A Gymnist In Training

Today we were about to leave for a trip to the mall when I went in my bedroom to get Victoria and place her in her car seat. I noticed she was doing a full-on split by holding her socks with her hands. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen! The girl has it going on with flexibility!

If you know anything about Down Syndrome babies, you know they have low muscle tone. In case you don't know exactly what that means, here is a quote I copied in from www.babycenter.com.

"A child is said to have low muscle tone — hypotonia — if his muscles are on the loose, floppy side. You may find it unusually easy to move your child's arms and legs when they are relaxed, or that he seems to slip through your arms when you pick him up."

Because Victoria is "floppy," she sees a physical therapist every few weeks. The therapist teaches me things I can do with Victoria that will help her get physically "fit." She is now 6 months old and still cannot sit up and even has trouble rolling back over once she has made it onto her tummy. She has trouble holding her head up while on her tummy, but is definitely getting better with her head control when I hold her up. She will be behind in doing a lot of things physically, but we are working hard on improving from day to day.

In the meantime, I thought you would get a kick out of the photo of her split!

Today, I also put her in her exersaucer for the first time. She is so small that I had to wrap a towel around her. It was great exercise not only for her physically, but also for her eyes. She sees a vision specialist also, by the way. She did a great job, but did tire quickly. Here is a video of her in the exersaucer.

Continue to pray for her muscle-tone development. Ask God to give her extra strength to keep herself moving to make great big muscles in her body!