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Archive for Gross motor

Eleven months

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (12)· January 25th, 2012

Eleven months. Seriously. I’m not kidding. One month shy of a whole year.

I’m going to say this now so that I’m not a party pooper on her actual birthday: it really doesn’t feel like it should be so close. And not just in the usual “time flies” way, though that’s always true. I just have such a disconnect between Ellie, the little person in my life, and the day that this baby was born. Obviously I remember it very clearly. But the ten weeks that followed were so surreal, my memory of March and April of 2011 will always be warped. She didn’t even come home until May. So to think of celebrating in the middle of winter is kind of strange. Plus, developmentally-speaking, she’s not doing the kinds of things that other nearly-one-year-olds are doing. I don’t feel like I have an almost-toddler on my hands, the way I would otherwise expect of an 11-month-old.

THAT SAID…

The upside of being told in the hospital that your baby could potentially have very significant developmental delays and perhaps permanent deficits? Every time she makes a new leap forward, every time she does something sort-of-normal, it’s cause for celebration. (Remember that line from Say Anything…? “Start out depressed and then everything is a pleasant surprise.”) When we were still in the hospital, and they suggested that there may be gross motor issues of TOTALLY UNKNOWN severity, I silently wondered things like, “maybe we should move to a one-story house in case she never walks and needs to be in a wheelchair.” Had I voiced that thought, I can tell you the doctors would have just looked at me and shrugged. They had no way of knowing which way it would go, either.

But my girl? My girl wants to be on the move.

Sitting up and rolling over are old news, she’s a total pro. While she can’t yet get herself up to a sit, she can go from sitting down to her belly with increasing speed, purpose, and grace. While on her belly, she now uses her arms to pivot around, and sometimes ends up pushing herself backwards until her legs are stuck under the couch. Between the pivots and the rolling, I can no longer assume she’s going to be right where I left her. That photo up there? I put her down on the quilt in the foreground, sitting up. She managed to get herself over to the TV somehow. It ain’t fast, but she moves.

In physical therapy, we’re working hard on getting more strength in her legs, hips, shoulders, and arms in the hopes of getting her to crawl. With as good as she is at sitting, we need to have her on her belly more so that she can learn to crawl before she learns to just scoot around on her butt. The physical therapists swear up and down that, once babies learn to do a seated scoot, it’s nearly impossible to teach them to crawl. So we spend time on her belly and try to scoop those knees up underneath her instead of being splayed like a little froggie.

But coolest of all, in the last week I can see her try to pick those little hips up on her own. Her stamina is improving almost every day, getting stronger and steadier in those hips and shoulders, kicking those legs, bouncing that little body.

I don’t know how long it will take, but my girl is going to crawl.

How awesome is that?

My big, awesome, 11-month-old girl. My munchkin, my pumpkin pie. What a joy you are. Happy almost-birthday.

Comments (12)

Categories : Birthdays, Child Development, Infants

Tags : crawling, developmental delays, Gross motor

Ending the lockout

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (10)· December 15th, 2011

For the last six weeks, Ellie has been on strike during her weekly physical therapy appointments. Oh sure, she would seem agreeable enough with her big smiles and blowing raspberries. But rolling over? Which she is perfectly capable of doing? No thanks. Grabbing toys? No interest. Nada.

It got to the point that going to the appointments was almost embarrassing. “I swear, she really does roll over at home. She does… you know… touch things from time to time instead of weirdly recoiling her hand when you try to give her something.”

We had really been spoiled. For the first four or five months of PT, there was noticeable improvement virtually every single week. Either she’d be doing something altogether new, or would be steadier and stronger at a previous skill. Halloween came along, and Ellie decided it was time to take a little break.

She wasn’t going backwards, exactly. In reality, it was clearly just a plateau. Normal. To be expected, even, after making so much progress. But with a baby who is already delayed, it’s frustrating when you stop seeing progress you’ve gotten used to. It’s hard not to get anxious over it.

Thankfully, in the last week, Ellie seems to be picking up the developmental pace once again. Sitting up even steadier than before, and finally starting to use her hands to grab a toy or stuffed animal, instead of just using them to prop herself upright. In fact, not only will she pick up the rings from the floor in front of her, but she’ll transfer them to the other hand, AND put them in her mouth! Fine motor, cognition, and oral de-sensitizing, all in one easy toy!

