New Wheels!

Clayton has many lessons to come in learning to drive a new power chair.  But in the meantime, he is now the proud owner and DRIVER of a new manual chair!  We've been wanting/needing this chair for quite sometime now and it is such a relief to finally see him in it!  He was two when he got his first chair, and both his body and condition have changed so much since then!  He was definitely too long for his old chair and he wanted and needed some control of his movement about his environment, even if it can't involve a power chair just yet.  As soon as he got in it, he was wanting to go "in the back."  Quite different, since he usually wants to go out front to watch for cars.  With this chair, he was ready to get in the grass!  He's mostly spent the afternoon and night going in circles (he rarely uses his left hand).  We're just letting him explore and figure out just how he'll compensate with that hand--we'll see if he gets motivated to use it more!  I'm loving how he looks in it and wouldn't trade it back for the old, but I've got a lot of adjustments to make in order to get into a new routine with this chair.  Loading and unloading it will be different for a while and we're going to try our best to use it at the house (we usually use his Special Tomato chair at home).  The more we use it, the more independence Clayton gains--and he is sooo craving independence!  And today, he definitely started that journey!