Behold…some video of Stacy in the water…during the lesson…with no crying!
Stacy has been wanting her own foot stool to stand on in the bathroom, so we told her if she didn’t cry we would buy her one. There was a nice pink princess footstool but Stacy insisted on the ‘Cars’ footstool:
I felt bad that all Stacy wanted was a crummy footstool, so I also got Stacy a Thomas the Train puzzle in a lunch pail container:
I hope Stacy doesn’t cry at this week’s lesson.
Whoa! Finally a break thru….Stacy had a swim class where she did not cry!
Stacy putting her head under the water:
Yay!
Now the hard part for Stacy…floating. When the water goes in her face…nose…mouth…she freaks out but not this time!
A good day at swim class deserves a donut!
All the Kindergartens in Jack’s school sang a song at the Spring Musical last week. Jack entering the cafeteria with Charmaine:
Jack played the part of the ‘wind’.
Room 4:
All the kids did well. I was surprised, none of the kids had stage fright and/or cried.
So far things have really been good between Jack and Stacy. Jack is very nice to Stacy whereas Stacy is not so nice to Jack. Hard to tell in these pictures as you would think Jack just bullies and squashes Stacy all the time…ROWRRR:
Head Smash #1:
Head Smash #2":
Let’s start off with the good news, Aunty Dawn came to swim class….YAY!
At least this week Stacy didn’t cry in the changing room:
And, that is the end of the good for Stacy. Once Stacy’s lesson started it was back to the crying:
At least this time, Stacy didn’t cry the entire lesson. She was a bit calmer but then she swallowed some water and then she started to cry again.
Jack started his lessons this week. First time Jack has been in the water since September when we started basketball on Saturdays. Jack’s new teacher is Daniel:
Pretty easy day for Jack. The teacher was just assessing Jack’s skills and going over freestyle with Jack. Hopefully the classes get better for Jack as the last class he was in it was pretty repetitive.
A bad news and good news week for me. The bad news was a week after the steroids, my knee did not improve much. In fact, it hardly showed any progress that the therapist said the surgeon is going to have to do a follow-up surgery if my knee does not get better in the next week or so.
Luckily for me, towards the end of the week my knee made a lot of progress. My extension got dramatically better and for the first time in 6 weeks the swelling was minimal. Hopefully the good progress continues this week.
Jack was invited to a classmates birthday at a Music center. They did some arts and crafts, learned some songs and learned a dance:
The girl Jack is dancing with is not the birthday girl, just a classmate. I give him credit. I don’t think I would have done that if that was me.
We had an impromptu scrimmage with the first grade basketball team that practices at the same time as us and Jack got into a minor scuffle going for a loose ball and hurt his shoulder.
We iced his shoulder down and he was as good as new. More importantly, we had a very good scrimmage against the 1st grade team. My team wasn’t scared and was up to the challenge. We lost the scrimmage but we hung in there and competed. I was very happy at well the boys played against an older and bigger team.
It had been a while since we have been able to see Uncle Su-chan and luckily he came out to visit us for dinner over the weekend:
The kids love to see Uncle and Jack had someone to play Wii with him:
Have I told you how much I dislike my surgeon? The reviews are great on the guy but he is a HORRIBLE people person. Every appointment he makes me wait and this time I waited for 1 hr and 45 minutes. Keep in mind that I had to leave work early to make the appointment and I also leave work early 3 times a week for physical therapy…so I was not happy that I had to wait AGAIN.
This time after waiting he looks at my knee for 1 minute…asks, “Who is your Physical Therapist?” I tell him and then he tells me to go downstairs to the PT center and wait. He wants to talk to my therapist and his boss.
So after I wait another 20 minutes, he comes down and he proceeds to yell at my PT’s boss in front of me and other patients and then yells at my PT guy saying my knee looks terrible and that my 5 week progress is not good at all. He then tells them to get rid of the crutches, brace and puts me on some sort of steroid to help the knee swelling go down.
Right leg is my repaired leg and swollen. Hard to tell but I have a lot of atrophy in my right leg as well.
Needless to say, the NEXT time I have my scheduled PT and my therapist works me like the guy from Shawshank Redemption except I didn’t escape and I was captured! I swear he was trying to make me cry. I came close to telling him to just STOP and that is enough for the day. He was like 1-2 minutes away from breaking me. Now, in addition to my normal at home exercises, I had ‘homework’ to do even MORE exercises.
Have I mentioned how much I hate my surgeon??
