Interesting juggle

So we wore the new arm today — I decided to have Jordan wear her new bouncy hand — low pressure and simple to put on. Jordan didn’t like that I made her wear it, but I wanted to see when it’s helpful and when it’s in the way.

My first note: She can pound on the wall with TWO hands. And boy did she think that was fun. Before we left for the day she was pounding on a wall — I went in to find out what the heck was going on — I was going to tell her to stop. But then I noticed she was pounding with TWO hands. I moved her to a wall that wasn’t shared with another hotel visitor and let her go crazy.

Next we went to a coffee shop and ate breakfast. What did we learn? The arm gets in the way of holding a cup (she doesn’t have enough bend in her arm and we’re using a set-up as if she was a below-elbow amputee — which means the arm extends from her little arm – so it doesn’t bend much – the gel and her muscle at the base of her arm turns slightly, but not close to as much as a real elbow). The arm helps move food around the table but it also helps push food onto the floor since she isn’t used to having an arm that long. The arm is very helpful when she starts to slide off a chair — I watched her catch herself. That was cool.

Next we went to the American Girl store in Chicago. Wow. That’s one girly girl place. LOTS of dolls. LOTS of girls. LOTS of dolls and girls clothes and accessories. We took Jordan to the Bitty Baby section where she picked out a new doll. She loves the doll. But the arm made it very hard to hug her new doll. She was desperate to carry it, so I removed the arm. The doll stayed with her for the rest of the day (except for a brief stop to eat and buy shoes).

This relatively short amount of time with the arm and the simple, flexible hand made me think about its purpose.
Good times: playing, dancing (probably only in some cases) and possibly gymnastics.
Bad times: carrying big things, gripping, pushing

Tomorrow I’m going to try to put on the arm hook. We’ll see if I can get her into a good enough mood to play around with it. Wish me luck!!