10 months and helmet comes off!

Ainsley was 10 months old on Thursday.  (I'm a few days late!) 

10 months

She doesn't understand why she can't crawl off!

Get me outta here!!!

Rita and I went shopping on Thursday, so Joel had to pay Mr. Mom.  He took Ainsley to Lisa's and picked  her up in time to get her to her appointment at the doctor's office for her second dose of the flu shot.  He said she cried more getting her coat on than she did for the shot.  She HATES getting her coat on.  Well, she's actually going through a stage right now where she doesn't like getting her diaper changed, clothes put on, or hat and coat put on.  When you lay her on her back to change her diaper, she immediately throws her body and starts screaming.  She'll roll over to her belly and start crawling away from you as fast as she can.  After her bath and before putting her pajamas on, I usually let her crawl around naked for a while before the fight of getting her dressed starts.  Joel wasn't too happy with me last night when there was a big wet spot on her bedroom floor where she peed because I let her crawl around naked.  Oh well, life goes on.

She likes PLAYING with her diaper, and that's the only thing she likes about diapers!

Anyone know a place that sells bras for babies?!?! (She's going to LOVE me one day!)

Last Sunday, we went to Aunt Doris's for Thanksgiving.  Ainsley ate some more table food, including some chocolate pudding, which she loved!  After that, she crashed.

Uncle Thomas feeding her chocolate pudding

We finished decorating the Christmas tree when we got home.  Ainsley liked playing with the decorations and had glitter everywhere! She doesn't care for the tree too much.  It's down in the basement, so she's not around it every day, but she could care less that it's there.  I tried getting her picture in front of it, but pictures are hard to get these days!

This is how all of the pictures turned out...with a baby on the move!

We had our second physical therapy appointment on Tuesday.  The physical therapist saw much improvement over the last week.  We don't have to go back for three weeks now because of how good Ainsley is progressing.  We still need to work on getting her to pull up and open her left hand, but she has the crawling thing down.  I had to laugh because near the end of the appointment, the physical therapist said how Ainsley's personality is really showing.  She described her as a baby that likes to sit back and observe and not really get in the middle of things.  That's Ainsley!

Physical therapy

After her physical therapy appointment, we headed over to Hanger Orthotics for her helmet appointment.  We had another scan done and the results weren't what we'd hoped for.  There wasn't much improvement over the last six weeks.  We knew the improvement would start to slow down as Ainsley got older, but the CI only went down by 1% and the CVA only went down by 0.2mm.  The Orthotist said that because Ainsley is now 10 months, her plates will start fusing together and it's harder to see improvement now.  The Orthotist thought we'd be able to see more improvement after using the helmet than we did, but we had a lot of things going against us.  The main issue was the new helmet.  We had to get the special foam put in Ainsley's new helmet because she had the allergic reaction to the other one, and the special foam is softer than the normal foam they use.  The softer foam causes the head to change at a slower pace.  We also had to go without a helmet near the beginning for a week or so while the new helmet was ordered.  I'm convinced that if we would have got Ainsley in a helmet when she was 4-5 months old, we would have seen a much better outcome. 

We could have continued with the helmet, but because Ainsley's at the 10 month mark and progress will now become very slow, so we made the decision to go ahead and take it off.  Because there wasn't much progress over the last six weeks, the Orthotist said that we may get 1mm of improvement over the next six weeks, but it would be so small that only the scan would be able to pick it up and you wouldn't be able to tell looking at her.  Her head will naturally elongate on its own and we felt it wasn't worth it to leave it on if we'd only get a slight, if any, improvement. 

I do have to say that is seems like Ainsley is a much happier baby without the helmet.  I'm going to miss having the extra layer of "protection" on my baby's head.   Each time she gets near a corner, I worry that she's going to hit her head now.  She's fallen while sitting up a few times without the helmet, and we haven't had any knots on her head yet.  I'm sure they'll come with time.  It also seems like Ainsley is cuddling more.  The helmet would hurt your collar bone or shoulder any time Ainsley would try to cuddle with you, and now she just buries her little head right into your chest and lays there.  It's so nice to be able to kiss and cuddle with my baby again! 

She fell asleep for the first time in the highchair last week

I love her chubby little hands!

Joel's birthday was Monday and after Ainsley and I got home from Springfield, we headed over to The Approach to celebrate.  Ainsley's really into Joel right now and will follow him around the house.  When he walks into the room, she lights up and will crawl over to him.  Ainsley and Daddy have their own "handshake" and Ainsley will crack the biggest smile when they do it.  I'm so glad that Ainsley has such a great guy to call Daddy!

Ainsley and Daddy celebrating his birthday

Lazy day at the Freeman house