Lizzie loved ladybugs.  She loved that they were her favorite color of red and looked like they wore little black helmets.   She loved the whimsical polka dots on their bodies because they looked like little red polka sweaters.  And she liked that they were able to hide their wings until they needed to use them and fly away.   She liked that they were bugs that people liked in their gardens because they helped get rid of the bad garden bugs instead of the gross or scary bugs like spiders or giant grasshoppers.  She thought ladybugs were cute bugs.

Lizzie’s grandma, Grandma Jo, said that Lizzie was her little ladybug because she loved to wear red and because she had to wear a black protective helmet on her head.  When Lizzie was younger and smaller and other kids her age were learning to walk, Lizzie could only crawl.  She crawled on the ground like a bug -- like a ladybug because she was usually wearing red and her her helmet that protected her head was black.  It took her a couple of extra years before she learned to walk like other kids.

Lizzie was born with a disability that made her have poor balance and made her fall a lot.  Since she didn’t know when she might fall and to protect herself she had to wear a helmet so if she fell, her head would be protected.  She was born with a disability which is something that children are born with that they can’t change about themselves. 

A disability is something that usually can’t be changed by someone, like the color of one’s eyes or the color of their hair.  Lizzie’s disability was called cerebral palsy.  It sounded a lot scarier than it was and she would call it C.P. for short because cerebral palsy was hard to say, even for her, when she tried to first say cerebral palsy, she had a hard time pronouncing it, she would call it all sorts of things like, ceberlall palllsy, siberan pony, sighting and pulsey.  But her parents would help her say it correctly, cerebral palsy. 

C.P was a disability that sometimes disconnected her brain telling her body what to do.  Lizzie’s brain would tell her legs to walk, but her legs would sometimes have a hard time balancing and so she would fall if she didn’t have crutches to help her walk. Lizzie had a fairly mild case of C.P. as she was able to still talk to people and understand them in conversations, sometimes people with severe cases of C.P. aren’t able to talk or walk and have to use wheelchairs all of the time.   

Her parents explained to her that C.P. was like your brain not being fully connected to the rest of your body and sometimes the brain needed help to move her legs.  They also explained that C.P. was like someone walking on a stretchy bungee-cord bridge.  Sometimes the person walking on the bridge would be okay walking across although they might wobble a lot, but if they used a stick that helped them balance they probably would fall less.  Lizzie tried to remember this when she had to use her crutches that these walking sticks were there to help her balance because most of the time, she wished that she could hide them away like ladybugs can tuck in their wings and she didn’t have to use the walking sticks.

Robin was Lizzie’s best friend and she lived next door.  Living right next door to Lizzie helped Robin be around her and see that just because Lizzie crawled when other kids her age walked and ran and jumped, Lizzie was still fun to be around and was a normal kid, even though she had trouble learning to walk.  Robin liked to play leap frog over Lizzie if she was having a bad day because it always made Lizzie laugh that she would jump over her.  Lizzie liked that Robin did things around Lizzie that made her feel like the rest of the kids her age, such as being nice to her, watching movies, playing board games and eating candy and ice cream.  

If you asked Lizzie what it was like to have her disability, she would tell you it was like trying to walk like Humpty Dumpty (kinda wobbly) and with large rocks tied on both of her legs.  Her brain would tell her to walk, but her legs felt heavy and hard to move and she didn’t have good balance on them so she wobbled from side to side when she walked.  She liked when people asked her what it was like to wear a helmet all of the time and what it felt like for her to walk while kinda wobbling, so she could tell people that she had a special disability but that she could walk. 

Lizzie’s parents tried to help her walk when she was little but her doctors decided that she needed to go to a special type of doctor called a physical therapist to help her walk instead of crawl, and they told her over a bag of gummy bears to excite her to go to this special kind of person that would help her walk better.

