In Which Connor Goes For A Ride

Today was a fantastic start to our Spring Break!  Though the forecast was originally for rain, the day dawned mild and beautifully sunny.  We decided that it was the perfect day to have Connor's tricycle make it's official debut outdoors!

Connor started getting excited when I put his helmet on to adjust the fit (he's grown quite a bit!) before we got in the car and drove to the park.  When I took it back off again for the drive he got kind of ticked-- he wanted on his trike now.  It's great to see him so fired up about a family activity!

Jer's taken most of this week off, though we had to cancel our visit to Canada because there are a few work-related things keeping him close to home right now.  He'll be home most of the week though, and I'm already really enjoying having so much family time.  Because Jer was coming to the park too, I got to strap on my outdoor skates and while Jeremy slowly guided Connor up and down Bradley Park's gentle hills, I zoomed around and got a great skating workout in-- my first outdoor skating session of the season!  Every once in a while I'd skate up alongside of them, flip around and go backwards in front of Connor, who thought this was pretty funny.

The park was absolutely packed, and we weren't the only ones out putting new adaptive equipment through its paces.  While we were sitting on a park bench letting Connor take a break (to his adamant protests-- that kid will ride his trike until he positively droops in the seat) a little guy in a new walker came by with his mom.  He was about Connor's age and obviously enjoying the walk and the lovely weather.  His mom and I chatted a bit and ended up exchanging phone numbers with the plane to set up a play date between the kids at some point.  Turns out they live really close to us.

Have I mentioned just how much I love this town?

Anyway, Connor had an absolute blast and completely wore himself out.  He's still not able to push the pedals down all the way by himself, but he still got quite the workout from all the effort he put into it.  He also played with a branch of pine needles.  Pine needles-- can you believe it?  Even I don't want to touch those things!  Not only did he happily pat the branch with his right hand, but he felt it with his left too.  It was pretty fantastic.  I think that the trike was giving him enough grounding and calming sensory input that he felt comfortable exploring things with his hands.  Of course he still won't hold the handlebars, but we'll keep working on that.

So all in all it was a great kickoff to what promises to be a fun-filled vacation.  Here's to sunny days!

~Jess

In Which Connor Rides His Tricycle And The Day Goes Downhill

Connor's day started out pretty well; he and I slept in while Jeremy drove down to one of the local coffee shops and brought home breakfast.  I only have the best husband in the history of everything.

Anyway, Connor had a birthday party to go to in the afternoon so we figured we'd get his therapy finished early.  Jer and I strapped him in and he rode around on the tricycle in the house for the first time.  We need to get him a new helmet before we try out the trike outside (and besides, it was raining to beat the band today) but we figured he wasn't going to roll down any really fast hills inside so it was okay to try it out anyway.

Connor loves it.

Right now he doesn't have the muscle strength to make the bike move forward all by himself, but if you give him a little help at the top of each pedal's cycle he's able to push them down the rest of the way.  So we made very, very slow progress around the living room and hallway.  He won't touch the handlebars yet, which we pretty much expected, but it was exciting to see just how hard he was concentrating on pushing the pedals down and making it go! 

The tricycle wore him out much faster than we expected-- he only spent about five minutes on it before he was drooping in his seat.  We took him out even though he protested and he promptly went to sleep on one of our library chairs.  Jer took off for the gym, and our plan was to leave for the birthday party when he got back.  The little guy woke up about half an hour after he went down, had a small seizure, and promptly went back to sleep and slept until just before Jer got home.  He seemed to be feeling a bit down, but we thought it was because he'd worked so hard on his trike.  We packed up and left for the party.

We hadn't been on the road more than five minutes when Connor had a big seizure-- the kind where we have to pull over because he was turning blue in his chair.  He hasn't had a seizure that big in the car in several months.  Jer turned into an access road and we hopped out and lay Connor down on the van floor, where as soon as the seizure was over he fell asleep.  Obviously the birthday party was out of the question, so we turned around and headed home. 

As we were getting ready to put him down in bed I noticed his cheeks felt awfully warm.  Sure enough, the little guy was running a fever.  Guess who's sick again?  We gave him some Tylenol and he spent the rest of the afternoon asleep.  I hope he's feeling better tomorrow after some good rest-- especially since he just got over a bug. 

Being sick is no fun!

~Jess

In Which Connor Gets Some New Wheels!

We picked up Connor's new tricycle today! 

For those of you interested in specifics, it's the small Rifton Adaptive Tricycle in a lovely shade of blue.  I forgot to bring my camera with me, so sadly I don't have any pictures of him trying it out for the first time.  I couldn't recreate it later in the day, either, because he was so worn out from seizures (he had just one today, thankfully), school and the bike that he fell asleep in car on the way home.  Oh well.

While I'm sorry that I didn't catch his first ride on the bike, I think it's going to be fantastic for him!  Everything is set on the shortest or tightest position and the bike can accommodate a child who weighs up to 150 pounds, so he's got a lot of growing room. 