The fine motor stuff was starting to worry me, but I’m happy to say there’s been a noticeable improvement recently. Lots more grabbing and reaching, and suddenly in love with one of those four-key piano toys from my mother-in-law. She was even kind enough to show off for both the physical therapist AND the early intervention therapist this week. Everyone is thrilled to have her back with the program.

Even the feeding therapy stuff has been going a little better. She likes to explore those teething biscuit cookies, and lets me poke around her mouth with this textured brush we use to try to tone down her gag reflex. They’re small steps, but good ones for us.

Though I knew on a logical level that a plateau in her progress was totally normal and shouldn’t be worrisome, waiting for new skills to show up was really stressful and had me feeling quite discouraged. On an average day, I am only just holding the worry at bay, so it doesn’t take much to push me over the edge. Seeing her master new tricks again? Suddenly all feels right in the world.

Comments (10)

Categories : Child Development, Infants

Tags : Early Intervention, feeding therapy, Fine motor, Gross motor, occupational therapy, physical therapy

Ellie, 9 months

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (10)· November 28th, 2011

I have a particular gift for dates. I can remember the date I saw U2 when I was a freshman in high school, the date of my college graduation, and plenty of other random things. I remember a lot of birthdays. Well, sort of. I can tell you someone’s birthday, no problem. I remember the several days ahead of time that it’s coming. And then the actual day arrives and I completely forget until two or three days later. Such was Ellie’s nine-month birthday. Totally knew it was coming, totally forgot on the day of (last Friday, for the record).

Anyways, my sweet girl is now nine whole months old. Three-quarters of the way to her first birthday. We’ve just had her nine-month pediatrician visit and her semi-annual Early Intervention evaluation, so I’ve got a pretty good picture of where she stands.

As for the vitals, she’s about 17lb12oz, and 25.5″. That remains a perfectly average weight and a WAY BELOW AVERAGE length. Short and squishy, that’s my girl. Lucky thing got four shots this morning. It was supposed to be three, but the ancient pediatrician accidentally gave her HepA instead of HepB, so she got them both. When is my regular pediatrician coming back from maternity leave, again?!

EI re-evaluates kids every six months to make sure they still qualify for services (the child has to show at least a 30% delay in one or more areas to qualify). Ellie qualifies automatically based on feeding alone. They scored her at “0 months / newborn” in the area of “self care,” which is entirely feeding at this age. Frankly, they’d probably give her a negative score if they could. She eats nothing. She wants to eat nothing. She gags on everything. The feeding specialist we see through the hospital is visibly disappointed by her total lack of progress, and has proclaimed Ellie a “tough nut to crack.”

Feeding therapy sucks. I literally dab my pinky finger in the smallest amount of baby food you could imagine, and try to get Ellie to let me put it near her mouth, on her lips, or even just barely inside her mouth. Sometimes it’s borderline acceptable. And then sometimes it touches her tongue the wrong way and we have a two-minute gagging fit. It is so, so demoralizing. But we have to keep trying to walk the very fine tightrope of gently pushing her to try to get her used it it and to tame the gag reflex, while not going too far or too fast and creating/strengthening an aversion that will set us back several more months. It’s awful. I hate it. Period.

Gross motor skills scored at 5 months. On the one hand, Ellie’s sitting is getting very good. She’s rolling back and forth quite a bit, especially at naptime. She has even (after the evaluation, of course) started to get herself from sitting, down to her belly, then rolled over onto her back. It’s not terribly graceful and usually involves a slow faceplant, but it does seem to be quite intentional. She still lacks a lot of strength in her arms, and puts very little weight on her legs. Much work yet to be done here.

Fine motor skills were even lower at 3 months. That might be a little low, in my opinion, but regardless, she still needs a lot of work. One problem we’re having is that she is not terribly motivated by toys, so trying to entice her to grab something is very hard. Her own toes? No problem. Your face? For sure. Bright shiny baby toy? Meh. She is a lot more likely to grab things and play with them if she’s reclined or supported while sitting. When she’s sitting on her own, it seems like she’s using all of her energy to keep upright, nothing left for those little fingers.

