Milestone Monday: Blocks, Walking and Big Girl

So first up is that Princess has figured out how to stack her blocks. The most she has ever stacked is 5, but those tend to fall right away. She usually manages about 3-4 blocks before they fall over.

Next up is that Princess is WALKING!!!!! She's been cruising since she was about 15 months old and started taking like 2-3 steps on her own at about 16 months. Then about two weeks later, she started getting brave and taking more steps on her own! It was decided that if we put her in shoes, it should help her toe dragging. Well, the problem was putting her in shoes! She HATED them! Then we went to the zoo for Labor Day. We put her shoes on her and she found out that she can WALK by holding someone's hand and she can go where SHE wants to. So now, she has been very good about putting shoes on when we go out. She LOVES her shoes now. And we even got her a pair of Mary Janes and she LOVES her "pretty shoes." She now will get up and walk all over the house. She's walked from one side to the other by herself!

Then, on Saturday, Princess didn't want to eat lunch. So MeMe suggested that she sit at the playschool table. So we tried it.

Later that day, MeMe and Pops went out and found Princess a toddler bed. It was a Minnie Mouse one but we decided not to put the Minnie Mouse stickers on it. Pops had to put it together and of course Princess had to help.

Once we got her "big girl" bed together, she had to sit on it. She got a pillow, a Doc McStuffins pillow case, a Doc McStuffins doll (that is about as big as she is!), a butterfly blankie, and a new butterfly sheet for her bed.

Later that night, we started a new routine: bath (if needed), jammies, story, bottle, and then bed. So far she has spent the past 2 nights in her bed. Of course, she doesn't want to sleep on the pillow and instead sleeps at the foot of the bed, so she has fallen out a lot. We're going to put pillows down tonight. Last night, we put a baby gate up at the door because the night before, the dogs kept coming in to sniff at her. Hopefully by her IFSP, she'll be sleeping in her "big girl" bed by herself and not falling out of it.

Milestone Monday: What happened to my little girl?

What happened to my immobile, quiet little baby? She must be growing up. Because now she is commando crawling all over and screaming when she doesn't like something or when she wants something.

Princess has learned to sit up all by herself, so between the commando crawling and the sitting, she's NEVER still any more! Won't J be happy? I blame him! =)

She is also holding her own bottle and drinking it all by herself. I just plop her on the floor with her bottle and she goes at it. Yes, there are times when she screams because she drops it and can't figure out how to get it back to her mouth, but otherwise, she does fine feeding herself her bottle! No, she can't feed herself the bottle sitting up, but this picture was just too cute!

She is also waving "hi" to everyone! She is so cute about it too! Unlike Little Man who did the whole finger wave thing, she uses her whole arm! Surprisingly I caught this on camera when I was getting her picture for Rare Disease Day!

She is so close to actually getting up on all fours and crawling away. And sadly, I think it would take one of those huge play yard things (you know, people put puppies in them) to contain her in this house. Pretty soon, NOTHING will be safe. That is why, this week, I am having Little Man crawl around on the floor (he loves doing it anyway) to see what Princess can get in to.

Oh, we also painted her/our room this past weekend. Yeah, it's her room, I just sleep in it. We are currently working on sleep training. I am trying to get her back into her crib. Last night went pretty well, save for the fact we had an earthquake and a torrential downpour that woke BOTH kids up at 2am. Hopefully tonight will be better.

And I am in the process of planning her first birthday! Oh my, is it really less than 3 weeks away? Where has the last year gone?

Developmental Clinic from February!

Well, we had our big follow up at the hospital's developmental clinic back in February! I made our developmental therapist, J, take us. I figured it was important that we all be on the same page with her development and doing the same things.

So at the clinic, things were about the same as her 9m (really her 10m) appointment:

Weight: 16lbs 2.5oz
Length: 25.5in

I didn't know what to expect, but it was pretty basic. Met with one of the PTs. They assessed Princess. She did amazing! Of course they were looking at her like a 7m old, not a 10m old. But that's fine.

Met with the doc. She checked her out. Things were fine. I knew they would be. Got the weight and length above. Then, as we were waiting for the social worker, they came in and delivered her PT assessment. She assessed at 7m for gross motor/fine motor and communicative/expressive language. So that's what they expect. But she assessed at 10m for her cognitive abilities! J said that was why they didn't look at adjusted age for the county early intervention. Sometimes this happens and then you have a weird gap. So instead, they look at actual age and work on getting them "caught up."

Social worker suggested we apply for SSI. I don't know if we'll get it, or even if I'll apply. Maybe. Otherwise, we go back in November, so I should be hearing from them soon. So, if my math is correct, they wanted to see her when she was at least 6m adjusted (she was 7m adjusted) and November would be at least 15m adjusted (I think it'll be 16m adjusted or so). So I think they'll be looking for her to be walking. I think I have her adjusted age right. That's why I put the ticker! The ticker will disappear probably either at 2 or 3 years old. I don't adjust her age. I just let her be!

