She is about 20 months old now and has advanced sooo much in her abilities. It was in about January of 2012 that she first actually started to move. She was in a seated position and would move in a cartwheel like movement. We like to refer to it as "twirling". I've been told that a lot of babies that aren't quite strong upper bodywise will usually scoot on their bottoms but she found this way instead all by herself which turns out to be pretty convenient and clever. She still doesn't say any words the only thing that she does say and it sound pretty close is " hi dad". She still doesn't say her "m's" much so "mom" is almost non-existant. I'm not sure she even recognizes that I am referred to as mom.
As of April 2012 she had made much more progress......Early march we saw a spine specialist at Shriner's hospital in Utah. She has a curvature in her back that resembles kyphosis. Her OT was concerned and urged me to see a specialist to take a look at it. He said that the normal curvature is about 50% in the upper back whereas her is 60%. He said that her lower back which resembles lordosis is just compensating for the curves of her upper back. I told her OT this and she was thinking, hoping that if she strengthen her upper back muscles that it could maybe help the curves to either straighten or slow the progression. The specialist said we don't need to worry too much but that we need to bring her in every 10-12 months to keep track of how she is doing......Back to her OT, she said the only way she could think of strengthening her back muscles would be to spend more time in the four point position or to crawl. The was an amazing day. We spent just about a whole hour playing with blocks on her hands and knees and coaxing her in to getting down on her hands and knees, if she squealed we would let her get back on to her bottom. Apparently praise it was is really her ticker. She loves to be praised. When she would voluntarily get on her hands and knees and play we would just make such a big deal out of it. That is how she knows that "oh this is a good thing, this is what I should be doing". I even got her in that position and she tried to get away and ended up crawling away from me!! I was in pure shock that she did that. Now that I knew she could I pushed her and pushed her to crawl. We still make a huge deal out of it when she just spontaneously comes in the room crawling. I can tell that it is helping out tremendously with her strength. She is such an amazing girl. Just praise and praise her and she'll do anything.
Just this night I was so excited. She was playing around the couch trying to get up. I usually have to show her to steps to stand up. I put one of her knees in a 90 degree angle and she'll push on that leg to a standing position. Eventually she wanted to move from standing to crawling up on the couch. I showed her to put a knee up on the couch and she could pull herself up, of course I had to do a lot of boosting because she just doesn't have all the strength yet to pull up. Just now I saw her pull herself up into a standing position all by herself and she had one knee up on the couch. She started to whine for me to help her up the rest of the way! I was soo impressed!!! I can't possibly imagine what it next she tends to keep me guessing. We've been trying to teach her a little bit of sign language so that she can better communicate. Lately she's got the pointing thing down she points to everything. If she wants a drink or something I'm eating she'll point. She'll point at the dogs and I'll recite their names etc. The other night she held her empty sippy cup out to me and I signed the action for "more". Out of the blue we've tried this many times before she mimicked me. She obviously doesn't know what this means so I filled up her cup and gave it to her and she refused it, so I brushed her teeth and put her to bed. Every so often when she is being fussy and just not getting through to me she'll do the sign for "more". I thought it was her cup or her blanket. This night she had both her cup and blanket in front of her and she was fussing and signing it again. So i'm thinking that it means she wants to go to bed. I figure its not the right sign but at least she is communicating that she is tired and wants to go to bed.
Such an amazing little girl I am so truly impressed I love living each day to see what comes next in our little adventure together. There aren't a lot of things better than seeing your hard work pay off. What takes normal kids days to learn it'll take her weeks if not months. My 20 mo. old daughter is starting to break out of her infancy.
