Saturday, May 31, 2008

floppy

You know you have a child with hypertonic cerebral palsy when:

You're asked to babysit your friend's twins, and it takes you 10 minutes to change each of them into their pajamas because you take 1 minute to get business done, and 9 flopping their legs around like wet noodles. This brought great delight to Katherine, who giggled the whole time we (yes, Drew joined the fun) were tossing her legs all over the place and eventually moved up to her arms. I believe at one point, we made her do the "YMCA" dance. Claire was not so amused, preferring to shoot us a look that said "You're the schmucks my mom chose to leave us with?" Except Claire would never end a sentence with a preposition. I did force a giggle out of her when I just took her legs and started flailing them all the while making a helicopter noise.

Ace's legs don't flop. It'd be like trying to make a refrigerated stick of butter flop around. After a full day's worth of muscle relaxers, they're a bit more like fishing poles, but they still can't be used to make helicopter noises.

3 comments:

Katy said...

We're more hypotonic, so I stare in amazement at tiny babies who can do things that Charlie is still building up the strength to do.

Stacey said...

I'd maybe have to helicopter him too.

EAB said...

Heh -- it was interesting to babysit Ace the next night, and see the difference myself.

What he lacks in helicopter noises, though, he makes up for in "Hiiii Buddy"! SO cute.