Kailyn Pieper eats lunch with friends Mackenzie Schmidt (left) and MaryClaire Paulus at Menomonee Falls North Middle School. Kailyn was born with a rare congenital disorder that results in joints not forming properly, giving her limited use of her hands and arms. Credit: Gary Porter

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Before they meet the girl with the amazing feet, six students see her project, and something tells each one of them: This is it.

It is September and Marquette University engineering students are combing through lists of ideas. They must pick one for their senior project. There are marks to consider. Certain projects offer a better chance of success.

But they are seniors. In a year, they are going to find out if there is as much satisfaction in earning a paycheck as there was in playing with Legos when they were kids.

Each of the engineers reads the project list. Each arrives at the same entry. And the idea of grades melts away.

The girl's project is unlike the others. Most seem destined to follow a familiar storyline: You build something, give it to an industry sponsor, cross the stage at graduation. What happens to the device you created is anybody's guess.

This time the engineers will know if they have succeeded, and it won't be the grade that tells them. An 11-year-old girl named Kailyn Pieper will get to eat without having to bring her mouth right down to the table, without having to dip her face into the plate. She won't have to maneuver applesauce to her mouth with a spoon held between her toes. She'll be able to do something so fundamental, so second nature that most never give it a thought.

The project - and it's more of a plea from the little girl's stepmother - is to build a device that will help her eat.

Kailyn was born in April 2000, seven weeks premature and diagnosed with one of those rare congenital disorders with a complicated name: arthrogryposis multiplex congenita.

What it means is that joints do not form properly. And the malformed joints mean parts of the body cannot move as they should; in Kailyn's case, her arms, which hang stiffly in front of her. Early on, her legs were afflicted too, stuck in an awkward position, jutting over the stomach to her ears.

The causes of the condition aren't known, but may involve problems with the spinal cord or central nervous system. One theory holds that too little room in the uterus may play a role. Doctors thought Kailyn might have an extra set of chromosomes. They told her mother, Katie Paape, they did not expect her to survive.

Kailyn underwent her first surgery at four days old. Another 14 surgeries followed. For five months, she was tube fed. She wore casts on her legs. She could not grab toys with her fingers.

During her first seven years, she lived with Paape. Her last name, Pieper, is actually Paape's maiden name.

The little girl showed an independent streak, teaching her feet to do what her arms could not. When other children were learning to write with their hands, she gripped the crayon with her toes. Paape noticed how patient Kailyn was, how seldom she displayed frustration. Watching her made the mother hopeful.

"She's going to thrive in life," Paape said recently. "She's going to get married and have babies and go to college."

The mother wanted her daughter to have the best chance for that life. That's why when Paape, wrestling with personal problems, moved two hours away, she made a decision. She did not want Kailyn to be pulled out of school in the middle of the year. She wanted her to be in schools that were nurturing. So, Kailyn came to live with her father, Chris Bunke, and his wife, Jennifer, in Menomonee Falls. There were things Kailyn could not do, many things. Taking off her shirt, for example.

The Bunkes attached a hook to Kailyn's dresser drawer. If she slid down the drawer, she could get the hook to catch her shirt and use it to pull the shirt over her head and around her arms.

Do it again, said Jennifer Bunke.

Again.

Now put it back on.

Sometimes Kailyn asked: Can you take my shirt off?

Nope. You've got a hook. What if I'm not there?

Outside in their snowy yard, Kailyn fell and cried out: "I need help. I can't get up."

"You don't need help," said Jennifer Bunke. "You can get up."

Then she went inside and watched from the window.

The Bunkes told Kailyn over and over until it became a mantra: "There's a lot you can do."

Kailyn could hold a book with one foot while turning pages with the other. She could use her feet to play with Barbies.

When video games became popular, she taught herself to play with her feet. When other kids were operating cellphones or wrapping birthday presents with Scotch tape, she did, too; she used her toes.

Still, her feet could not always substitute for arms. Once, when she was 8, Kailyn was walking with her dad to a parking lot. Chris Bunke looked away for a moment. Kailyn missed a step.

He still remembers the awful sound Kailyn's forehead made when it hit the curb. Without strength in her arms, she could not reach out to protect herself from the rushing pavement.

She struggled with some tasks. Showering. Buttoning clothes. Zippering zippers.

Eating.

In mid-September, the four women and two men of engineering Team B18 meet Kailyn at her Menomonee Falls home. They introduce themselves: Lauren Eno, Robert Herlache, Laura Finn, Cathryn Krier, Kristina Lee, Michael Ventimiglia.

All are between the ages of 20 and 22. Most have never seen a person who cannot use her arms. They don't know what to expect.