Milestone Monday: Lady GaGa

Okay, so I was going to post something else for today, but then Thursday happened. Thursdays are our usual weekly therapy days with J. Princess gets a 45 minute session once a week. The first week in February, we didn't get our therapy session because we dragged J to the developmental clinic at the hospital. (There will be a post on that next week.) So Thursday night, we were all having dinner. We had given Princess some bread and she started smacking her lips and thrusting her tongue down in her mouth. It was like she had a piece of bread stuck to the roof of her mouth. So I checked. Nothing. Then, out of nowhere:

"GaGaDaDa!"

Yep, Princess started babbling! Of course she does this AFTER therapy! And since then, every time we sit down to eat or at other random times, she just bursts out into "GaGaDaDa!" And other random baby words. So far, I've heard: "Ma" and "BuBa" and "GaGa" and "DaDa." Of course, they have no real meaning, to us at least. For Princess, it means that she is talking! She's trying to do what we do, which is talk!

She's gotten very good at making her needs known. She has many different vocalizations for different things. And she's very vocal. And now, she's got "words" behind her! Oh boy! What have we done?

(There will be most posts later this week, as we had a very adventurous weekend and are planning on a very adventurous week!)

Milestone Monday: Teeth and Spaghetti

So the past month has been kind of rough. After we had our crisis of the stomach flu, Princess cut her first tooth! Actually, I probably should have known she wasn't feeling well because I noticed the tooth had finally popped through the day she got sick and she wasn't fussing about it. But then, right after that first bottom tooth, the one beside it popped through too! So it was like 2 to 3 weeks STRAIGHT of teething pain! And because of her PHA2 and the medication she's on she can ONLY have Tylenol. Glad I got an updated dosage at the pediatrician's when we went in at the beginning of January for her Synagis shot.

One of the other things that may not seem like a milestone to everyone else, but is kind of a big deal to me, is that Princess got to have spaghetti! (I'm working on a post about her dietary restrictions.) One of the things she can't have a lot of is tomatoes. This includes things like ketchup and spaghetti sauce. Well, we managed to find ONE spaghetti sauce that is lower in potassium. And the way we mix it all in with spaghetti noodles, she really doesn't get THAT MUCH sauce. And now that she is really getting good at feeding herself, she got to have spaghetti with us for the first time! Like any other child, she wore most of it. Fortunately, we took her clothes off and let her eat it that way. Then she went STRAIGHT into the bathtub!

Princess is sitting up well by herself. Feeding herself well and we are working on crawling. She may be 10 months old, but we're not really close to the point of crawling yet. Her therapist comes out once a week, and we play. She loves the toys he brings (as does Little Man) and we are trying to find new ways to get her on all fours without her screaming at us. She is generally a happy little girl, but she does have a temper. She's curious and into everything. She sometimes gets frustrated because I think her brain tells her that she needs to get to something, but she just can't figure out how to get there. She'll figure it out soon enough!

Milestone Monday: Rolling Over, Feeding and Sitting Up!

Recently, all of a sudden, Princess decided to roll over from her back to her tummy. She'd done it a couple times but last week, the light bulb just went off and she was off and rolling!

This is what she had been doing:

She had just about gotten it. All she had left was that last shoulder. Then she figured it out! 

Then, just randomly, she started grabbing the little puffs we'd been putting on her tray. She's managed to get a few of them to her mouth. So I watched her, and yes, she did have a pincer grasp!

So when we went to the grocery store, we got her Cheerios! (She's special and gets the chocolate ones!) And this little girl may not have a tooth in her mouth, yet she is chewing EVERYTHING up!

And then on Christmas, she did this:

Yep, she sat up all by herself!

Milestone Monday: Socks and Sippy Cups

This would have been posted yesterday, but I was still having issues with my photo storage website. I'm hoping it's fixed now!

Welcome to the first Milestone Monday! Princess has been approved for developmental therapy through early intervention and we have written our Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP). So I figured I should keep track of all of these milestones that she's going to be meeting. Some of them may not seem very big to you, but to us, they are a big deal. Something as simple as learning to pull her socks off on her own is cause for celebration!

So this past week, Princess made some pretty big strides!

Yes, she did finally get those socks off her feet!

She also learned to hold her own bottle!

And she held her own sippy cup!

She's rolled over from her back to her tummy a handful of times, and I have yet to be able to catch it. She did it the first time the afternoon after we wrote the IFSP. I think it was because we set it as an outcome we'd like to see her do. She was awake the whole time and she heard everything we said. So I think she went "HA! You just THINK I can't do it!" It was kind of like the day she was born. She went "HA! You just THINK I need this tube to breathe. Let me pull it out and show you!"