Skip to main content

Footloose

Shoes are good right?
Shoes go on feet so that feet can do their thing;
like walking, or running, jumping, and heck, even dancing.
Nika asked me the other day (she's very into the who did what questions lately) who was it exactly who invented shoes?
She elucidated that in her bible book Noah is wearing sandals, but Adam and Eve aren't, so one can assume that somewhere between the snake and the boat someone invented shoes.
I can only think that like everything that was lost in the fall from Eden, so was lost our impervious and hobbit-tough feet. Hence the need for shoes. 
I love shoes, don't get me wrong- I'm female after all -but today I had a pretty singular shoe shopping experience that wasn't one to raise my dopamine levels.


Leo got his AFO's yesterday.

And man, there is nothing cut loose about them.

But the idea here is that they will help shape his ankles back into alignment, because right now he's got some pretty big pronation happening which is affecting him from his tootsies all the way up to his hips. They are supposed to even help with his walking.
He needs this.



It's great that he finally has them, but like any thing in the special needs section of the store, it comes with a complimentary dose of heart ache.
Not a lot, because in the realm of things AFO's aren't really all that tough. Although Leo screaming in the super sonic range every time I try to get them on does contradict that fact just a tiny bit...
And the fact that all of his shoes no longer fit.
Special needs shoes made to accommodate orthotics? Out of my price range. 
All that on top of some new issues at school makes this new development in Leo's life seem just a tiny bit tough.


So here I found myself, in the little boy's shoe section, trying to find shoes that would fit not only the little lion man's toes but also his AFOs. While Leo was blessedly distracted with the Thomas the Train sneakers box, I tried sneaker after sneaker: first seeing how wide the opening could get, wether or not the laces could be redone, or the straps, second, taking the AFO's out of my purse and sticking them into the shoe. Out of the myriad of cute little boy shoes, I found two pairs that might work. To Leo's disappointment, they weren't the Thomas ones.
Sure Converse are cool right? Especially when laced at the bottom with AFO's sticking out.
Definitely the start of a new fashion trend!
Right now he's wearing them on and off during the day to acclimate his skin to the new pressures and get him used to the new balance and posture of his feet and legs.
I think he (and I) have definitely had better days.
No biggie, I know he'll get used to them.
At some point..but probably not today. Probably not tomorrow either.
But after that? Who knows, little lion man might bust out some footloose moves of his own, because after all, feet are good for a lot of things, but in Leo's book, they are the best for dancing. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

With Mixed Feelings

So for the past couple weeks my feed has been filled with the "back to school" and "end of summer" and "beginning of parental freedom from their annoying offspring" photos. It's ok, I totally get it. Another year, another back to school pic, another notch in the door jamb, and another chapter of growth and development with junior. Look at him go! Or not, as the case may be for many children. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease control and Prevention) one in six children has one...a developmental disability. A stamp of "not normal" across their foreheads. A number. A check mark in a box. My kid is one of them. I heard a brief segment on NPR that enticingly started out with the title of developmental delays on the rise, a 17% increase over the last twelve years. And though I turned up the volume the segment only talked about how it's probably only due to poverty, and it's only the upper classes that actually pursue diagnosis...
34 comments
Read more

Kinda Like 'Nam.

First off, sorry about the disjointed nature of the posting from yesterday. I was updating via text messegaing from my phone and because the service is patchy in the hospital not only were the posts chopped up but they were frequently out of order. You have to be a sleuth to figure it out. On the other hand, I guess it was a direct reflection of what we were experiencing! Between getting little bits of info and there, we had no clue what was going on. This is what we have been able to piece together since yesterday. The surgery itself was a definite success, though there were a few surprises. One of which being that when they took out Leo's shunt of 8 months they discovered that it was not working. Huh??? He never showed any symptoms of shunt failure and brain compression, so what the heck? In between the sobering list of items now holding risks for our guy, the nuero surgeon dropped this little bombshell on us. Does that ...
18 comments
Read more

The Heart Knows

Today during the physical therapist's visit, Leo was put through his paces. She had a whole list of things, 40 to be exact, of regular newborn motor reflexes and characteristics. Each one gets a check-mark (or not) and then a total score once she tallies up all the information that she observed. Although the final score for Leo really itself doesn't matter, the test was more to establish a baseline of development for Leo, and to find his strengths and weaknesses. Once this baseline is established, it will be easier to tell any progression and growth. Just since her last visit, she observed that Leo was doing a much better job of keeping his head in mid-line position. Before he would always keep it on one side or the other. She also determined during the exam that Leo definitely tracked her with his eyes and responded to sound. More specifically, to my voice. She had him on his tummy facing away from us, and she shook a rattle and made some noise to see if he would move his head...
18 comments
Read more