In Good Company

When you spend much of your waking hours air born, you're bound to hit a pothole in life's occasionally bumpy road. Petra has been limping around for about a week, I thought maybe her sneakers were a little tight. On Thursday she told me her heel hurt but that it was "only a little" and that she didn't need anything for it. By Saturday morning, with 9-hours of gymnastics practice behind her and three in front of her, she told me again that it was hurting. For any other kid, including my own, this would be equivalent to crisis mode. I called her pediatrician, who runs a puppy mill as far as group practices go, and got her in for a 9:40 a.m. appointment with the athletic pediatric nurse practitoner (coincidentally named Kelly, coincidentally saw us last year when Soren had that awful bout with pneumonia). She thinks Petra may have some developing tendinitis or inflammation of her growth plate in her foot (sounds eewy but apparently not uncommon). Either way, treatment is the same, and if it's not better in two weeks then we re-evaluate. Good by us, Petra feels a bit antsy on the other hand.
We got her some heel cups, per the PNP's recommendation, which Petra finds quite soothing. Tova does too, we've found then in her mouth several times.

When she's not at gymnastics, she's supposed to rest her left limb on ice. She prefers to rest it on ice on her piggy pillow. Piggy pillows make everything better. Baby sisters think icy piggy pillows must be nice, cause this baby sister plunked herself down on Petra's piggy pillowed and pilfered Petra's ice pack. Eventually she got her own bag of ice. This went on nicely, until . . .

she took her ice out of the bag and started eating it, dripping frozen drooly drops on to Petra's perfectly plush piggy pillow. Petra rolled with the punches, perservering per usual. Poor Petra.

In addition to stretching, Petra's new program includes pampering. We're supposed to massage the tissues in her leg a couple times a day. Of course, Ms. T needs pampering alongside Petra so she plopped next to Petra and propped her pudgy, stubby legs atop a pillow, pointed to Mommy and demanded bilateral lower extremity manipulation. It was only after much time had passed that I realized I was using sun screen to massage their legs.