Two Ws

Here are two Ws (not to be confused with W-2s) – water and writing.

Most congenital quads seem to have an added buoyancy in the water. I’m not sure why, maybe because their limbs don’t weight them down? Regardless, Ying loves the water and that’s loves with an extra tall capital L. In fact, two days after we met her, we all went swimming. After we got out of the water and were toweling off, we caught her scooting back to the edge of the pool. We let her go to see how far she was going to take it. It turns out she meant business and was all set to jump back in, luckily my husband has long arms. Since then we’ve kept a close eye on her because where there’s a will there’s a way!

We’re trying to get her signed up for swim lessons, but in the meantime, she’s been enjoying  floating and paddling in the water. She can’t wear arm swimmies or a life vest, but she does fit in this. (I think it may be this one, but it’s a little hard to tell given that my parents purchased this about four grandkids ago and it’s a tad faded.)

When it comes to writing, our OT presented us with a new option a few weeks ago. Initially Ying was using her her feet or chin/shoulder to write. She used the two pretty interchangeably and didn’t seem to show a preference for either one. But now that she’s starting school in the fall, we at least needed a starting place for the OTs.  Although she shows great dexterity with either her feet or chin/shoulder combo, the original plan was to start writing with the feet. The advantage of this was that she wouldn’t fatigue her already hardworking right arm. The disadvantage however was that her writing surface would need to be on a different level than her peers (with her sitting either on the table or on the floor).

As we began experimenting with different chairs and options, however the plan evolved. She is now going to start out using this. Our OT made the one she’s wearing in the picture but a similar model can be purchased here.

The upside of this is that it extends past her arm a few extra inches and she doesn’t have to hunch her neck and shoulders over the paper to use it. This means she can see and cover more of the paper with less physical exertion. So far she really likes it, so much so that she colored her shirt and lips a pale lavender last week.

While this adaptive device helps tremendously, it does have a few drawbacks. One being that while she can take it off herself, she can’t as of yet put it on. As a side note: we have the same issue with the U-cuff. The other down side to this, is that it’s hard to change out the pencil/marker in either this one or the commercially made one. This doesn’t seem like a big deal except that three-year-olds like to switch colors, like, all the time. Even with these drawbacks though, I’m really glad we have this option and I’m curious to see how her writing will develop.

So we’re getting our w&ws down, now we can work on r&r.