Armed and Ready - show begins tonight, 2/26!

We wrote a post about Kevin Michael Connolly's book, Double Take, a while back. We really enjoyed reading it, and loved his outlook on life! Kevin was born without legs. He is a professional photographer and professional skier, and now stars in a new show that begins tonight called Armed and Ready. Watch it on The Travel Channel at 10/9C!

http://www.travelchannel.com/video/get-armed-and-ready

Today.

It's snowing here today, and its cold, and we're inside...because its snowing and cold, but also because a couple of us aren't feeling that well. It's been a nice day of schooling, movies, and baking cookies. It's also been a fun day to take pictures. I have to remember to take them often...time goes by so quickly! Here are a few from our day today.

This morning, Dillon tried blueberries. He didn't like them...but you can't tell from this picture! He was playing like crazy with those blueberries, and, well, the kid is always smiling for pictures these days!

This is a shot of my big boy, now six and a half. He just looks six and a half with all those teeth missing! The tooth fairy is going broke these days. Oh yeah, and he has a broken elbow. Poor kid. At least he has a cool cast...and I get to write a lot of his school assignments for him lately...I keep reminding him not to get used to that!

Then here's D playing with his giraffe toy. He's showing you how to use it in these pics.

Step one - pick up the red ball.

Step two - put red ball in twirly giraffe toy thing.

Watch it go through twirly loops and repeat. Super fun. For about three hours.

Hope you are having a great day today, too!

Where to store an arm?

Dillon got his prosthetic arm two weeks ago and its adorable. For those of you that don't know (as we didn't up until a couple of months ago), you can choose your fabric to put inside a prosthetic. That means that you can go to a fabric store, pick any fabric you like, and they will put it inside the prosthetic somehow (I really don't know how this works, to be honest). Well, we went and picked a Star Wars pattern. Yes we did. It's so cute - dark blue with Star Wars ships all over it (pics below). I guess we didn't really like the idea of a boring flesh colored arm...we wanted to give the kid's arm some "coolness." So, Star Wars it is. I figure he'll have a new one each year or twice a year, so once he's "into" something, we can change it to fit his personality. For this year, he's got a blue Star Wars one.

The prosthetic looks great, and for the most part, works well. The goal is that he'll be able to catch himself to help him sit up, and that he can use it for grasping with both "hands." I think he'll take very well to doing those things, and he seems quite happy with the prosthetic on when sitting. The difficulty and frustration comes upon crawling. He can crawl rather well now, and very fast. When you put his arm on, however, he can't. It's just too hard to get around his body when it doesn't bend. So, he gets frustrated. Thankfully, the doc said that if it brings frustration to just take it off. We want him to get used to it, not get frustrated each time its on.

The doc also said that to begin with, we should only put it on Dillon for about an hour a day. We'll then see how he tolerates/likes it, and can decide when he should wear it longer each day. So...he only wears the arm for an hour each day, which leads to the question, when he's not wearing it, where do we store it? Such a strange thing you never thought you'd have to think about...finding a place for an arm. Seems odd to put it in a drawer or in the pantry, or to just leave it out on the counter. For now it'll hang out by the kitchen desk. No reason, that just seems like the place it should go.

Dillon and the prosthetist (Dr. Terry at Hangar Clinic - we love him!) showing H the new arm.