Finally – no more stairs!

As Becca has gotten older (and bigger), one of our biggest challenges has been the fact that we lived in a two story home. The bedrooms were all upstairs. Becca can sometimes walk upstairs, with a lot of support. It all depended on the day, and her energy level. She does not have the vision skills to safely walk down stairs. This meant that every night someone had to get her upstairs (usually carrying her), and every morning carry her back downstairs. She now tips the scale at 64lbs, so this was no easy task.
This past fall David and I started the journey of looking for a ranch style home for our family. We needed to eliminate stairs from Becca’s daily routine. We ran into multiple issues over the ensuing months. Houses seemed to either sell faster than we could possibly put an offer in to purchase, or in two cases we found significant issues during the inspection. We finally found a home that met our needs. The day before Becca’s 9th birthday we closed on the house, and the day after her birthday the moving truck came.
It has taken quite a bit of getting use to for Becca. As much as David or I talked to her and tried to explain, we don’t think she fully understood. It has now been about two and a half weeks and she is certainly more into our new routine. I think it has helped quite a bit that most of the initial chaos has died down, and even David and I are into more normal routines.
Becca already has a favorite spot.
It is much like her favorite spot at our old house, the sunny spot at the front door.

At this house she can watch all kinds of people walking by.  This neighborhood has many people who have dogs, so there are dog walkers out all day. Amazingly we never hear dogs barking, so they are all well behaved dogs with attentive owners who don’t let fido bark for hours on end.

Our dining room, with plenty of space for Becca’s special chair

That is a shot standing from the dining room table, looking across our living room (and yes that is Becca, sitting in front of the door).

First night in her new room,

Picture of the house

Sitting on our front steps

 

We are all so very happy here, and it is exciting for Becca.  Even if her mobility declines than this house should be great for her for years and years to come.  you can see there are just a few steps to the front door and only one from the carport into the kitchen area.

Overall Becca is doing well.  Her seizures are somewhat stable for her (at her baseline). They’ve been a touch higher with the move, but we know there is the external stress on her, and that accounts for more seizures, yet overall she is doing great.  She had her 9 year old well child visit.  Becca weighed in at 64 lbs and is about 50 inches tall.  Height is rather hard to measure on her since she doesn’t understand how to stand up nice, straight and tall.  There is no doubt she has had some recent growth spurts.  I’m actually putting her into 10/12 clothes.  This is especially helpful for shirts since girls clothing is horrible these days, and if I want her to have an iota of modesty we need to go up in sizes.  Thankfully for shorts and pants she is most comfortable in leggings and those can be darn near any size (including ones from several years ago).

It has been amazing as I’ve been packing and unpacking the things I’ve come across. I’ve shredded a ton of old documents (we don’t really need 9 years of Insurance EOBs).  I’ve found things from her first hospital stay when she was diagnosed with infantile spasms, including the pharmacy receipt for the ACTH treatments she was on.  I plan to scan that in for Facebook one week for TBT (Throw Back Thursday).  I know other Epilepsy parents will get a kick out of that.

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