Please stand by . . . or, walk this way

Folks, you've been mighty patient with me, and I thank you for that.  I never finished boasting about Hannah's birthday.  I haven't yet told you of the process of closing out our case with Early Intervention and the bittersweet farewell to the occupational therapist we had for more than two years, and the sixth bureaucratic caseworker in the same span of time.  And of course, having the relationship change between our family and Michael Workman, the Angel of PT, without whose Bamboo Brace we would not be where we are today.  And then I didn't get to tell you about our preparations for kindergarten for Claire, or the choice to keep Hannah in the group of the people on the younger end of her day care class - the ones who are "not quite ready" to be a Busy Bee and so will be Big Ladybugs, at least for the time being.  And how this decision concerns me as it makes me wonder of the wisdom of keeping Hannah, with her late summer birthday, in the cohort that would be her regularly assigned class or might I, instead, hold her back a year so the physical disparities are not so great between her and her classmates and yet leaving her less intellectually challenged.  In her preschool class, no one else knows all their letters (and has done so for eight months) and yet many others can speak more clearly about the letters they do in fact know.  I haven't told you how I worry that the decision I make for this year will not bind us to a certain result in kindergarten - but the choice I make in our kindergarten year will indeed bind us for the rest of her school career.  How will I get that one right?

I also haven't told you how delightful the two girls are to be around.  Fart jokes aside, they have lovely manners and they are wonderfully loving to each other (excepting the odd and oddly lethal sounding disputes over the toy of the moment).  I think they truly miss being in the same school even though they didn't play together on a daily basis there.  Hannah was given a chance to select a sucker from a large jar as bribery for allowing a medical assistant to weigh and measure her, and she took two - so she could give one to her sister - and then wouldn't even open hers until she saw big sis later on and could present it herself.  I haven't told you how joyful Claire really is - even in the roughest moments.  Case in point - the new kindergarten schedule has us waking so, so, so early  (compared to last month, that is) and when I went to wake her she threw her arm around my neck and said "Mommy!  Mommy! Woo-woo-woo!!" (the traditional family way to praise someone about virtually anything).   At 7:40 a.m.!  I think she likes kindergarten.

I haven't told you how discombobulated I am to not have to consider the dog when I want to slip out the back door unnoticed, or I start to pour water in her bowl until I realize her bowl is no longer needed.  We failed to adequately recognize the extraordinary effort she put into cleaning the floor, and have had to increase the mopping schedule considerably and we still are not up to Sophie's standard of cleanliness.

And finally, I haven't told of Hannah's extraordinary progress in gross motor skills generally and in foot function specifically that led her treating physician to decide that she didn't need to wear an AFO, and we'll re-evaluate in six months but it looks quite as if this is a child who might not spend her childhood in braces.

And so we say goodbye to footwear like this:

And hello to cheap footwear from Target - every girl's dream.

Walk this way, please!