PROVO -- Do not challenge Nicole Davis to a Hula hooping contest.

The 12-year-old Provo girl has some serious Hula stamina. And she can keep going with her sister, running around jumping rope, posing for pictures and even walking to the front yard.

From down the street, she looks just like a normal girl Hula hooping on warm June day.

And the fake leg? That doesn't slow her down one bit.

"Sometimes we forget she's 'disabled' because she just keeps going on with her life," Maria Davis, Nicole's mother, said.

Nicole was born with amniotic band syndrome; fibrous amniotic bands wrapped around her right leg and several fingers and toes actually amputated the limbs in utero. Doctors told Jason and Maria Davis that their first daughter's odds of survival were low. The possibility of Hula hooping, running, climbing and playing sports weren't discussed, up until she started doing all of those things.

"We've never let Nicole believe she can't do anything," Maria said.

Nicole looks at herself like a normal girl, she said. She likes camping and hiking and just finished the seventh "Harry Potter" book this week. She and 8-year-old Courtney have their normal sibling fights. She likes to swim and likes going to Lagoon. She just happens to have a bright pink plastic leg attached at the knee.

"I ski, I do ice skating," Nicole said.

"She rock climbs," Courtney chimed in.

She also races; Nicole will run in the Freedom Festival's 5-kilometer Freedom Run today for the second time. Last year she ran with two of her aunts and her cousin and finished in 47 minutes, 7 seconds -- beating one aunt, she is proud to say. Her mother and both aunts ran a few years ago, which gave her the idea.

"I was looking at pictures and I said, 'Mom, I want to do that,' " Nicole said. "She said, 'OK, you can do that.' "

And that's just how the Davis family meets life. Maria said they don't hold Nicole back when she wants to do something because they don't want to give her the idea that she is disabled. She wanted to play soccer, so they signed her up for the city league. That did come with its own challenges.

"She kicked the ball, and her leg flew across the field," Maria remembered, laughing. "The whole other team stopped to watch, and she hopped up and kicked the ball in the goal."

She does get a lot of viewers when she's out and about; Nicole's gotten used to it, and Courtney said most of the time people are nice.

"People ask, 'What happened to your leg?' " Nicole said. "I just say I was born like that."

"And most of the time people leave it at that," Maria said.

Children actually are more accepting than adults; they ask because they're curious. Adults tend to pity Nicole, and Maria is quick to tell them that her daughter doesn't need pity.

Nicole has never known a different life, so she has adjusted, even letting her younger sister sleep on the top bunk in their brightly colored, mostly neat bedroom. Her leg doesn't hurt, except after surgeries, of which there have been many and will be many more.

The Shriner's Hospital has provided her with a number of the surgeries and a number of prosthetic legs -- she's had 14 -- and she will continue to have surgeries as long as she keeps growing. The bone in her upper leg continues to grow, so the bone has to be shaved down and the skin readjusted. Each time she gets a new leg, she gets to pick a fabric that is then glazed onto the $10,000 prosthetic limb.

The leg, just like the pictures, trophies and decorations in her room, all are extensions of the soon-to-be seventh-grader's unflinching personality. She excitedly leafs through pictures of last year's Freedom Run and tells stories of recent camping trips. She has a trophy and several pins in the living room attesting to the service she did last year at Westridge Elementary, including tutoring a second-grader. She recently, much to her father's chagrin, cut off 12 inches of her hair to donate to Locks of Love.

As for being normal, her parents will tell you she's anything but. "They told us she wasn't going to live through the night, and she has defied all odds since she was born," Maria said.

• Heidi Toth can be reached at 344-2556 or htoth@heraldextra.com.

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