Thursday is PT day. We spent a lot of time working on the stages that Imogene needs to go through to get from sitting up to laying down on her tummy. You forget how naturally these things just occur until they don't occur naturally! Basically Imogene needs to learn to put her arms out to 'brace' herself as she goes down to the ground. Right now she just falls over to the side or backward. As PT Susan calls it, she 'crashes and rolls.' PT works in long-term, 12 months from now, and short-term, six months from now, goals. One of her goals (officially long-term but we'll hope for short-term) for Imogene is to be able to bear weight on all four limbs so that she can go from sitting to quadruped (think of a table, or for babies, how you crawl). So we worked on helping her begin to bear weight on the right arm as well as the left. Imogene pulled her left leg up a good bit on her own to get into that position, which was great. PT is both rejuvenating and overwhelming at the same time. I really enjoy getting to have an 'action-item' for Imogene's care, but at the same time, it's in PT that I realize her current limitations the most, I imagine because they appear much more obvious. This is hard to explain, and I'm not really doing the emotion I'm feeling justice. Maybe it's just more 'in my face' at PT. But I'm so thankful for it, and so happy to have things to do to help our baby girl.


This afternoon, bless her, our 'mother's helper' Maggie was here. Maggie is every mother's dream for her child to be around; polite, outgoing, and very good with children. She is an excellent role model, even for someone who doesn't know what a role model is! Maggie is in 6th grade and comes over once a week for a couple of hours to play with Lily and sometimes help me as I run errands with both Lily and Imogene in tow. Lily adores her, and so do I. Another gracious gift in our lives thanks to Westminster Presbyterian!


Lily told me today "Mom, you should change your shirt. I really don't like that green."

Things have been less than pleasant with Lily at times lately. She is having a lot of temper tantrums and meltdowns. Other times she is really pleasant and our same old happy Lily, calling Imogene 'sweetheart' and being helpful and fun and silly and just how she always was. Last year she loved ballet class and had a blast at the "Ballet in the Grass" summer camp. Three times in the last two weeks she has bawled her eyes out during class, even with two of her best buddies in the class. So we're giving up on ballet class for a while. It breaks my heart because I know she loves it once it gets going, but she just can't stop crying to enjoy it. School is going well, thank goodness. She is very happy to be there and is already excited about "going next week for 4 days." This is actually next year, when she'll go 4 or 5 days a week, but sweet thing is trying to grow into one of the "big girls" too fast!

While we were doing Imogene's bedtime tonight out of the blue she said, with her hands in prayer, "Thank you God for Imogene's eating. Thank you God for Imogene's sleeping." She said her friend Emily at school told her to do that. (The irony of her praying and giving thanks for two of Imogene's bigger struggles is not lost on us!) And then later she said to me, "I really love my baby sister Imogene." There's my girl.

For those of you in the area, I invite you to join the Sigler family on November 7 for the BA5K, a race which is held by our friends from WPC, Lindsay and Stephen Moss. They hold the race to benefit the Sydney Moss Fund established to support biliary atresia (BA) research at the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Liver Center. Sydney is Lindsay and Stephen's absolutely beautiful daughter, who will be 2 in December. Sydney was diagnosed with BA just a few weeks after she was born. Not much is known about BA, a rare and serious liver disease that affects newborns, and the only "cure" lies in a liver transplant. We hope you'll be able to join us on the 7th. For more information, visit http://www.ba5k.org/. Thanks!