Update on new legs, x rays, and starting school

It has been a while since I have written and I'm pretty sure she has had 3 legs since I last posted. She got an Eiffel Tower leg, a Tinkerbell leg, and now has a butterfly leg. As you can see by the next few pictures, she really wears out her legs! She was missing the big toe on her foot for about 2 months before we finally got her new leg.

 

 Here she is getting casted for her new leg:

She decorated it like a watermelon.:)

 

This was her most recent x-ray. Her prosthetic was pretty short on her and so that is why it has the 2 cm lift under it. As you can see by the x-ray, her knock knee is slowly getting worse. They are watching it and don't want to do the 8-plate surgery until they have to.They will wait until it starts hurting or until it gets so knock kneed that they have trouble fitting a prosthetic on her.. The longer they can wait, the better because then there is less of a likelihood of having to do the surgery twice.

  

There was a mix-up with the fabrics for her new leg. We brought a Hawaiian style fabric in for her new leg, but when we got there her prosthetist said that her leg fabric got mixed up! Luckily it was mixed up with a pink sparkly butterfly fabric or I think we might have had a very sad little girl on our hands! She was pretty excited about her new butterfly leg! She has now had that leg for 2 months and it;s been a good one so far. We went in once to have a little adjustment done because the inside of her knee was being rubbed raw. The prosthetist just adjusted it a little and it's been great ever since.

 

 

Sydney started 1st grade a few weeks ago as well! She's loving 1st grade and has done really well with it. The first day of first grade and Kindergarten I went in and gave a 5 minute presentation about her leg to all the little kids. I went in and basically explained that she has something different about her. She has a prosthetic that helps her walk just like how glasses can help kids to see and braces help kids teeth. All kids have things that make them different, and this is something that makes her different. I then passed around a couple of her old legs so the kids could touch and feel them, and then asked the kids if they had any questions. I feel this helped the kids get their questions and curiosity out and Sydney hasn't had problems with it so far in kindergarten and 1st grade.

This picture is my favorite! She wanted to show me how excited she was for 1st grade!😋

Sometime around Christmas last year, Sydney's prosthetist gave her the sweetest gift! He altered an American girl doll and put a prosthetic on it that matched her Eiffel Tower leg. It was the cutest thing and she really loves that doll!

Learning new things - kayaking, biking, swimming, tennis, gymastics, disneyland and the beach

Since it has been a year since my last post, I thought I would give an update on what she has been up to!

When we did the amputation we weren't sure how things would go for her, but she has really learned and grown so much and has proven just how much her amputation will not be slowing her down in life!

Sydney really loves gymnastics and is super determined!

The beam was a a little more tricky for her than the other students because she isn't able to move her ankle on her prosthetic foot to help balance. It took a littler longer to figure out, but she figured out her own way of doing it and got pretty good. This video was a little early on when she was still kind of struggling.

At the beginning of the summer we went to Disneyland. That was something I  was unsure about before going for our first time. I had heard that it could be difficult with a prosthetic, but we didnt have any problems. She's still only going on mostly kiddie rides, but she was able to do some of the bigger rides as well and no one batted an eye at her leg.

We also went to the beach twice this summer. She wore her leg all day at the beach. At the end of the day when she took her leg off she had LOTS of sand in it, but she didn't complain once about the sand bothering her.

Sydney had the opportunity to go paddle boarding and kayaking with Wasatch Adaptive Sports this summer and had a blast learning how to paddle board especially! Such a fun experience for her!

She also learned how to ride her bike without training wheels like a pro! We used a balance bike for a few days and within 1 or two tries, she had it down and was riding like a pro!

She also played tennis this summer and loved it!

Sydney and I attended a Big Little camp with Shriners this summer. It's where the patients with limb differences and past camp goers that are now grown get together for an all day camp! It was up at Snowbird and they had fishing and a hike and swimming etc. The kids had a blast! During it they took the kids to go fishing and the parents stayed back and they had a panel with some of the past camp members where they could answer your questions about how things have been for them now that they are older.  That was really great for me to be able to see some of the challenges that will probably come up but also see how great these kids are doing and what great people they have grown up to be!

Two of the "Big" camp members are current Paralympiads and are preparing for the next Olympics which is pretty cool! The young man in the picture below is on the U.S.A. Paralympic rugby team. It was a lot of fun for Sydney to interact with other kids that have limb differences, but I think it was especially cool for her to see these older kids that were just like her. She and I had so much fun!

 On the ski lift.

 On the alpine slide at Snowbird