Cognition was placed at 7 months, and the evaluator even wondered if it would have been higher if her fine motor skills were better. Some of the things they look for the baby to do to demonstrate understanding involves using their hands to manipulate objects. So it’s not necessarily that Ellie didn’t understand something, but potentially that she just didn’t have the fine motor skills to act on it. Regardless, I’m very happy that she falls with a fairly normal range on this one.

Receptive and expressive language were at 5 and 7 months. She makes a lot of different sounds, consonants and pitch and range and all of that, which is excellent. She doesn’t consistently respond to her own name, though.

And finally, social and emotional development. Clearly, she is Daniel’s sister – they scored her at 10 months. I couldn’t tell you exactly what it is she does that makes her a social overachiever, but she is most definitely an interactive baby. She loves to smile at people, loves to have company, loves to be entertained.

Feeding crap aside, I am really happy with all of this. I am especially thrilled that, at least for now, her cognition, language, and social skills are reasonably within the normal range. Every delay has its challenges, for sure. But the fact that she is so sociable, the fact that she seems to be making strides toward communication… well, that makes the rest of it downright bearable if you ask me. Motor skills I can work with. We can practice, we can strengthen, we can adapt. That spark in the eyes? That seems harder to cultivate, harder to compensate for.

Maybe I’m way off base, I have no idea. All I know is what I’ve got, and I am so glad that my girl has plenty of spark.

Comments (10)

Categories : Birthdays, Child Development, Infants

Tags : cognitive development, developmental delays, Early Intervention, feeding therapy, Fine motor, Gross motor, NaBloPoMo, Social/emotional development

Ellie, seven months

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (21)· September 28th, 2011

Ellie has spent the last few weeks working on a new trick.

One of the main characteristics that her providers have mentioned from the very first day she was born was “low tone.” For her age, she is noticeably weak and floppy. We had to support her head when holding her for much longer than you normally would, and tummy time was a complete non-starter. While her squishiness does make her extra cuddly, we’ve obviously been working on trying to help her get stronger. She gets physical therapy once or twice a week, and obviously we practice on our own. Thankfully, we have noticed steady improvement since starting PT back in May.

Since last month, tummy time has gotten much much MUCH better. She’s lifting her head way up high without any help, is starting to push up and support weight on her arms, and is generally a whole lot more tolerant of actually being on her belly in the first place.

It’s still hard work, though.

Even more noticeable is that, when she’s sitting on my lap, she no longer wants to lean back against me. She is constantly pulling herself forward, doing a little crunch with those core muscles to get into a more upright sitting position. The first time she did it, I was so surprised I almost let her fall off my lap. In PT, we started working on a little tripod/supported sitting. She’d manage it for a second or two, but she still keeps her hands in fists a lot of the time and doesn’t have a lot of arm strength, so there’s a lot of collapsing and folding in half. We keep pillows nearby.

Still, we’re working on it. Sometimes you can position her just right, help her lock those elbows and bend her legs for a nice supportive base, and she can almost get the hang of it.

And then, every now and then, you’re supporting her and you can feel those muscles engage in just the right way. And you have five or ten seconds to back up with the camera, and catch this:

With all those weeks in the hospital, talking about “abnormal MRI” this, and “hypotonia” that, and vague references to potentially severe cognitive, language, gross motor delays… I never imagined she’d be this close to independent sitting at a scant seven months. She’s still not what you would call “developmentally appropriate.” There’s still tons of work to do. But man. This is freaking awesome.

Almost as awesome as consonants. Did I mention she is babbling with consonants? Two of ‘em at the moment, “m” and “b.” (And I may have heard “p” this morning.) Again, much closer to the range of normal development than I could have dreamed five or six months ago.

I love this stuff. LOVE IT. Oh, and this sweet, delicious little girl. She is just too much.

Comments (21)

Categories : Child Development, Infants

Tags : developmental delays, Gross motor, language development, sitting

Ellie, Six Months

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (7)· August 25th, 2011

Half a year? Honestly? Six months, already?

Well, in truth, February 25 feels like it was about three lifetimes ago. And of that six months, she’s only been at home for three and a half, so I suppose it’s understandable that I feel a little confused as to how we got here.

But here, indeed, we are. Six months old, my sweet Ellie Bear.

