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 john -- May 5th, 2010Stella popped into the bedroom this morning while I was getting dressed for work. I think she made her point quite succinctly. Stella does her best Snoopy impersonation valerie -- January 31st, 2010Stella has been experimenting with walking on her own these past few weeks. She’s a bit wobbly as her feet still turn out fairly far but she’s working it. She walked across the kitchen and into the living room a few nights ago and she can be encouraged to walk…if we stand her up and let go. She still prefers “knee walking” (which is horror on her pants) and when she falls down from walking she’ll finish her journey on her knees instead of pushing herself back up to a standing position. Ah well. It’s still remarkable progress and I’m tickled by the sight of her hurdling forward, arms outstretched for balance, using those little feet of hers. We went to the park yesterday to soak in some late January sunshine before the rain returns. It was a family affair with John and myself, a rarity. Stella surprised both of us by walking all over the place. She’d walk, fall, knee walk to an object, pull herself up and throw herself out on her feet again. It was a sight. And she is, of course, looking at us and smiling the entire time. Look at me, I can do this now. She also learned how to slide down the toddler slide all by herself. I called her the “butterball express” as she swooshed down a giggles and shuffled (on her knees) back to the stairs to go down again. She was an amazing collection of energy and gross motor skills. In the hustle and rush of our daily lives, I need to remember to back off and give the girls time to explore. To try things out and to also remember that for them each day is so new. One day Stella wouldn’t walk. Now she’s stepping out. It’s amazing. john -- January 23rd, 2010This is Part 2 of a series on Stella’s head. Part 1 is here. We had an appointment Hanger Prosthetics. We had a lot of questions and were rather apprehensive about the doing this as the kids pediatrician really wasn’t very knowledgeable about the subject. One of the first things that Julia, our assigned Orthotist, did was to get a large pair of calipers and measure the asymmetry of Stella’s head. Two measurements were taken in an X orientation from from each temple to the oposing back-side of the head. The result was 13 mm difference, which was well above the threshold of “medical relevence” (8 mm, IIRC). It wasn’t the worst she’d seen which was in the high teens. The “good” news was that the severity was sufficient that insurance would pick up the bill. And, the bill was not cheep — list price for the whole procedure was about $2500! Regardless, we had committed to it and would have paid out of pocket if it came down to it. We made the commitment and proceeded to the next step: scanning her head. The scanning process uses an laser scanner to map the precise shape and size of Stella’s head in order to build the custom helmet. First, they put on a “sock” over her head. This served 2 purposes: kept the hair from showing up in the scan, and it allowed the positional reference transmitter/sensor to be affixed to her head without sticking in her hair.
Then they affixed the sensor gizmo which lets the scanner know where it is scanning relative to Stella’s head movement.
Then they darkened the room and scanned her head from top to bottom using about 10 swipes to get all the way around.
Below is a screen shot of what the scan looks like after they applied a smoothing algorithm to remove the small bumps. I missed the shot, but, prior to the smoothing, the raw scanner output was a very precise rendering of Stella’s face with her little dimples and details of the hook and loop layers used to hold the sensor gizmo to her head.
The blue lines scan are reference lines for where the top of her forehead is and an outline of where the ear holes need to be cut out. And that was it. Quick and easy, well, other than trying to get a baby to hold her head still! About 2 weeks later, the new helmet was ready. john -- November 8th, 2009If you ask Stella to play peak-a-boo, she gets a coy smile on her face, and happily starts the game. Peek-a-boo And she’ll wait for you to ask, “where’d Stella go?” Where’d Stella Go? And, the predictable response she gets after opening her hands starts of a fit of giggling that makes it easy to keep the game going for as long as she wants to play. There she is! john -- November 4th, 2009Stella has become quite the little ham in front of the camera. Maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with her Daddy being there too. Not that she isn’t equally fond of Mommy, but lately she’s been the most expressive in her excitement when I come home in the evenings. Her stranger anxiety is also abating as her personality blossoms and she realizes that the world is so much more interesting when she’s interacting with it rather than hiding from it. And, for the record, it wasn’t that I didn’t try to get equivalent shots of both Elise and Maia (because I really *did* try), but, they were just so busy doing their own things that they wouldn’t stand still and be adorable when I had the lens trained on them. Yeah, I’m cute
All smiles — Stella seams to have taken lessons from Elise.
Stella says “Hello!”
