I’ve never tried pilates, yet Connor possesses two pilates balls. In fact, if you inspect the portion of the house that contains his things (and by that, I mean every square inch of the house) you will see many strange looking items. This us because of his physical therapy that he receives via the state of Georgia’s Babies Can’t Wait program. Babies born with certain medical conditions that have the possibility of delaying their development automatically qualify for this program, regardless of the family income level. It means that a physical therapist comes to your home to make sure your child meets their development goals, and if they are behind, try to catch them up. Connor automatically qualified at birth due to having epilepsy caused by his TSC. Although he does have some slight motor delays from the pre-surgery seizures and five weeks in a NICU bed, she has no doubt he will do everything. Basically she comes in with new techniques to help him achieve each milestone more quickly than if left to his own devices, shows us what to do, and we continue the method on the days she doesn’t come. This has led to the proliferation of some weird things littering our living room, something my OCD husband has handled very well thus far. Some are on loan. Some we purchased. Others involved trips to Home Depot and some sweat equity.

It’s a really good thing he mastered this head control thing because it meant tummy time went from this:

To this (with nose skin intact):

The therapist suggested having a mirror by him because it would motivate him and make him more aware. He absolutely lights up at the sight of himself. No self-esteem issues here.

Sherri, the therapist, has also helped us modify some of his toys so he could use them before he was quite ready. He couldn’t touch the floor in his jumperoo so we brought the floor to him, and because he was still building core strength, we rolled a blanket to place behind him to keep him steady.

He no longer needs the modifications and now he looks like this, although he would like to point out that if I would remove his slippery socks he could do much better. Of course, it was pretty cute when he first started and looked like this.

We’re currently working on mastering sitting independently. He can for short periods of time, but needs to work on sitting a little more erectly. But he needs less and less support as time goes on.

Sitting in his corner chair (on loan from therapist) because it requires him to do more work than the Bumbo.

The Boppy pillow also provides him support that will allow him to maintain a sitting position longer.

He finally started using a regular high chair on Thanksgiving.

This is one of our Home Depot projects. It’s a bolster we use to help him with crawling trechniques, and transitioning from crawling to sitting. Thanks to fancy, overpriced duct tape I was able to give it a race car theme.

And finally, here he is doing “pilates.” We’ve used two different sized balls to help him with head lifting, sitting, and leg reflexes. I also tried using it as a chair while watching Judge Judy. I have not pursued pilates beyond that.

There is still one corner in the house reserved for Mommy’s therapy:

We hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving!