Just What Every Little Boy Needs

Today was Sweet G's short therapy day when he only sees his physical therapist, AKA "the mean woman." G loves her dearly and because of that she bears the brunt of his jokes and abuse. Her job and what it requires G to do is the most difficult physically of all his therapy. G's legs are the most affected by his cerebral palsy, therefore that is the most difficult and taxing on his body.

Therapy has been ramped up, so to speak, since his tendon lengthening surgery. We are requiring much more from him and he is seeing his PT twice a week instead of once. The surgery has given G so much more range of motion and has eliminated the muscles fighting each other for control. It sort of evened out his muscle tone by lengthening and therefore weakening muscles that have been stretched tight preventing normal movement.

As I wrote in my post a couple of days ago, G has made remarkable progress lately. Today I asked his therapist if we could try him on a bike the clinic has. The bike is a regular bike but has these amazing training wheels that give it perfect stability like a trike. We thought that by adding straps to the pedals and changing the seat to something with a back and straps it might work. Boy were we ever wrong! We put G on the bike, he sat up and said, "Let go, I can do it all by myself." He had no problem balancing on the regular seat or keeping his feet on the pedals. There was a problem with making it go. His trike is adapted to become hand cranked and he has recently learned to ride his plasma car which propels when you wiggle the steering wheel back and forth so it took us reminding him a few times that wiggling the handlebars does not make it go. He did try so hard to make it move. We were shocked when he stood up on the bike and started saying, "I'm a big man and I can stand up by myself." As if those things weren't enough he had to kick things up another notch when we were about to dismount the bike. I noticed that he only had his hands lightly placed on the handlebar so his therapist asked him if he could clap for himself. He steadied himself, took his hands off for a brief second a couple of times and then he took them off completely and gave himself a round of applause. There were a lot of happy people in that gym today.

So, I bet you can't guess where we went when therapy was over! If you guessed a bike shop a mere three blocks from therapy you are right. I thought that might be best since he kept insisting we borrow the one from the clinic. When I told him we couldn't he replied simply, "We can bring it back before anyone misses it." After all every little boy needs a bike.