Happy pumpkin This is probably my favorite picture. Perhaps it’s my own projection of her actual sentiment, but, I can’t help but think she’d sure like to play with that big orange ball. If only it weren’t so darned immovable… Little help please? It’s too heavy to move by myself. valerie -- November 1st, 2009We did something today that I have been remiss in doing lately. We went to the park. My favorite park for little crawlers and just standers and the big sister that travels with them. It was a beautiful day for it. Sunshine, cool breeze, temperate weather. The time was right…after lunch so it was very quiet. The girls had a fantastic time. Elise and Stella both loved the swings. Elsie has been loving them, but this is a new development for Stella. Stella spent the entire time laughing her perfect baby laugh, laughing to the point where she gave herself the hiccups…which only made her laugh louder. After swings we went to the small child play area with a large sandy area that is partially shaded. There is a small climbing structure with a “Maia sized house” and slide. Maia loves the play structure and Stella and Elise enjoyed the sand, both giving a shovel a try. They then scooped sand and, wonder of wonders, put it into their small buckets and not into their mouths. Yay! Then it was teeter-totter time. This teeter-totter is really a cantilever type beam with a spring in the middle, so it bounces as opposed to moving the kids up and down in the air. Better for little ones. Elise loves to pull herself up by the seats and make the whole thing bounce and once she realized she could sit on the seat and bounce big time I had a hard time convincing her to do anything else. At one point she even tried to throw her little leg over the saddle herself, but the seat is still a bit high for her. Stella also enjoyed the bouncy teeter-totter, but not as much as she enjoyed the sand area and flirting with the other moms and grandmas. Stella was holding court with her bucket and shovel. She’d do peek-a-boo and then smile and look away and then laugh as the other women coo’d at her. She was just too cute, and we almost lost her to the grandma who just wanted to take her home. There were tears all around when we had to head out. I’m thinking that’s a good thing, in a way, because all the girls had such a good time playing. valerie -- October 19th, 2009True to form, Stella does things late but makes up for the timing with intensity. She’s gone form only having her two bottom teeth to pushing her top incisor a few weeks ago to her current state of having the rest of her top front teeth poking on through. That’s two front and one more incisor coming down the pipeline. Sheesh! No wonder she was a grumpy gal all of last week. valerie -- October 6th, 2009At our 12-month checkup last month, Dr. Rose expressed some concern that Elise was standing and Stella was not. She casually mentioned that if Stella wasn’t up on her feet we might want to consider some physical therapy. Enter Mommy panic mode. But after thinking about Stella and her general physical milestone attainment, John and I thought it best to wait it out. Stella is on her own schedule. She loves to be held, picked up, and is not very motivated to try new things unless she initiates it. We find she does hit gross motor milestones about a month to six weeks after Elise does. And when she hits them she masters them fairly quickly. So the other morning when Stella was just yelling her head off and we went to her room to investigate we shouldn’t have been surprised to see her standing in her crib complaining she couldn’t get down. That’s so Stella. And yesterday she pulled right up on our friends ottoman and just beamed with pride. And this morning she finally took to the kitchen step stool I keep out just so the girls can play on it, grabbing hold and lifting herself on to her feet with no fuss. Until she tried to get down and just, you know, let go. The dismount learning will be quicker than the pull-up learning was, I imagine. Welcome to the vertical world Stella dear. We are so glad to see you. valerie -- September 24th, 2009Stella is a snuggle baby and I love love love to kiss kiss kiss her. I love to kiss her under her chubby chin and on her sweet neck. And because I’m the mom I always make a big production out of it: making “muah” lip smack noises before I go in for the snuzzle kiss. This morning as I pulled a happy Stella from her crib she looked at me, went “muah” and hit me with a big lip-smacking-wet-baby-mouth kiss. Swoon. I love that happy girl. john -- September 8th, 2009A whole year old today, Stella! A milestone for both parents and children alike. You’re mommy made you a most delicious pumpkin spice cupcake for you to do with as you pleased after dinner. And, while you were very happy smashing it up at first, you quickly realized that the sticky gooey frosting did not, in fact, come off of your hands; at all. To which, you sat there and made the milk sign repeatedly with that frosting covered hand. Not that you were thirsty, no; I’d imagine that sticky sensation was something entirely new to experiment with and you had the most quizzical look on your face while doing so. And then, it was fun no longer. It made a lovely moose in your hair as you tried desperately to get some of the frosting off and wailed insistently with displeasure in that way that only you, dear Stella, know how to communicate to others your unhappiness. Props to ya kiddo — your mess required serious detergent to clean up all that butter cream. You have a future as a grease monkey helping your dear ole Da in the garage. Happy birthday, Stella! |
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