Cast Free Brooky!!!!!!!!!!

Well my sweet little Brooky has always been sweet, but let me tell you how much I am enjoying this sweet girl now that she is out of her cast! Yes! You read it right! Brooky got her cast off on Thursday November the 15th! After being in her spika cast (3 different ones) for 6 1/2 months we were more than happy to finally be getting off her final cast! And even more excited when the doctor gave us the news that her hips look great and he thinks we have nothing to worry about! Everything is looking as good as it could be at this point. So we didn't end up having to wear the brace again or anything! So we just have to go back in 8 months (when she is about 2 years old) and have another check up to make sure everything is still good. So now Brooky doesn't have to wear the brace, cast, or anything else! She is all free!

Needless to say I am so excited to finally be able to cuddle and squeeze and tickle and bathe and dress my baby in cute clothes after not being able to do these things for so long! Who knew giving kids a bath could be so much fun? Well after not being able to bathe her in the tub for 6 1/2 months it sure is fun to soap her all up and let her splash and play. And it is so much fun that she can wear tights, and leggings, and skirts, and pants and all these cute clothes that I haven't been able to dress her in before. Even before she had the cast on she was wearing the brace, so I haven't been able to have a "normal" baby since she was 5 weeks old. So I am so happy that we are FINALLY done wearing the brace and FINALLY done with the casts. From 5 weeks old to one week short of 16 months old is a long time! And we are now finally done!  And now I get to hold and cuddle this sweet girl. And it is SO FUN! I am just soaking up every second, because she is so much more cuddly now and I just love it! It really is hard to believe that we are finally to this day, because at times I wondered if we ever would be.

I have felt very blessed through this whole experience though and know that I have had extra strength to deal with things, which I think came from all of those people who were praying for us. I feel so grateful that I was given such a sweet girl who has handled each step of the way with such patience and resilience! I really couldn't have asked for a more happy girl than Brooky! She has been so happy through this whole experience and has really taught me a lot. Just makes me love her even more!

So to celebrate Brooky being cast free, we decided to take the kids to Chuck E' Cheese for a fun night out. We have never taken them before, and they both loved it! Brooky loved riding the little rides and trying out the little kid slide and trying to put the little tokens in each time. Zaya loved it too! He keeps begging us every day to see if we can go back. :)

So far Brooky is doing well. Her skin looks really great for having been in the cast for so long. There was a lot of dead skin that had built up of course, but other than that, was really not bad at all. She is relearning how to sit up. She can do it, but she likes to throw herself back on purpose because she thinks it is fun. I could tell that she is really used to having support helping her sit up, so she is having to re-learn her balance of things without the cast on. She is still pretty stiff, but that is expected for the first little while. She also was a little scared/unsettled or something  (can't think of the right word) because now when I would go to pick her up to hold her, it was such a weird feeling to her that she would grab her arms around my neck and hold on for dear life. I would just have to calm her a bit and reassure her that she was fine. This happened a few times, but now she doesn't seem to be doing it any more and is getting accustomed to what it feels like to not be in a cast anymore. She loves to be thrown up in the air! And all the other fun movements that we get to do with her now that we can actually lift her above our heads! She is also starting to realize that she can move her legs and has fun just wiggling them around. It is really quite funny though, because she still tries to do all the same kind of movements that she did while the cast was on. It's like she doesn't know how to move her body any other way. It is also funny for me, because in a way it seems like I have a newborn, but in another way it seems like she is her actual age. It is just so funny that she can't really move her legs much at all. They are like rubber and she hasn't learned how to control them and they have hardly and muscle, so they are like trying to dress a newborn. It is hard to put pants on her. And now we are relearning how to diaper. It actually takes me longer to change and diaper her now than it did when she was in the cast. But I am sure once the stiffness and everything goes away, and I get used to dressing those floppy legs, we will get faster. :)

Well this post is getting too long, so stay tuned and I will post lots of pics soon. :) Just wanted to let everyone know our exciting news! So happy to have our little girl without all those things strapped around her and that her hips are all fixed, at least for now. :) But hopefully for good.