My Conductive Education Guest Post

Janet over at Painting for Hailey is doing a series on Conductive Education. I am her first guest poster...so go over and check it out when you get a chance.

Sliding fun

I've been suffering from a bit of Mommy-guilt lately. You know the guilt that you're not doing everything you should for your kids? One such thing that has been causing this guilt is that my kids don't do a lot of the "typical" kid things. Like playing outside in the snow.

Mostly this is because it's so freakin' difficult for Ben to play in the snow (not difficult for him...he loves it...difficult for us). But another reason is that I really don't like playing out in the snow. I kind of an indoor girl. And my husband really isn't all that outdoorsy either, unfortunately.

However, we built an awesome huge deck last summer and it's turned out to be a great place to play in the snow. Over the holidays, we had a few snowstorms and I would just bundle the kids up and send them out on it while hubby was shovelling it off. He bought them a few kid-size shovels and they were in snow-heaven. And it wasn't even all that difficult for us. Ben really didn't mind crawling around out there. It's so nice and flat on the deck that it works pretty well for him.

Then the idea came to use the ramp off the back as a hill for sliding. So off the nanny went to get a sled and away they went. I will give all credit to this afternoon's sliding fun to her since she was the one doing all the work...carrying Ben up to the top each time.

Here's Daniel going down the ramp:



And here's Ben - I can't believe that he chooses to go on his knees..but he loves it!




And here's Ben after he fell off!


Isn't that smile just awesome??

Special Needs Sunday - Guest Post

I'm a guest poster over at The Beautiful Side of Hectic today! Go check it out.

Conductive Education - I'm a believer...

So. We just finished our 3rd session of Conductive Education ("CE"). I am a total believer now. Total believer. Ben was simply amazing. He did so many new things and just amazed me everyday. And I can't wait til we go again in March...this time hopefully for 2 weeks.

I am going to do a guest post for Janet at Painting for Hailey explaining more about CE, the centre that we use and other details...but for now I wanted to at least brag about how awesome Ben is!

As I said, this was our 3rd session, I blogged about our first session here. I blogged about our 2nd session here and here.

For the 2nd time, we did a session with a classmate named "Sarah". It is truly a great experience for both Ben and ME to be around another child (and Mom) with CP.

And this time...instead of staying in a hotel, we stayed with Sarah and her Mom at their vacation house just an hour outside of Halifax (where the CE centre is). Sarah's mom had extended the invitation for us to stay with them when we met them at the last session and I was a bit nervous, but decided to go for it. It would save us ALOT of money plus it would be great for Ben and maybe even great for me.

It turned out so much better than I could have imagined. Sarah and Ben are great friends and got to know each other even better. Sarah's mom and I completely connected. We have a TON in common...besides the fact that we both have a child with CP, we both have lived in multiple countries, love to travel and....best of all....have a mutual passion for really good red wine.

We spent every night sharing a bottle of wine and stories...either about our life or about our kids. It was awesome.

So...back to CE. Here is a photo of Ben practing walking with canes. He continues to improve with this and can almost do it independently...well, he can do it independently for a few steps but then loses his balance.


Here are Ben and Sarah working on balance by throwing beanbags while trying to keep their feet flat. Ben loved it!

And here's my favourite photo from the week. Here you can see Ben standing ON HIS OWN!!!! It is only for a second or two, but this simply amazes me.

So yeah...I'm a believer. A believer in CE and we can't wait to go back. March can't come soon enough.

Loving this life

Just read this awesome post over at Hopeful Parents.

And had to share it with you in case you missed it.

My favourite line..."threw away the old recipe for happiness and wrote my own..."

Are you loving THIS life?

Happy Boxing Day!!

Happy Boxing Day everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with your families. We certainly did. I wanted to share this photo with all of you. Ben has gotten more and more agile with his walker over the last few months. He likes to "jump" where he lifts his feet off the floor by using his arms on the walker. Well...this has now escalated to him lifting himself up onto his walker so that he can now sit on the back of it. He figured this out at our annual Christmas Eve party with my cousin Scott egging him on. And then of course, my cousin would push him around while he was sitting on the back of it. It was truly fantastic! All of Ben's cousins wanted a walker too so they could be as cool as Ben.

It was truly a magical night. It was the first time that most of my extended family saw Ben as a true 3-year-old...upright and walking. Instead of sitting and crawling. It was really crowded and he wasn't able to use his walker the whole evening but for the parts of it when he could, it really paid off.

We are awaiting a major snowstorn here in New Brunswick, Canada...supposed to arrive overnight. Lots of the white stuff (yeah!) and wind too. So we won't be going anywhere tomorrow....so more time playing with all our new toys that we got from Santa.

If the weather if affecting any of you out there, please don't go out on those roads. Stay home with your families where it's safe.

Happy Boxing Day!

Christmas is once again upon us

Hi everyone. I hope you are all managing to enjoy these last days leading up to Christmas. I haven't been blogging at all (although I am reading your blogs) as I've just been so busy. Above is our family Christmas photo (and more follow below) done by Megan McKinley Photography.

Since we got back from our week in Halifax doing Conductive Education, we've been busy getting ready for Christmas, going to preschool, PT appointments, etc. There is more botox in Ben's future...we're currently on the waiting list so hopefully we'll get that done sometime in January.

We're going to do another week of Conductive Ed during the 1st week of January. Again, it will be with Sarah, Ben's classmate from the last session.

We're also going to be heading to Ontario for a weekend in January for my husband's grandmother's 90th birthday party. We decided that the best gift we could give her would be to make the trip with the boys for her big party.

I feel like Ben is making good progress these days. He uses his walker constantly. Even inside the house now. We even borrowed a lighter weight walker from the hospital to use over the holidays as Ben's "inside walker" so we can take it with us when we visit family and friends over the holidays. He is getting better and better using it. He "runs" and "jumps" and even falls backwards on purpose just for fun.

We're working on giving up the afternoon nap. We're trying a 3-day-a-week nap schedule. So it's been interesting around here. Lots of crankiness at suppertime on those days when they don't nap. But they are going down at nighttime so much better and sleeping later in the morning which is great.

Christmas will be a busy and fun time for us. My sister will be home from Calgary for about 9 days which will be wonderful. The boys seem to think that she's always on an airplane when she's not here with us and they're getting excited to see her. There will be lots of family events to attend. A huge one on Christmas Eve and smaller ones on Christmas Day. We'll go and stay a night with my brother's family. And we've decided to host a "New Year's Day Recovery Party" this year. Hopefully it's a success and will be the first one of many.

Christmas feels very magical this year. The boys understand it and love all the decorations and lights. It's amazing seeing Christmas through their eyes.

I probably won't post much over the holidays but you never know. In case I don't post again before Christmas, Merry Christmas everyone! Enjoy your families. Enjoy your kids...they'll only be this age once and experience Christmas this way once.

I'm not quite sure what's so funny here...

Showing off the gingerbread men they made at preschool

Daniel helping Ben with his tie

Cuddles which quickly turn into wresting matches these days.

And my favourite...this boy is so amazing!