit independently. Her tripod legs are useful in this ruse.

We're still plugging away at around 15 weeks in braces and haven't had any appointments since early January. We go in next at the beginning of April and I anticipate we'll get a "doing good" pat on the back from our doctor and then have another appointment three more months down the road. Our son wore his braces 23.5 hours a day until he was 9 months old, so I anticipate that our daughter will graduate along that same timeline. I guess you could say we're about halfway through the "braces all the time" phase. Time is just flying (eye roll and sarcasm). I still look at her sometimes and can't believe we are doing this all over again.

Milestones are still in the future. She gets close to being able to roll from back onto tummy, but just can't quite get enough momentum going to breech all the way over. She does do better practicing this with the bar and shoes on as she is just more comfortable that way. When the bar is off she just is not used to having her legs be two separate entities. She has started to be able to rotate around in bed and often ends up in a different direction than the one I laid her down on. Going to have to start thinking about how to contain her on the bed so she doesn't go over! We co-sleep and she is just on the mattress which is low to the ground. Not that falling from any height is good, but atleast we aren't talking about a 3-4 foot drop here.

We've started letting her have some time in the bouncy saucer exerciser. Without shoes on it does some good stretching just like the physical therapy we do with her doing her daily shoe break. We limit her to 10 minute segments twice a day (once without the shoes and once with) as those exercisers are hard on hips, and we were warned to be extra careful.

Here's a fun photo taken with baby's all born about the same time. Ella in purple is the oldest (born prematurely at 29 weeks), then 10 days later my baby girl was born, and then our man Chase was 3 weeks after that. Pretty so we won't be able to set the baby's like this as Lena just might get her whale tail brace going and crack her friends over the head. Look out folks!