What they get is a little girl who is shy but not self-conscious. Kailyn, blond-haired and pretty with round, baby cheeks, shows them how she types with two toes. Using her left foot, she draws a picture of herself and writes above it "chocolate is my favorite food."

Weeks later, two of the engineers, Krier and Lee, visit Kailyn's school. They watch her in class. They see how she moves among the 1,000 students at Menomonee Falls North Middle School, often barely distinguishable from her peers.

Last summer, before Kailyn started middle school, her parents and educators discussed what to do. The plan was to have Kailyn talk to her classmates in September so that they would not gawk or stare or make fun of her. But right before school started, Kailyn changed her mind.

"She decided she just wanted to blend in," says Holli Martin, a school counselor.

Now, when the boys and girls start gym class leaning on their hands in the pushup position, Kailyn holds herself in a sit-up, teeth clenched. When other children assume the crab position, propping themselves on their hands and feet, backs lifted above the red mats, Kailyn lies on her back. When they play "crab soccer" with a ball as big as the kids, Kailyn never shrinks from the action.

In class, she uses her feet to remove a red binder, the one on which she has written "Math" and also, "Justin Bieber." Her feet remove the cap from her pen, scribble notes, turn pages, draw pie charts, erase mistakes and type on her calculator. She raises her foot to ask a question. She uses her feet to measure angles with a protractor and draw circles with a compass.

She seldom asks for help. When the class ends, Kailyn's feet slide the binder and notebook into her backpack along with the pencil case she has just closed.

She heads for the cafeteria. It is the one place she does not lift things with her feet.

At home, she sometimes holds the spoon or fork between her toes. She won't at school. Doesn't look "normal." Besides, she would have to sit on the floor, and that would make it hard to talk with friends.

Instead, she bends her mouth down to the plate to bite off pieces of breaded pork chop. Holding a section of pork chop in her mouth, she uses it to scoop up mashed potatoes and gravy. When gravy dots her chin, she gently wipes it off on the tray.

Although the cafeteria is a beehive of adolescent chatter, no one stares or points or laughs. The day Krier and Lee follow her to lunch, they are struck by how discreet the other kids are. Friends occasionally nudge Kailyn's milk carton closer. They do it almost unconsciously.

Still, one force threatens to exert its influence over Kailyn, as it does over most children.

"In middle school, the whole fitting in thing is so important," says Martin, the school counselor. She pauses to consider the way Kailyn eats.

"I don't know if it bugs her, to be perfectly honest. She's so good with who she is."

The Marquette students begin by brainstorming, ideas flowing from the tip of a pen, one sketch, then another. A device that would attach to the side of a bowl. One employing a Ferris wheel design. One resembling a swing set, with a scoop where the swing would be.

They survey existing devices, all either inadequate or too costly ($1,000 to $3,000).

They ask their customer, Kailyn, what she wants and rank priorities - safe, easy to clean, compatible with different foods.

For nine months they work at least six hours a week, sometimes more in a single night. The day before a class presentation, they arrive at the engineering lab in the fading afternoon light, clutching notebooks, energy drinks and cups of coffee. They snack on pistachios brought by Krier and cookies and chocolate-covered pretzels sent along by Kailyn and her stepmother.

After the sun sets, the students cross the street to Starbucks for fresh injections of caffeine. Often they leave the lab at midnight, the traffic on Wisconsin Ave. down to an occasional set of headlights.

They keep returning to the house in Menomonee Falls for Kailyn's input. Her initial shyness gives way as the engineers ask about school, books she likes, Justin Bieber. She shows them her new iPod. Sometimes Lee texts Kailyn from the lab to ask: What do you think about this?

Gradually, from primitive drawings, an idea takes shape: similar to the swing set, but instead of having the scoop between two poles, it is attached to a single motor-driven arm.

In December they present their final plan.

And then things change.

Kailyn's project grows beyond Marquette.

Each year a few engineering teams work with students from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. While engineers focus on function, performance and mechanics, the designers add a concern for beauty and psychology, how a device looks and how it makes the user feel.

Designers listen to a series of presentations by the engineers and later their professor asks for a show of hands. Who's interested in this one? When he reaches Kailyn's, two hands shoot up.

One belongs to Sean Simmons, whose mother taught special education, who grew up in a home where helping others was just what you did. The other hand belongs to Brett Pearson, who grew up playing sports and now dreams of designing soccer cleats. He knows that classmates often toy with futuristic designs, but this is different, this has him thinking that in some small way, "we can leave our mark on the world."

In January, the designers join Project Kailyn. They fashion adjustments, ensuring the device will fit in Kailyn's backpack and will match her height when she sits at the table.

Simmons and Pearson generate 75 to 100 sketches - each. They decide on key features that will make the device pleasing to the eye. Then, in the loud drone of the workshop, beneath rows of fluorescent lights, they start with high-density foam. They shape, sand and paint the foam, working it into a rough model of what the device will be.