When they brought the trike out for him, he applauded-- that's how excited he was about having a trike to ride again after having long outgrown his other one.  Obviously he remembers those rides and is really excited about having some wheels again.  My only regret is that we didn't get him this one sooner! 

He wasn't able to move the bike himself in the pharmacy as we were on a rug that gave a little too much resistance, but he was trying so hard to push the pedals that his legs were shaking.  He's super motivated to make it go!  We'll play with it indoors until the next sunny day, and then I'm going to take it down to Bradley Park.  There are a couple of really gentle slopes along the trail, and I think that with that extra help he might be able to get the bike moving himself.  I'm hoping this will be a fantastic way to build his muscle strength and give him a way to be just like all the other kids at the playground. 

Hooray for new adventures!

~Jess

In Which Jer And I Go On A Date

What a great day we had today!

While Joanna and Connor hung out and Jake worked on the deck, Jeremy and I took off for a date!  First we headed to lunch, which we ate at our favorite Greek place.  Then we walked around for a bit and grabbed some coffee before sauntering over to the movie theater, where we saw Inception.  Awesome movie, by the way-- totally worth seeing.

After that we went home, where we discovered that Jake had almost completed the ramp up to the deck!  I'll take some pictures tomorrow so you all can see; things are really starting to be fleshed out.  Jer and I changed clothes and took off with our bikes in the wheelchair van (which is good for more than just wheelchairs) towards the Interurban Trail, which is a lovely bike ride on mostly flat terrain.  We didn't do the whole trail-- about a twenty mile loop of it-- but that was more than enough, given that it was 88 degrees outside.  I practically bathed in sunblock before we went out; as I will burn in about five minutes in that kind of weather.  All those years of living in Texas did nothing to help build my immunity to sunlight.  Oh well. 

I can at least be satisfied that I am now not the fairest-skinned person in the house anymore; Connor has achieved near-vampire status in his dislike of hot, sunny weather.  Because for some mysterious reason he doesn't sweat (really-- this is not an exaggeration!) and two medications he's taking could potentially make him photosensitive, we generally keep him out of the sun.  He has a tendency to overheat extremely quickly.  Today apparently he spent most of his time in just a diaper, because having clothes on was making him overheat in the house.  I get the impression that Connor would be perfectly happy if we skipped summer all together and went straight into fall.

But Jeremy and I enjoyed ourselves even if it was (for this area anyway) eight billion degrees outside.  When our ride was over we stopped by a fast food place, which we almost never do but were in the mood for today, and instead of the grilled chicken wrap I ordered the place screwed up and brought me a bacon cheeseburger, which I happily ate.  Because my intentions were good, and I didn't actually order the cheeseburger, I'm relatively sure the calories don't count.  That's how calories work, right?

At any rate, it was a yummy ending to a pretty awesome day!

~Jess

In Which I Get My Birthday Present Way Early

Okay, so I lied.  Pictures tomorrow of the bulletin board-- I forgot to take any before Jeremy and I left on our date.  Whoops.  But in my defense I was excited about the date, because I knew I was probably going to end up with my birthday present from Jeremy a month early.  So sorry about that.

Anyway, we've been doing a lot of cycling on dates recently, but we've had to stick to only one trail-- the one right next to the bicycle rental shop-- because I didn't actually own a bike.  So today we went down to the shop, which sells and repairs bikes in addition to renting them, and I got to walk out with a shiny new bicycle of my very own!  It's a hybrid, and by far the most sophisticated bike I've ever ridden, by which I mean it has actual gears (24 of them!) and everything.  I have yet to get any of the bike gear, other than the helmet and the little pouch that straps onto the bike and holds my repair kit and wallet and whatnot, but I'm sure that will come in time.  Biking has a ton of accessories, it seems, and if we're going to be doing it a lot I'm probably going to want a few of them.  Like some of those crazy bike pants-- you know, the ones with the chamois, or as I like to call it, the bubble butt.  For today I just borrowed some of Jeremy's and went in a regular workout top.

Okay, and just so you know, those bike shorts feel really weird. 

Anyway, we took our bikes down the usual trail today, but we have big plans for hitting other trails in the area on future dates.  I think the next trail we'll probably tackle will be something on Vashon Island-- we've never been there and I've heard it's a good lazy-summer-day sort of place!  Except for all the Giant Hills of Death, of course.  Maybe we'll try something, um, flatter for our next summer day and work up to Vashon.

It's really nice to have an activity that Jeremy and I both enjoy to do on our dates-- other than the usual bookstore and coffee shop thing.  And yes, of course we did that too-- do you even have to ask?  We're tossing around the idea of getting Connor one of those little kid trailers so we can take him with us, but we're a little worried about how we'd keep an eye on him while he's inside-- I have a hard enough time balancing on the bike while I'm looking forward, let alone using one of those helmet rear view mirrors!  So we'll see what we come up with.

In the meantime, Jer and I will enjoy hitting the trails-- just the two of us.  An early "happy birthday" to me!

~Jess