Leah's new exercise regiment

We have worked with Leah, according to OT instructions, to get her core muscle strength up, and now she can sit all by herself! The next area we are working on is her arm strength, her ability to push herself up to a sitting position from laying on the ground, eventually pull herself up to a standing position, or to catch herself if she starts to fall over. After the OT showed us the exercises she wanted us to do with Leah, here was Leah's response...

"You want me to do what?"

To work on her arm strength, we will lean Leah over and put her arm down, so that she will have to hold herself up with her arm strength. But, before we get to that point, we need Leah to first be aware of the ground around her. So, we are just putting her hands on the ground around her while she sits up. Leah does not like this kind of exercising, though. This morning, every time Stephen would touch her hands, she would start to cry. I was trying to think of a way to make it more tolerable, so I put her toys all around her, so that anywhere she reached, she would grab a toy. She had fun playing her piano and a couple of times she even leaned both arms over to try and play it. She was exercising and didn't even know it!

Playing the piano, notice toys in a ring around her.

And, just because she's so cute, here's Leah in her shark towel.