Lizzie was to go to this special person, a physical therapist, every day after class.  Her physical therapist’s name was AJ.  AJ had some special equipment like exercise balls and weights, and stretches that would help Lizzie to balance so she could walk instead of having to crawl.  AJ made Lizzie some special crutches that he called walking sticks because he thought walking sticks sounded cooler.  Her crutches or walking sticks were hard to learn to walk with and at first she fell a lot, so the helmet helped her so she didn't bang and hurt her head.

Lizzie sometimes wished she could hide her crutches, like ladybugs can hide their wings because sometimes she just wanted to walk normal like everyone else and balance on her own.  AJ tried to make the crutches fun for Lizzie because they were metal and squeaked when she walked.  The loud squeaky noises coming from her crutches when she walked seemed to scare the other kids in her class.  

AJ told Lizzie they were  going to add some fun stickers to her walking sticks and if other kids wanted to add some stickers that might be fun and would include the other kids by asking about why she had to walk with crutches.  If they added some stickers, the other kids might not be so scared by the loud creaking walking sticks.  She thought the adding stickers could kinda be like when someone breaks their arm or leg and people write their names on a cast, it helps them be involved and ask questions.  So, she had lots of fun stickers on her crutches like flowers, hearts and cats.

Lizzie would sometimes miss days at class because she had to go to her special appointments with AJ the physical therapists.  At physical therapy, she had to learn to walk and fall down with her crutches so she could do it safely, which meant she had to push them to the side so when she fell, she didn’t fall on the crutches and hurt herself.  She also had to lift weights with her arms so her arm muscles were strong and helped her when she had to use them for walking.  She also had to do special stretching at physical therapy, which also helped her become strong and flexible.  Because she used her hands a lot on her crutches to help herself walk, her arms became much stronger each day.  Her legs were still kinda weak because of her disability but her arms became much stronger from physical therapy.

Most of the other kids in class wanted to try out her walking sticks, although the crutches squeaked and made a lot of noise and were kinda hard to walk with unless you had some practice like Lizzie did.  By her classmates wanting to check out her crutches, she felt like they were interested in her and wanted to know how it felt to be like her when she had to walk with the crutches.  She also would tell her classmates that they could put cute stickers on her crutches, which they all liked to do.  She was getting lots of stickers on her crutches which started to look more like fun sticker books, instead of scary and squeaky metal crutches.

Usually Lizzie loved going to school because she had lots of friends, although some kids that didn’t know her or why she walked with sticks were mean and would make fun of her.  Her friend Robin liked to step in and help answer questions about Lizzie if kids didn’t know what to say to Lizzie or were mean to her.  Lizzie just wanted people to be nice to her.  Lizzie usually had lots of friends because she would answer her classmates questions when they asked why she walked a little funny.  She also usually had a handful of gummy bears in her pocket, so she could sneak them to her friends in class when her teacher was writing on the board. 

Lizzie also used to talk and to tell jokes to her friends as well so they laughed whenever she was around them, because she liked jokes like all kids, even though she had a disability - she just wanted to do normal things like all kids.  Lizzie tried to help the kids around her understand that she was just like them, she loved going to the movies and being with her friends and eating candy, especially gummy bears.  She also loved swimming since she didn’t need her walking sticks in the swimming pool.

A couple of times Lizzie had to have special surgery on her legs and when she came back to school she was in a wheelchair.  The first time she came back to school with a wheelchair, the kids she thought were her friends made fun of her because she now had a wheelchair instead of crutches.  Lizzie asked her teacher if she could explain to her classmates that she would soon be back on her crutches, but until she was back on her crutches, she asked if any of the kids wanted to help  push her in the wheelchair around school.  Most of the kids wanted to help and would push Lizzie down the hall in the wheelchair and she would usually tell them to go faster.  

She loved being pushed in the wheelchair down the hall because they would have races where one person would push her and then one person would run alongside and they would see who would win.  Lizzie usually didn’t win when they had the races, but she loved that her friends would make her feel included when she wasn’t able to walk on her own by pushing her in her wheelchair.  Sometimes the kids that were racing Lizzie in the wheelchair would put a box on each foot and then try to race her down the hall, they would call it rock feet because that’s how Lizzie would describe how her disability made it feel to move her legs.