She is really a very happy baby, very much of the time. Her smiles have gone from few and fleeting to freely shared with all. So sweet, watching her face light up when she sees me or M or Daniel or Becca. Even better, she’s really starting to laugh. Again, like smiling, I first thought I heard her chuckle about six weeks ago. But it was so brief (just a single “heh”) and so infrequent, I wasn’t even completely sure that’s what it was. But now, with a little hard work and some silly faces, you can actually draw out some real giggles. She’s also pretty talkative, sometimes a sweet “aaahhh,” sometimes a gutteral growl. But you can always tell if it’s a happy sound or a grumpy one.

With the help of twice-weekly physical therapy (one through the hospital and one at home through Early Intervention), she’s making really nice strides in strength and motor skills. She’s reaching and grabbing more (especially her lovey or anything fabric), holding her head much more steady, and I’ve noticed a lot more strength in her core and legs. I feel like, now, I can look at her and say “yes, she’s going to sit on her own at some point.” It won’t be next week, but she’ll get there. For that, I am very glad.

She has been, all told, a very good sleeper. She’s been consistently sleeping through the night since about four months. Well, sometimes I think she’s awake, but she’s quiet and/or happy and doesn’t require anything from us to go back to sleep. So, close enough. I’ve been playing pretty fast and loose with her daytime sleep, often getting just catnaps in the morning and then a good long nap in the afternoon. It had been working well until a few days ago, and now I think I’m starting to pay the price for the lack of morning sleep. She’s having a harder time settling for that long afternoon nap, and then totally falls apart by bedtime. Bedtime itself is, usually, pretty good. We got into the habit of doing a bath every other night instead of every night, mostly because she screamed bloody murder every time. But now that we’ve got her nasty recurring diaper rash under control, she’s much happier in the tub. Go figure.

She has teeth. OH MY GOD does she have teeth. Four so far, with at least two more clearly visible that will probably be through in the next week or two. For the record, Daniel got his first tooth on his six-month birthday, and Rebecca didn’t get one for another two months after that. RI-GOD-DAMN-DICULOUS, especially for a baby who doesn’t eat.

Oh, right. The eating/feeding thing. It blows. The “practice” with the bottle is going absolutely nowhere. She used to sometimes try to chew on it, but now she just screws up her face and turns away. I’ll talk to our speech pathologist soon (she’s the one guiding our feeding therapy stuff) and we will probably just go for purees on a spoon in the near future, but no idea how that’ll go. In the meantime, the g-tube feeding stuff is going fine and is relatively easy and portable. But, yeah. No noticeable progress there, and the gag reflex is as bad as it ever was.

That said, she’s growing just fine. Well, sorta. She’s packing on the pounds like nobody’s business (15lb7oz/44th percentile at her checkup this morning), but is still pretty short (24″, which was probably generous, around the 5th percentile). We’re working with a nutritionist to gradually tweak her formula intake to try to even those two things out.

She has been really great this summer, tolerating a lot of being dragged around with relative ease. The time has clearly come for me to get serious about planning and respecting her naps, but all in all she has done amazingly well between the endless doctor’s appointments and following along with the big kids and their activities. While she might not be THE most easygoing baby in the world (see: stroller and carseat aversion that, while improved, is not gone), she really has been great. One of the things I’m looking forward to about the big kids going back to school is the chance to actually focus on her a little more, instead of just dragging her to gymnastics.

There you have it, snapshot of my little girl at half a year old. Time has alternately flown and dragged, but mostly flown. I know I’m going to blink and she’ll be a year old, and two, and four, and eighteen. Unbelievable.

Comments (7)

Categories : Birthdays, Child Development, Infants, Sleep

Tags : feeding therapy, g-tube, Gross motor, low tone

See, I knew he was a genius

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (11)· March 3rd, 2009

This morning, we hosted three lovely folks from Early Intervention. For anyone out there who is not familiar with EI, it’s a pretty awesome thing. Basically, if you or your pediatrician have concerns about your infant or toddler’s developent from birth through age 3, you can request an evaluation. They will send out a team (developmental specialists, occupational therapists, and the like) and do a complete evaluation on your child. That means, if you call because you’re worried about speech, they’ll evaluate your child for fine and gross motor, too. The eval is free, they billed my insurance. And if you qualify for services (generally by showing a 30% delay in one or more areas), they’ll send someone to the house to work with your child. A win-win situation, if you ask me!

