Friends With FOP

Hello, and happy New Year to all!  I’m very excited to be writing my first blog.  I will soon put some information on the site about Miranda and our family, but for now, I’ll just tell you about New Years Day at our house in Burnaby, British Columbia.  Our household consists of me, my husband Pete, Miranda (will be 4 years old this month) and Owen (will be 7 years old this month).

I woke up this morning at 7:30 AM to “Mommy, I have wet underpants and jammies.”  Sure enough, Miranda had peed herself.  Oh joy.  This is rare for her, but happens on odd occasions.  With her arm limitations, Miranda hasn’t been able to learn to pull down her own pants, much less take them off, so I had to haul my sleepy self out of bed and take her to the bathroom.  I cleaned her up and got her changed into fresh pants, and then crawled, along with her, back into bed.  I dozed for a while, but I don’t think she really fell asleep again, and we were up by 8:30.  On New Year’s Day!!  Oh well.

Pete and I did some chores this morning while the kids played.  Normally after finishing chores, we’d take the kids outside to a playground.  However, that was not in the cards for us today, as has been the case so often this holiday season due to snow.  Snow is great, and I love it, but deep, heavy snow + Miranda = not good…  To get to the playground, which is a block from ourself, we’d have to trudge through some really deep, slushy stuff – the residue of huge snow dumps several days ago which are now melting in temperatures above freezing.  This is slippery, treacherous stuff for anyone, but for Miranda it’s doubly hazardous because if she slips while walking, she has a hard time regaining her balance due to the rigidity in her back.  The result is inevitable falls into icy cold, half-melted snow, a miserable kid, and the risk of FOP flare-ups from the impact of hitting the ground.  Assuming we would even make it to the playground safely, the conditions are no better there.  So…  We’ve spent the day in the house. 

Luckily, our house got a new Nintendo Wii for Christmas, and we’ve all been enjoying playing Wii games, especially bowling.  I wasn’t too sure how that would work out for Miranda, since her right elbow is pretty much fused in a bent position (and she’s right handed), but she’s managed to figure out how to kind of swing her whole body around and throw the ball.  She’s been enjoying this, though not to the same extent as Owen, who has become a Wii bowling prodigy who regularly beats both me and Pete (!).  Anyway, apart from that, we’ve also played Fisher Price Little People Zoo, which is one of Miranda’s favourites, plus pretend cooking supper (we cooked pretend pasta, chicken, potatos and vegetables).  We’ve also read some books.

We’ve enjoyed our holidays, notwithstanding being snowed in, but it will be good to get back to our regular routine starting on Monday.  Both Miranda and Owen will be happy to get back to school, grade 1 for Owen and daycare/preschool for Miranda, so that they can see all their little friends.  Then we begin the birthday gauntlet, as both kids were born in January…

That’s all for now – I look forward to adding more information about Miranda to this site in the next few days.