Every couple of weeks, they return to Menomonee Falls. They have Kailyn pick out the things she likes.

Often they work until 1 or 2 in the morning, going through cans of Sierra Mist and Monster Energy drink. They dine on slabs of peanut butter and bread, and boxes of Cap'n Crunch's Oops! All Berries. They begin computer modeling, using equipment that allows them to take ideas that began as drawings and translate them into three-dimensional pieces. They sand, prime, paint - then do it again.

What they come up with is small and white with elegant curves; it looks a little like a swan. At the swan's head there is an opening with rippled spaces for Kailyn's fingers. Here she can grip the device for short periods if she needs to.

Is it cool? Simmons asks.

Kailyn nods.

In April, with the final presentation just weeks away, the engineers huddle in their lab. The flat screen TV on the wall cycles through a series of engineering-related quotes, including this one: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

- Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer.

Kailyn's device is not magic, not science fiction. It is all about real-life details that often pass unnoticed. The angle of a bowl's lip, which the spoon must slide up without getting stuck. The weight of the spoon, which must not tip the device or spill food. The motion of the motor, which must be made to pause on the upswing so Kailyn can reach the food.

It is the geometry and physics of an act most people repeat dozens of times a day. It is also the hands-dirty mechanics of building something. One day the students spend five hours soldering.

The engineers make adjustments to the device, adding weight to the base to prevent tipping, changing the circuits, adding a resistor. Finally, they begin testing.

On this afternoon, they will be the guinea pigs. In a few days it will be Kailyn.

On the table are samples of yogurt, strawberries and celery. Cathryn Krier is the designated eater.

"We've nailed yogurt," declares Robert Herlache, after Krier plows through a bowl. "Next food!"

The device passes the celery test. Then strawberries. The real challenge lies ahead.

Can Kailyn use it?

In the car, on the drive to her house, the engineers are nervous. They encountered problems with the weight of the steel ice cream scoop on the device and have switched to a lighter scoop.

Krier keeps wondering: Will it work? Will it work? Will it work?

They arrive at Kailyn's house and set up in the kitchen.

First, they have Kailyn go through a series of tests.

How long does it take to remove the device from her backpack and set it up? (1 minute, 45 seconds).

How long to turn it off and return it to her backpack? (just under 1 minute).

Does it make her backpack much heavier than normal? No.

Could she carry it out to her school bus? Yes.

Then the one test that matters. The device whirs, the spoon rises and Kailyn leans forward to meet it with her lips. In the scoop is a mini chocolate peanut butter cup. It falls from the scoop. The engineers move the device just a little. This time the peanut butter cup stays in the scoop.

"Oh my gosh," says Jennifer Bunke, Kailyn's stepmother. "That's just awesome, you guys."

Next up, yogurt.

Whir . . . Gulp.

"This is amazing," Bunke says.

The engineers turn to Kailyn. Is the device easy to use? The noise level OK? Comfortable to use? Does it look OK?

Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes. Asked to grade the device from 1 to 10, she doesn't pause.

"One hundred."

The final presentation for all the senior projects takes place in an auditorium at Marquette. The engineers of Project Kailyn are in suits. Their professors and classmates are in the audience. So are the designers from MIAD. And so are Kailyn, her dad and stepmom and her younger sister.

"We've been working on Nourish, which is an assistive feeding device," Krier begins. "We created this device for Kailyn."The other members of the team take turns explaining how Nourish works, how a light will tell Kailyn when the 6-volt rechargeable battery is running low, how the spoon can hold a quarter of a pound before it begins to tip, how a special scoop holds large items such as pizza and sandwiches. They show a video of Kailyn using the device, grinning as she eats.

"That smile right there," says one of their classmates in the audience, Spencer Greaves, "that is a job well done."

The engineers explain that while similar devices on the market cost up to $3,000, the materials for Nourish total $203.88. Including labor, the total cost of Nourish is well under $500.

When the presentation and questions finish, Kailyn's family approaches the engineers and designers.

In a few days, the team will drive to the Menomonee Falls home one last time to present their customer with the finished device. They will give her an owner's manual with troubleshooting advice, five new bowls and some paint in case Kailyn wants to give Nourish her own touch. They will give her a photograph of the team to remember them.

But after the presentation it is the Bunkes who come bearing gifts, eight framed copies of a picture Kailyn has made. It is a heart surrounded by a Barbie, a musical note, an image of a book, labeled, "The Hunger Games." Below the drawing is a message from Kailyn. Written with her feet:

"These are things that make me happy, and you're one of those things . . . Thanks from the bottom of my heart for helping improve the quality of my life one spoonful at a time."

"Love, Kailyn Pieper."