Anyways, I called about Daniel. I had a very odd, specific concern. Basically, he still drools what seems like an awful lot (though, of course, it slowed down noticeably once I made the call a few weeks ago!). And he has some difficulty chewing certain foods. In particular, ones that you can’t just easily mash, but have to really break down with your teeth. Crackers are no problem, nor are most kinds of fruit. It’s not that he dislikes crunchy things or smooth things. But with, say, a piece of tortellini… he’s most likely to mash it up in his mouth (getting out the yummy filling) and then spit out the actual pasta if it’s even the slightest bit al dente. And it’s not a question of dislike. He’ll ask for more tortellini (or clementine wedge, or grape, etc.). And he eats a reasonable amount of food, is gaining weight, etc etc. It’s not a huge problem, and I honestly suspected that we probably would not qualify for EI services. But I just wanted it to get checked out and maybe get some suggestions for how to work on it.

So, three women came to my house this morning. All very friendly, all fairly young. Basically, two of them played with Daniel while the third asked me some health history-type questions. It was fascinating to watch. Each toy or object they’d bring out of the bag was designed to get at a particular behavior. See if he’d do pretend play, model behavior, stack blocks, match shapes. As far as he was concerned, of course, he was just playing with these nice new people. He was his usual charming, sociable, talkative self. There were a few things when they would ask him a question, and I had to stop myself from chiming in “c’mon, buddy, you know that one!” Especially when it’s something he most definitely knows/understands/is capable of. But he’s a toddler, and sometimes he’s just going to elect not to participate. And you can tell those times, because he gives you the Daniel face. It looks something like this, but with a bit more brow furrowing:

Oh, and when it came time to check on his chewing? I gave him some clementine for a snack, which he always mashes and then spits out. Except when the nice lady is there watching him. Then he swallows segment after segment. Show-off. Way to make mommy feel silly.

At any rate, at the end of the eval, they will let you know how your child did, basically scoring them at a particular number of months for each developmental area. So, if he were scoring right on target, that would be 19 months. He would have to score at 14 months or below to qualify for services. How did he do?

Gross and Fine Motor Skills: 19 months

Spoken language: 20 months

Receptive (understanding) language: 22 months

Cognition and problem-solving: 24 months

Social interaction: 26 months

Oh, and the feeding/chewing is under the umbrella of “self-care,” where he scored… 19 months. She did notice the drooling, and said that he does show a little bit of low muscle tone in the lip area, which usually would lead to speech concerns. Not with my chatterbox. She suggested having him use a straw (which he already does), and try sucking thicker things like yogurt or smoothies. Also blowing raspberries, buzzing your lips, and trying to blow bubbles are all good for that kind of muscle tone. For things specific to food, she suggested that we try to work on more foods with mixed textures, which is where he seems to have a hard time. So try dipping things, like fruit in yogurt or cracker in hummus, or even try eating things like soup that have more than one texture in the same bite.

Yeah. Basically, my kid rocks. Obviously, as his mother, I have long suspected it. But nice to have outside confirmation. He did particularly well on imitating unfamiliar sounds (zoop! zip!), finding a hidden toy in several different variations, and grouping similar objects together. He showed good understanding of basic shape puzzles, even if he couldn’t quite get the triangle to fit properly, and did a great job labeling familiar objects with the correct word. I’m so proud.

All of this is not entirely just to brag about my own kid (though, it’s my blog, so I can do that), but also to say that getting evaluated by Early Intervention was a really good experience. The people were nice and great with the kids, and gave immediate and helpful feedback even though we didn’t qualify for any ongoing services or therapies. Birth to age three, people. If you have any worries, use it!

Comments (11)

Categories : Child Development, Feeding, Toddlers

Tags : cognitive development, Early Intervention, Fine motor, Gross motor, language development, Social/emotional development

Check that box

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (7)· October 1st, 2008

The kiddos continue their developmental progress, with new bits and pieces seemingly every day. As a mom, of course, you can’t help but worry. I found a developmental checklist the other day from an Early Intervention service provider, and I thought I’d take a look. As to be expected, they’re “ahead” on some things, and there are others that they don’t yet do that they arguably should.

