Spring is in the air!

I love the spring as it means summer is on the way!  But I do not like the allergies that come along with spring!  And I DO NOT like the cold weather that is coming this weekend.  What a tease we had last week!

Anna Cate loves the warm weather as she loves to be outside.  It doesn’t matter what she is doing; playing soccer, swimming, going for a walk, sitting on the porch listening to Jack Johnson, you name it, she just loves to be outside.  Spring is also a busy time for Anna Cate extracurricular wise….she will start hippotherapy on Tuesday (finally found a barn with both an indoor and outdoor ring), soccer starts this Saturday, and she swims on Fridays (luckily the pool is indoors until we switch to outdoors).  Seeing Anna Cate participate in all these sports makes her so happy and puts a huge smile on her face.  As it does mine and anyone who watches the joy that it brings to her!

Watching her grow year after year in these areas amazes me and makes me so proud of her.  She works so hard every day in school that sometimes I forget that while she is doing something fun and enjoying herself, it is also therapy/work.  Last year when she started soccer, she needed to be lead by someone holding her hand to dribble the ball down the field to score.  By the end of the season, she was dribbling BY HERSELF down to the goal!  This was not only thanks to the hard work of Anna Cate, but the repition of Will being her biggest fan out on the field!  Now when we play in the back yard, the child who ALWAYS wanted to go on the swings NOW wants to play soccer!!!!  And at school this new skill is HUGE!  She asks with her device if a child wants to play with her and then when they are playing she tells them to “kick it to me”!  And they have been “programmed” by Amy, not to kick the ball to Anna Cate unless she tells them with her “voice”!  It is so incredible to see her being able to PLAY with her peers!  And she LOVES it!  I can’t wait to see what soccer season is going to bring this year.  Go little Mia Hamm!

POOL!  POOL!  POOL!  This is what I hear from Anna Cate every Friday when I pick her up from school.  She would swim every day if we let her (and lucky for her in the summer she does!).  Since we have been doing aquatic therapy she has gone from drinking the pool water and just floating (so to speak), to now swimming “Anna Cate style” in her aqua jogger and will release her hands to use them to swim!  Getting her to “swim” like her peers on her stomach is the ultimate goal, even with the aqua jogger, and we are getting there!!!  This past Friday there was another child who was at the pool swimming and she and Anna Cate were the only two in the pool.  I did not talk to the mother, but I could tell from the child’s actions that she wanted to play with Anna Cate, but knew Anna Cate was different.  So what she did was start swimming on the side of Anna Cate across the pool with her up and back.  Something so little was HUGE for AC.  She loved having this interaction from a typical peer and it helped her swim!  I am always amazed at children and how they just “do” without question sometimes!  This little girl made me so proud that day!

I am very excited to see Anna Cate on a horse again on Tuesday as the last time she went to ride, she looked at the horse and said, “Go”!  She loves riding, especially when she gets to trot.  She loves for you to watch her when she goes trotting by.  For her the biggest challenge is not her posture on the horse, but holding onto the reins.  This girl has unbelievable upper body strength (wish my abs looked like hers!) and can ride around on a horse still wringing her hands!  Everyone caught onto this, so in order for the horse to “go”, she had to stop wringing and hold on….and she learned….slowly, but nonetheless, she got the idea.  It has been about 6 months since she was last on a horse, so I know there will be an adjustment phase; however, she is going to be so excited to get back on, that hopefully it will not last long.  And if it does, then it will be an easy mountain to climb!

There is nothing like seeing Anna Cate smile and hearing her laughter.  I will do whatever I have to, to make her happy even if it means driving her from one side of town to the other.  If she is happy, then I am happy!