After last weeks fiasco at swim school, we decided to try to bribe Stacy to NOT cry at swimming this week. There is a bathroom stool that Jack stands on to reach the sink because our sink counters are high. Stacy tries to run and take Jack’s stool but we told her that we would buy a stool just for Stacy if she did not cry. Before swimming, nice and happy and ready to swim:
This week, the teacher suggested us not be in the pool area and just watch from behind the one way mirror. I thought it was a mistake and sure enough, Stacy cried and cried. Stacy cried before the lesson started but when we left her in the pool with the teacher that just made it worse. Again, another 15 minutes of Stacy flat out crying. No pictures or video since we were in the lobby…but even after swim lesson Stacy was still upset:
Stacy got some new PJs and now she looks so much like a little girl instead of a baby:
Sometimes I forget she is 5 years younger than Jack. They argue, they play, they look after each other…it just seems to be going by so fast.
First it was Jack now it is Stacy’s turn for swim lessons. I really had high hopes for Stacy. Stacy really enjoys the water and he is happy before her lesson:
Sadly, it was all downhill from there. Stacy did not like being in the water without me or Aya holding her. Stacy is just sooo stubborn. For the entire lessons (15 minutes) she cried and yelled the entire time.
First Stacy kept telling the teacher she wanted to go “over there” which was closer to where we were sitting:
Then she got smart and thought yelling, “HELP…HELP” might work…but it only made us laugh:
Stacy managed to do quite well in her lesson, if only she stopped crying:
She was able to jump in, put her head under, lay on her back. Comfortable in the water…just not with the teacher. That was the same teacher Jack had as well. Hopefully Stacy gets better next week.
Jack’s first CBO season came to an end. Even though we don’t keep score or record wins or losses we ended the season with only one loss…and I am pretty sure if we did keep records and scores we would have ended in first place. We had the league Jamboree over the weekend and Jack got a trophy:
Every kids gets a trophy at this age but they got to go on stage and get the trophy. For most of the kids it was their first trophy:
No time to rest….we are gearing up for our first tournament in April, the WLA tournament. It’s been tough to coach them in the brace but the kids have been doing well. I am hoping for good results in the tournament!
I have to say, the surgery was relatively easy and pain free compared to physical therapy. PT has been a lot harder than I expected. I don’t know where my doctor gets 30-45 minutes of therapy, because my first PT session was 90 minutes. It has only gone up since then. Last week I did 3 hours of PT.
What makes PT hard? For one, the guy is massaging my leg and digging his fingers into my knee cap and or area that got surgically repaired so it is sore. Then he bends my knee in all these directions but I have limited range of motion so it hurts to move. Then it is the time. I either go a few hours BEFORE work or a few hours AFTER work and it isn’t peaceful or easy.
PT usually starts off with a 45 minute massage of my knee, so 45 minutes of me cringing in pain. Next comes 15 minutes of electrical stimulation to get my quad muscle working again:
Then I do various exercises where it looks like I hardly know how to use my leg. Shoot, I just finally was able to lift my leg on my own for the first time in a month! I was so happy that I thought my trainer would let me go home early and celebrate but ‘nooooo’…he put me on the bike instead. It was like the first time I ever rode a bike! As soon as my leg hit the top of the rotation is just STOPPED. I mean literally stopped. The muscle go so tight that I couldn’t complete a revolution! After a few minutes of forward and back I finally made a revolution but I am pedaling super slow.
After that, back to the electrical stimulation. A few more exercises and then my favorite part…game ready":
This thing is awesome! I wish I knew about this when I was playing. I might have bought one of these machine. It basically wraps around my leg, gets filled with ice water, then freezes instantly and then compresses and decompresses for 20 minutes. It feels great. Best part is, I know when it is done I can go home.
I have only gone to PT for 2 weeks. Even though I see improvement, I also see other patients who have been coming for 3-4 months. It is just daunting to think 3-4 months of going 3 times a week. It is almost like having 2 jobs. I am trying to get off the crutches by next week and just be on a brace. At least that will get me more mobile.
Stacy got a princess set for Christmas and she loves to wear her crown and/or necklace. Yes, it is upside down, but that is how she likes to wear it:
It still amazes me at how girlie Stacy is and how sensitive she can be. I just raise my voice and the water works immediately starts up. I can see it already…she is going to be TROUBLE when she gets older.
It is hard to tell who Jack likes more now, Kobe or Lebron. I got Jack a Lebron jersey when I was in Miami and now Jack wears it to practice every week.
I dunno why he poses so ‘feminine’.
When I told him to do something more normal this was the secondary pose:
Crap bag.