One thing that is always on lists that has always bugged me is clapping. In the child development class I took back in the spring, here were all of these 9-month-olds clapping. My kids? Yeah, not so much. But, then, I suppose I don’t clap a lot in front of them, so whatever. I tried doing it more. No interest. It’s a small thing, and they seem to be doing well otherwise on fine and gross motor stuff, but it was this little thorn that kept bugging me.

Last night, all of a sudden, Daniel started clapping. I encouraged him, he kept going. Wohoo! Did other things for a few minutes, tried again – more clapping! Yay! M called on his way home from work and I let him know of this new trick. As I was telling him that Daniel could do it… Rebecca walked up and with a look of “oh, sure, so that’s what we’re doing now?”, she started clapping, too. Even better, a few minutes later, I simply said “clap,” without demonstrating or even really looking at them, and clap they did. Wohoo! Motor skills and language comprehension! I tried again this morning, and it was no fluke. We have clappers. Whew, check off that box. [I'll try to get a picture later today. Daniel is so entertained by clapping, it's frigging adorable.]

In other developmental news:

Daniel is taking a few steps at a time, now many times a day. Sometimes it takes a bit of encouragement, and sometimes he just decides to do it on his own. He has such a great excited, proud smile on his face when he does it. He’s still a little unsure and unsteady, but he’s getting there quickly. He’s also gotten very good at figuring out how to climb on one thing to get at something higher. Such as climbing on Daddy to get to the couch, or climbing on the new Ikea chairs to get on top of the new table.

Rebecca has also figured out the chairs-to-table bit, and every now and then I turn around to find her standing on top of the table. There’s going to be a loud thud followed by screams in my near future. Speaking of loud thuds and screams… both kids are getting better at the feet-first method of getting down from things like the couch. But not all the time, and Daniel crawled himself right off of our bed the other day before naptime. Thankfully he landed on the carpeted part, but the carpet ain’t that thick and he had a nice welt on his forehead. Poor kiddo. I saw it happen, but just couldn’t grab him in time. And so many times he’s crawled near the edge and come right back… oh, we all have to have our bad mommy days, don’t we?

I wrote about speech development the other day for HDYDI, and since then I’ve noticed even more attempts at imitation of words. Rebecca is very clearly trying to indicate “dog,” it’s just that she has a lot of words that sound like “da-da.” But her comprehension is good. When I ask her to find her bear or a ball, she gleefully finds the right thing most of the time. Daniel, I swear to you, is now saying “light” in addition to signing it (it remains his only sign). It sounds more like “yacht,” but he’s done it several times. And for further proof that he really is M’s son… my mother-in-law informs me that “light” was his first word, too. Funny, huh?

Comments (7)

Categories : Child Development, Toddlers

Tags : Fine motor, Gross motor, Language

Limits to my superpowers

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (13)· September 17th, 2008

I tend to pride myself on the variety of activities I undertake with two 13-month-olds in tow. I take them grocery shopping, I take them out to lunch, I take them to classes. All by myself, no biggie. I mean, yeah, it’s more complicated than it would be with one kid, but I’ve got my strategies and my double stroller. I am pretty confident in my abilities.

But, in truth, there are some things better not done solo. Today’s case-in-point: taking them to the playground by myself. This is a nice one. Fenced in, relatively compact, and shredded recycled tires that make a pretty soft surface in case of falls. Has some baby swings, and some less-steep slides. But the fact of the matter is that I have two mobile-but-not-steady kids who don’t take direction and haven’t entirely figured out that you can’t crawl straight off of surfaces 3 (or 6 or 10) feet above the ground.

I mean, we did OK. No one was in any way injured. They were a big hit with a couple of five-year-old girls. But at this age, it’s just a really tricky outing to do by myself. Lots of chasing, lots of pulling off of high places (and ensuing proto-tantrums), lots of lifting that’s causing my lower back to grumble menacingly at me right now. And none of the other moms are particularly able (even if they were hypothetically willing) to help me, because they obviously have their own kids to watch and prevent from falling. It’s just one of those things that, at this age, is better done with a 1:1 adult-to-child ratio.

