I’m not the only one that makes things in this house.  These ramps are thanks to Charles.  One from garage to kitchen.  One from downstairs to screened in porch, and one from porch to backyard.   He was able to use scraps of 2×4’s and 2×6’s and plywood to put these together.  Because two of these ramps go out to the screened in porch and to the backyard (pool), he put carpet on top of the plywood to make it barefeet safe for non-wheelchair users.

John’s therapist said it would be helpful for John to do reaching stretches to help with his tight shoulders, so I thought another modification of the scooter/chair was in order.  Now we have a scooter, or a chair, or stander, or stander with golfing attachment, or chair with shoulder exerciser attachment.

Well, another kind of failed project.  We started with a soccer guard that John was given through a local power soccer team.  (See here:  http://www.powersoccershop.com/ps-forcesoccerguard.aspx)  We took a large paint bucket and cut it in half and attached it to the front of the soccer guard with some bolts.  Unfortunately, the 9 inches of heavy wet snow was too much for the light plastic bucket and it would just bend it.  We did try taking it off and just using the soccer guard.  It pushed the snow a little bit, but wasn’t able to plow like we hoped.  

I posted a while back about a scooter that I made.  The scooter was great, but I decided to upgrade it and turn it into a chair so that John could lean back on it.  This has been a great thing to bring to people’s houses when we can’t bring in the wheelchair.  If there are hardwood floors, John is able to scoot around (albeit slowly).  It’s certainly not a perfect solution, but it definitely has made visiting friends a bit easier.

John has a hard time holding cards in his hand, but his brother doesn’t mind so much, because it makes winning at Uno a lot easier.  So, to try and even the playing field, I took a scrap piece of wood and sawed a thin straight line into it (just the width of the saw).  Seems to be holding the cards ok so far.  We’ll see how the next game goes 🙂

Here’s a new idea I added to the idea section:

Balancing Scooter — August 2013
What if I could merge my putt-putt stander-scooter with this?:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Self-Balancing-Scooter-Ver-20/
John leans forward in the stander and it goes forward.  Leans to the side and it steers to the side.  It’s so compact.  John would only take up about as much room as a person does.  A definite space saver when in a house.  Wonder how it would do over thresholds or carpet.  Wonder if anyone could make it for me!

I built a walker for John out of PVC pipe that was much easier for him to maneuver than the traditional aluminum walkers.  I admit, the aluminum walkers are very sturdy – much more sturdy than the PVC walker, but because of that they are heavy and difficult for a child with low tone to move around.
John was able to use the walker at the beach, and swimming pool.  Plus he could get around in the house more easily, too.

When babies are young you typically move them from container to container…  ie, from the bumbo to the bouncy seat, from the bouncy seat to the swing, etc…  But John didn’t fit into any of those once he had the spica cast.  So, I decided to make John his own chair.  All I did was wrap a couple 1×6 boards with batting and blue fabric, then screwed them together to make a chair.  I cut a couple holes into the chair for straps to hold John on the chair.

Here’s a view of the chair that shows pretty much how I made it.  I made the length extra long to help it be more stable in pitch, and I used a couple boards to lift it from the ground to make room for his feet, and to give more stability in the heeling direction.  The second picture shows John in his chair at a restaurant.  John definitely couldn’t fit in the booster seats or high chairs in the restaurants – so this way, we could bring our own.

Added a putt-putt attachment to the scooter so that we could all go putt-putting together.  See my instructable for how to make it.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Accessible-scooter-with-putt-putt-attachment/