maggie is getting really close to crawling

she can scoot around on her tummy in any direction except forward. she's very very close to getting herself into a sit, too. she's excited to work on her skills, so every time i pick her up she tries to dive back to the floor. she can be awfully hard to hang on to!

on thursday maggie had another physical therapy appointment, and it was not as good as i had hoped. apparently, when the craniofacial specialist told me to "keep up the PT for a year, and keep doing what you're doing with positioning" what he meant was, "i'm sending a letter to your PT, i want this girl in physical therapy for at least a year." aida told me on thursday that the craniofacial guy sent a letter saying he still felt tightness in maggie, and that she needed to be in physical therapy more often again.

well, so it goes. we'd gotten a 2 month break, so that was good. but aida says babies with torticollis need PT to crawl regularly, because their tight back muscles make them reluctant to put both knees on the ground. she said that since maggie's back is tight on one side, it'll pull to much to put both knees on the ground, so she would crawl with one foot on the ground and one knee, if you can envision that. over christmas she was starting to go into a crawl but leaving one leg in front of her, so it looked like all she had to do was figure out how to move that leg out of her way, and then crawl. but according to aida, it's not that she hasn't figured out how to get her leg out of the way, it's that it pulls too much on her tight muscles so she doesn't want to do that. aida's always commenting on what a smart baby maggie is, and how she avoids stretching her tight muscles when she does things. which in the long run works against her, since she needs to loosen the muscles.

i'll try to take a video of maggie doing some stretching, in case anyone is interested in seeing what we do, and how the torticollis has affected maggie's range of motion. i noticed the other day that it's really noticable when she's on her stomach and tries to look to her right.

oh oops, i hit publish and forgot to write about the other thing that aida said. she said that maggie has some low tone in her muscles, and has since she first saw her. i didn't think maggie had low tone, and the pediatrician never said anything, so i don't think it's anything serious enough that anyone but a PT would notice it. i asked her why she thinks she has low tone, and aida looked at me and said she thinks it's probably genetic. hm! in my day we just called it delicate.