Hot Cereal

The other day, A was playing on my bed after our morning nurse and she looked up at me and signed 'eat'. This is not too unusual as she often hurries me along through my tired, slow morning movements. Then she signed 'cereal' and then 'hot'. Her signs are of course imprecise so I did a double take before I realized that she was asking for hot cereal, NOW!

Of course, she got her hot cereal with grated apple and raisins as fast as possible. I'm so proud.

A Mail Day is a Good Day

Here is little A admiring her Valentine card from Auntie M. She is quite pleased as you can see.

She is doing well. Her gross motor development is her weakest area overall but we have refocused our efforts to include crawling again and I think it's helping. We're using the stairs. She can't sit back and start scooting and it's easy to incorporate a few times per day. The crawling focus was prompted by a book I picked up and some families I ran into who use the neurodevelopment approach. There are at least two camps on this topic. One says although crawling is important, any movement is progress. The other says that if they replace crawling with scooting or some other creative method of getting around, there will be neurological damage. I know there are lots of 'typical' kids who don't crawl but perhaps for kids with an extra chromosome, it makes more difference. I don't know. I did spend a little time trying to find out but it seems that there is no proof either way. So! we are trying more crawling because it's not going to hurt. If you have been through this debate and have any comments, I'd love to hear from you.

In the speech department, we are having lots of fun. We recently started with a speech therapist and she had us do an inventory of A's language. She has about 15 spoken words and 50 words including signed words. This means, I'm the bottle neck. If I had 100 signs I'm sure she would too, so I'm trying to step it up. We're using the signing time series and it's perfect. Both kids like it and it's not too annoying as far as kid stuff goes.

Sleep is better although I hesitate to get too excited because things are always changing. There are teeth coming and I know that is part of the issue but we also get some long stretches. She is sleeping in the play yard porta-crib in our room and we've turned up the heat at night. We also night weaned and moved the morning nursing time to another room to distinguish when the day really starts. One or more of those changes is helping and although I'm curious which was the key, I'm not willing to experiment to find out.

We are spending more time at playgroups lately. There is one nearby with a nice structure including free time, snack time, book time and singing time. She eats things there that she will not try at home and she loves the whole scene there. It's good for me too.

Oh yeah, I cut the tiniest lock of hair from her bangs this week. It was in her eyes all the time. I always feel a pang cutting hair. Especially the first one.