Equipment for the busybody

Today Emma was fitted for her stander at physical therapy.  She tried out a couple models, and I have lots of pictures.  This first one is a mobile stander with the wheels attached.  It's too tall because it's a size small, and she will fit in a "mini."  The chest pad is designed to come up to her chest (duh) and not her chin.  Hers will be raspberry-colored.  For you men, that's pink.  The big wheels on the sides will allow Emma to move herself around when she gets a little bigger, but in the meantime, we won't have the wheels on, and Emma will just practice standing.  We can roll her around on smaller wheels, but it's not self-propelled until the wheels on the sides go on.  The point of a stander is to introduce kids with diminished leg strength to standing with their legs and trunks supported and knees straightened.  Have you heard that aging adults should lift weights to help with bone density?  Same concept with these kids - besides helping them learn to walk, standers help their bones develop stronger because it's weight-bearing exercise.  Otherwise, their bones would be even more brittle and less developed than they are prone to be because of their disabilities.  Ok, enough with the boring medical talk.  Let's see Emma in action.

She'll have a little tray in front of her, and keep in mind that that chest pad will actually be at her chest, not her chin.

Emma actually pitched a complete fit after a few short minutes of being in this stander.  We hope it was because she was uncomfortable with that thing all in her face.  We took her outside to put her in the other one since she likes being outside so much.  It didn't go so well at first:

But things went much more smoothly after a few moments, and then Nan took Emma for a ride. Check out the cute tushy with the tiger paw.

A few more things about The Care Center - they have wonderful Bible verses on the long walls in the gym.  It's so wonderful to have God's Word over us as we travel a difficult journey. 

There are lots of things to love about The Care Center, and being a dog lover, this is definitely one of them:

I can't remember her name, but this is a one-year-old service dog that is being trained by Sabrina, the physical therapist to the left.  It's Sabrina's personal dog, but she is in the process of being trained as a service dog.  I think it's ok for me to say that the dog is being trained on a few different levels, and one of them is as a Dogs for Autism service dog.



After all this stander business, Emma then proceeded to roll over for her therapists and impress them with her leg movement.  Our family didn't realize this, but Melanie pointed out that after Emma rolls over to her stomach, she's actually trying to then sit up.  I'm so proud of our Doodle.  I left therapy today feeling so blessed and uplifted.  God's pretty amazing that way, isn't He?