We really needed an outing this afternoon. They skipped the afternoon nap again, a nap that currently has only about a 60-70% success rate. The trouble is that they really seem to still need it, and are often hysterical when they don’t get it. And when they’re hysterical because they haven’t napped, and I haven’t had any break because they haven’t napped, it’s best if we all get the hell out of the house. So, off we went. Stopped at the Starbucks drive-thru for a mommy pick-me-up, and off we went two towns over to the park. (Yeah, my sucky town doesn’t have much by way of playgrounds… boo.)

Naturally, they both passed out by the time we arrived. Hrm. So, there I am, the weirdo sitting in her car at the playground. Hope no one thought I was a stalker. I let them sleep for a few and tried to relax and listen to the radio and check my email on my enabler iPhone. Then I got out of the car, and opened the sliding doors. They didn’t wake up. I put on their shoes. Didn’t even twitch. I unbuckled their carseats, called their names, stroked their heads. Nothing. See what I mean about needing the sleep? Anyways, just when I was going to give up and go back home, they stirred. Great, brought them over to the playground. We stayed for about half an hour until Rebecca lost it when I pulled her away from the slide so another kid could go down without kicking her in the head. Let’s just say it was an ugly afternoon and an early bedtime.

I recognize that this is the beginning of the dreaded switch to one nap, but as much of a struggle as the afternoon nap is right now, I honestly don’t believe it’s time for it to go. Plus, they’re still completely ready for the AM nap at 9:00, and that’s obviously way too early to be the only one for the day. But they only seem to really take the afternoon one if I do something that involves a lot of running around in between the naps. Easier said than done, for sure, especially with Daniel not yet walking and the weather hinting that we won’t be able to play outside forever. My buddy Dr. Weissbluth seems to agree that’s the way to go: “intense stimulation” after the AM nap, but then “extra long and relaxing soothing to sleep for the midday nap.” I’m not sure what on earth the latter should look like with two kids who just want to climb on me, but I suppose I’ll give it a shot. I suspect there will be a lot of back-and-forth on this one until the day comes when we just go to the one nap. Wohoo.

Comments (13)

Categories : Child Development, Out and about, Toddlers

Tags : Gross motor, Naps

We have a walker!

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (11)· September 7th, 2008

We were at our friends’ house, visiting and making dinner for them since they’re now expecting their third child. Rebecca has been more and more confident with standing in the last week, and very insistent on me or M helping her walk around, but I wasn’t sure how soon she’d up and do it on her own. Even when she was standing on her own, she preferred to do so while holding onto a beach ball. I’m not sure why.

Anyways, yet again, animals provided the final push of motivation. When she first crawled, it was in an attempt to chase the dog. This time, she was already standing with her hands on our friends’ long-suffering cat. The cat decided to go elsewhere, and Rebecca was so focused on it, that she just went right along. We all cheered wildly, and proceeded to make her walk back and forth between us for the rest of the day.

Yikes! A walker! We’ll see if she remembers her newfound ability tomorrow morning, or how long it takes her to just do it on her own. I suspect it won’t be long and she’ll be tearing around the house on two legs shortly. That also busts my initial prediction that Daniel, though he crawled more than two months later than Rebecca, would be the first walker. Ah well. No rush, really! I may have to bust out those little backpacks sooner than I thought…

Comments (11)

Categories : Child Development, Milestones, Toddlers

Tags : Gross motor

Out of sorts

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (11)· September 4th, 2008

I’m just not feeling 100% right now. The last few days have felt kind of out of control. My house is cluttered and messy. The kids are clingy and screamy. M is home sick. Naps are being skipped. Things are buzzing around in my head, but nothing quite wants to become a real blog post.

I think de-cluttering my house will be a major improvement… as soon as I can find the energy to do it. My twin club’s sale is coming up, so that’s a major incentive to go through all of the old baby clothes and gear. I also need to do a major clothing purge of my own, to get rid of the piles of things that I haven’t worn since well before I got pregnant, not to mention all the maternity clothes. I can’t keep them around on the outside chance that I might have more kids at some point down the line. If I do, I can just get a new pair of jeans. Seriously.

But all is not lost. In between screaming and tantrums, the kids are pretty funny these days. Today I slid Rebecca down the slide on our swingset, and she thought it was hilarious. Then, she realized she could climb back up. It took her a few tries, but she kept going right back to it, until she climbed all the way to the top. And Daniel just never stops talking. He’s so expressive and has so much to say… I just wish I knew what it was.