Catching Up

I feel that I should apologize for my dramatic drop in postings recently.  It has been hard to find the time or motivation to write anything that would be worth of reading.  Sweet Pea isn't really doing anything new and we are just muddling through here.  Some days we feel better than others, but overall things are good.  Let me try to think of all the things that I haven't shared recently.

Skills:  Sweet Pea is definitely creeping a lot more.  She moves around a lot in a small area and moves for whatever she wants.  We have a clear bin of toys and she creeps over to it and tries to grab things out of it.  I love that she is moving where she wants to go and know that it is just a matter of time before she is moving more than a few feet.

She is also working hard at learning to go from laying to sitting.  We jumped the gun when we announced that she was doing it.  I don't know if it was just the bed or what, but she hasn't repeated that yet.  She is definitely getting closer and we only have to put a little bit of pressure on her opposite hip for her to get up, but we do have to help her get started.  She is so adorable when she gets up because she starts clapping and gets the biggest grin!  We eat it up and feed into it as having her happy about making progress is a-ok in my book!

Sweet Pea is also working on the sign for milk.  Tonight at the grocery store she did the funniest thing!  She was riding in the cart and I was pushing it.  I had stopped for a minute while Daddy was looking for something.  Sweet Pea lifts her arms up and pats the sides of my boobs with a big grin and then with her right hand does the milk sign.  It could have all been coincidental, but we just cracked up!  First of all, she has not had any breast milk for almost a month now.  Secondly, she has NEVER patted my boobs like that or anything close to that before.  And we have only seen her do the milk sign a couple of times!  It seems impossible that she was really doing that, but who knows!  It made us smile though and sometimes that is enough!

I weighed her on our home baby scale the other night before a bath and she was finally over 18lbs!  She seems like she has grown in length too, but I'm thrilled that she is gaining at least a little weight.  That is about a pound in just under a month and I'm definitely good with that rate.  We don't know if it is because of all the dairy fat she was getting for a week or so there or just because she is finally eating again.  Either way I'm happy!  After we introduce a few more foods we will try some dairy again in lower quantity and see if her mini vomits start up again.

Speaking of food, we are trying all sorts of new things with her.  She is enjoying the tofu in chicken broth.  We gave her a lightly steamed carrot stick and while it worked well for trying to get her to bite on it, we had a hard time keeping her from choking on the pieces that she would eventually bite off.  When she finally gets a bite to break off she certainly isn't going to allow Mommy or Daddy to get it out of her mouth.  Any suggestions on what we can do?

We have her hearing test scheduled for the first week in May and hope that she passes with flying colors.  I'll feel better when we know the results.

Today was our second time to attend the DSALA Basketball Program and Sweet Pea actually started somewhat rolling the ball.  She is more swatting than anything else, but she is getting the concept down.  She has fun watching the other kids and loves that people find her so adorable and she just wraps them all around her little finger.

We also attended a Baby Signing class through DSAOC and I have to say that we were very disappointed with it.  They spent the first 45 minutes of the 2 hour class telling us why signing was so important.  We all knew that it was important and that is why we had paid the money and taken the time to attend the darn class!  I had hoped that they would have setup the class to be more about teaching sign to our kids with Down syndrome, but it was almost 100% a canned presentation that they would have given to a group of typical parents.  It was frustrating since it was through DSAOC.  Oh well, we still picked up a few things so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

Tomorrow we have our local support group play date and those are always fun.  It's nice getting to see all the other kids and their parents.  We always have some interesting therapists volunteering their time as well so we get some different ideas.  We always look forward to it.

Here are a few photos that we have been slow to download to the computer...

Poor Daddy was just trying to enjoy a glass of wine at the end of dinner.  Sweet Pea may not always eat or drink her own food, but she will always try to have a part of what we are having.  Too bad we normally have food that she can't have!  I really can't wait until that is no longer the case!!!!







She is so proud of herself and just so darn cute!





Birthday balloons provided a lot of entertainment!





She is a music girl alright!  This is her at her Wednesday morning OT session.