Tuesday Tidbits - A New Do and Trip to the Zoo

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Finally last week, Faith got her hair cut! Her thick hair was getting too long and unmanageable, so I had Julie cut it pretty short - perfect timing for the warmer summer months. It is really cute, and she has gotten lots of compliments.


We are also finally looking at purchasing an accessible van. Our disability case manager e-mailed us some specs of a van that is here in Bismarck. On Sunday we went to look at it and we think it would work well for us. 

The van does have some door issues, but we think we'll be able to work around them. It also has an in-floor ramp that can come out and go back in either automatically or manually. We rolled Faith into the van, and she was pretty excited about it!

Yesterday Faith had her class field trip to the zoo. Even though it rained for about 20 minutes, we still had lots of fun. Thankfully, the weather was good for the most part. Since I drove Faith out there, we were able to stay a little longer while her classmates headed back to school.

I'm so glad we did because we got to see a baby moose that was only a day old. The mama moose chased the dad away when he got too close. It will be fun to see how the baby moose grows throughout the summer during our future visits.



This morning, I took Faith to school, and we met the aide who is going to be working with her during summer school. I felt bad for the aide because there is so much to learn, and it can be so overwhelming. 

I showed her how to get Faith in her stander, how to switch her seating system from her manual base to her power base, how to hook up her tray and her buttons, and how do work her feeding pump - all in the first half hour!

We kept telling her not to worry because one of Faith's other aides would be at the school in the office if she needed help and that she could always call me too! I told her she will probably just be getting it all down pat and then the six weeks will be over!

As for me, I know Faith will do just fine because there will be people around her this summer at school who know her and knows how to meet all of her needs. I feel so blessed having such reliable, loving people working with Faith when she's away from home. 

It's also an added bonus that Faith is verbal, and that she herself can tell the aide what she wants or needs, and even knows some of the instructions like how to get her feeding going.

It looks like we'll be having a great summer and hopefully my dream of becoming an accessible mini-van mama will be coming true!

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