Jake Daugherty, a 20-month-old, sits like a rodeo cowboy on Cassi Vandever’s lower legs. He giggles as he braces to be bucked around.

Vandever, a physical therapist for infants and toddlers, lies on her back. She’s waiting for Jake, who has Down syndrome, to give her the signal.

“Say ‘Go,’ Jakey,” Vandever says in a high, baby-talk voice.

“Jakey, do the sign for ‘Go,'” says Lindsey Cooper, a speech pathologist.

Cooper then pushes her arm forward above her head a couple of times to demonstrate the signal. Finally, she gently grabs Jake’s arm, shouts “Go” and moves it forward a couple of times.

Vandever rocks on her back, as Jake moves back and forth. He cracks a huge smile and begins to giggle. His sister, Molly, 2, and his mother, Hayley, watch.

Jake Daugherty, 20 months, holds onto Cassi Vandever as she rocks him on her legs. Vandever is a physical therapist who works with Douglas County infants and toddlers to help develop gross motor skills. She worked with Jake on Friday at his Lawrence home.

It’s all in a day’s work for Vandever, of the Douglas County Infant-Toddler Coordinating Council. She helps develop motor skills for children from birth to 3 years old to prepare them to enter the school system.

Her days consist of a lot of chasing crawling toddlers across the floor and playing with toys.

“It doesn’t even feel like work,” Vandever said. “I can’t even believe that I got this lucky.”

Her chosen career path is a mixture of what she enjoys in life, Vandever says.

She grew up the oldest cousin of 22 children on her mother’s side. Hanging around with kids was mandatory.

“I’ve always loved kids and kind of been a kid at heart,” she said.

She graduated from high school in Arkansas City, and in 2001, she graduated from Emporia State University with a bachelor’s degree in biology.

Vandever, a college softball pitcher, injured her knee during her freshman year, but the physical therapists who helped her recover made the process so enjoyable she wanted to become one.

In 2003, she earned a master’s degree in physical therapy from Kansas University Medical Center. After performing her clinical work at Bird Physical Therapy in Lawrence, she found her niche helping infants and toddlers.

“My clinical instructors were like, ‘You really need to pursue this because it takes a very special personality to do it.’ Apparently, they thought I had it,” she said.

She worked there until she joined the Douglas County ICC in her current position. Vandever and her co-workers use a team approach to involve the entire family in the sessions.

Her outgoing personality helps with that approach, said Jake’s mother, Hayley Daugherty.

“They are more like a play date for Jake than therapy,” she said.

Her “kiddos,” as she calls them, keep Vandever coming back to her job.

“I could probably make a lot more money in a more clinical setting, but the job is so flexible and the kids – just building relationships. No amount of money can ever replace that feeling,” she said.

When one of them accomplishes a new goal, like Jake taking a couple of steps across the living room, it also makes it worthwhile, she said.

“That is the most rewarding thing that you can ever imagine,” she said. “You say, ‘I made a difference today. I feel like I did what I’m supposed to do.'”