A new way to play

As I've been doing more on-line research on kids in spica casts, I've been quite amazed at the very creative ways parents have tried to keep their kids occupied. One mom, despite have seven (yes, 7!) children, makes custom tables that kids in spica casts can sit upright in, which provides them a play surface, and also rocks. Genius! I've read a lot of stories and seen videos of kids scooting and even walking in their casts, which is something our doctor strongly discouraged. It was amazing to see that walking was even possible, but I guess you should never underestimate the will of a toddler! One particularly funny video showed a 3-year old doing the "spica spin" - laying on the kitchen floor on his stomach spinning himself in circles. Made me dizzy just to watch!

Inspired by this information, a week or so ago we tried putting Zach on the kitchen floor to see what he thought, if he'd want to scoot around, etc. He wasn't so sure about it at first, and definitely wasn't interested in the spica spin. But he now loves playing on the kitchen floor. What are we playing? Occasionally we can get him to bowl, but mostly it's cars, of course! He can scoot himself around a little, and really enjoys a new way to zoom his cars around. Collisions seem to be his favorite new activity - crash!


Other than playing cars, we tried a new activity last week - a play. There's a theater that puts on children's shows in Hopkins (http://www.stagestheatre.org/), so I thought this was a good time to see what Zach thought of live theater. He was captivated by the singing and dancing... for a while anyway. The play was based on a book called "I Like Me," and while it had a great message - to love yourself and not worry about what others might think - there wasn't much of an actual story to follow. So after about 45 minutes of the hour-long show, Zach was done. I decided to call it a success, even though he told me later he didn't have any fun. Stinker.

In other random news, I wanted to share some recent funny stories about Zach and his memory. Several times, Zach has both amazed and made me laugh when he wakes up and immediately (seemingly before he's even fully awake!) talks about something we discussed right before he went to sleep. Saturday night, as I was putting Zach to bed, I said something to Scott about needing to put the clean sheets back on our bed. Zach asked me some questions about it - why we needed sheets, etc. The next morning, right after I asked him how he slept and rolled him over to change his diaper, he asked me if we'd put the sheets on the bed. It took me a while to even figure out what he was talking about, since "sheets" sounded more like "seeds," and I had totally forgotten about the conversation. But he sure hadn't!

Lately Zach has been protesting pretty vehemently about going to bed (just a new phase, or cast related??). When I put him down for his nap yesterday, he was telling me he didn't want to sleep, he wanted to play cars. I told him that after he got a good sleep that Daddy and I would play cars with him (again). When he woke up, he told me he was ready to play. I was carrying him downstairs, telling him that we needed to change his diaper first, and he said "Mama, you said when I woke up, Daddy, you, and me would play. Changing my diaper is NOT playing!!!" I shudder to think about the debates we'll have as this kid gets older!


Spica cast days completed: 25
Spica cast days remaining: 10