Happy 1 Year Birthday Angel

Angel is 1 year old today!  Really?!?  How can that possibly be?  My sweet little baby girl is growing up so fast and I feel like I’ve forgotten so much already.  I’ve been so busy with the two girls that my blogging has taken a back seat for many months and unfortunately that is how I capture most of my memories and so I’ve missed them.  I’ll try to capture some of what Angel is doing currently, but it changes so fast that I can’t keep up.

Language:

After spending a few weeks or more likely it was a couple of months FREAKING out about her lack of speech…and I mean absolute, complete lack…we now have a motor mouth on our hands.  This little girl talks and talks and talks and I have hardly any idea what she is saying, but she is saying a lot!  She has quite a few words that I can understand and she mimics a lot of words too.  Here is a partial list of the words she says currently: hi, shoes, bye, ball, dog, outside, down, Elmo, milk, more, o (Cheerios), push, all done (which she says in the sweetest little voice that melts Mommy’s heart) and probably more that I can't think of since we haven't been writing them down. And she signs more, milk, all done, ball and potty which clearly means we have spent WAY too much time taking Sweet Pea to the potty.  And yes, Mammy and Daddy are missing from this list…eventually I’ll hear those sweet words I’m sure.

Here is a little video of her saying "all done":

And here is one of her saying "outside":



Eating:

Angel is still a champion eater although she is getting pickier with time.  She definitely prefers table foods over baby food.  Banana might be her all time favorite food right now, but that is only because she hasn’t had her cake yet.  I’m sure she will go crazy for that tonight!  Her other favorite foods are Cheerios, Goldfish, and avocado…but not guacamole.

Walking:

She has ZERO interest in walking.  She crawls super fast and she often pants like a dog as she is crawling which makes us crack up.  She can walk with a fair amount of wobble holding onto one hand.  She will sometimes take two steps by herself to get to something.  That something is most certainly not Mom, Dad, Sweet Pea or Grandma!  Oh no…we are not nearly enough motivation.  A puppet however is!  She has a nickname that starts with Silly ____ for a reason.  She also doesn’t have any interest in walking with walkers.  We stand her up at the handle and she holds onto them and walks around to the side or front of them to play with whatever is there.  Oh well…she will certainly walk when she is ready and I’m sure I’ll regret ever teaching her at all!

Here is a video of her trying to leave our house and then showing off her walker skills:

Climbing:

She is definitely a climber.  She used Sweet Pea’s lap desk the other day to climb onto the couch.  On Tuesday I left her alone at NAPA Center while I washed out a dish and I came back to find her on top of the therapy staircase (it’s only a couple steps up so it wasn’t as bad as it sounds).  She wasn’t even in the vicinity of that staircase when I left!  At Sweet Pea’s other therapy locations Angel is always climbing into the chairs.  I think she wants to participate in the therapy since she always sees her sister doing it.  She did join in at Sweet Pea’s center based therapy program last week for a short bit and it was cute to watch her sitting at the table with the other kids.  

Games/Songs:

Angel enjoys the itsy bitsy spider and twinkle twinkle, but doesn’t do the hand motions yet.  She plays peekaboo all the time.  She pretends to be bashful around people and gives them her cutest smile and then turns her head away.  Angel doesn’t really have any favorite toys…except for whatever her sister is playing with and also whatever she can carry in her mouth as she crawls around…which contributes to her looking like a dog in addition to sounding like one (maybe she is spending too much time with Kodi).

And one last video of her enjoying her penguin punching bag:

Teeth:
She still has the same 6 teeth that she had by the time she was 8 months old.  Don’t think anything is coming in soon either, but who knows.

Sleep:

She takes two naps a day on most days.  The naps can go anywhere from 20 minutes (oh how I hate those) to 2 hours (heaven!), but typically are in the area of 45 minutes.  Her ability to sleep through the night fluctuates greatly…some weeks are good…others not so much.  She seems to require crying to fall asleep and that is not a characteristic that I hope stays, especially since she shares a room with her sister. 

Angelisms:

• She has the most precious laugh. 
• She sounds like Donald Duck when she talks sometimes and other times she has the sweetest, softest voice ever and still other times she is the loudest girl in the entire world.  So many voices from one little girl.
• She loves to recline.  She tries to lay back on people all the time.  I don’t know if she learned it from Kodi or if it was all her doing, but it’s cute.
• Angel LOVES bath time!  She comes into the bathroom as soon as she hears the water running.
• Her favorite person in the world is still Sweet Pea.  She squeals with delight when she sees her sister coming toward her to play.
• I didn’t mean for this to be a pattern, but she is like Kodi in yet another way.  She runs her head into EVERYTHING.  She has no concept of where her noggin is in relation to the rest of the world.  She has had numerous bruises on her forehead and even a 3/4 inch scratch all from running into things or falling over.  She is extremely tough which shouldn’t surprise me since she had to put up with abuse from her older sister from a very, very early age.

Bottom line is that we love Angel with all our hearts and we can't imagine life without her.  This first year has been wonderful and I just know that this next year is going to be even better. 

Happy Birthday!!!!!

Wordless Wednesday: Zainy Hair

These are Happy Days

Life is good here.  The girls are both healthy and happy which is a nice change.

Angel is climbing onto everything so I'm sure the bumps and bruises are going to multiply for a while.  She doesn't just climb, she conquers!  Angel has zero interest in walking, but she sure does enjoy this new found freedom of climbing.

Sweet Pea is starting to be so much more independent!  She will often completely feed herself with her spoon or fork and not require us to even load the utensil with the food.  We used to have to load it and feed her so this is a huge step for us.

She also self entertains for a much longer period of time now.  The only issue is that she HATES when her sister tries to join her in some of her playing.  Sometimes they play great together (parallel more than together), but other times...not so much.  Little sisters sure can be pesky. :-)  (I'm a little sister so I can say that.)

And she is walking without fighting so much more!  We walked to the park on Saturday with Aunt R & Uncle R and she walked the entire way there without one complaint.  It is only 3 blocks, but for her that is HUGE!  On the way home it was a little more challenging, but I only had to use one goldfish cracker as motivation to keep walking which is unheard of.  She was asking for Signing Time about a block from the park but clearly we didn't bring a tv with us to the park so she had to walk home to watch an episode while I cooked dinner.  Silly little Signing Time addict...

On the walking and behavior front...I was able to take both kids to Trader Joe's this morning without wanting to pull my hair out after just a few minutes.  The trip took about 40 minutes in total and Sweet Pea was great during it!  Angel sat in the cart and Sweet Pea walked through the aisles with me.  She would help me pick out food to put in the cart and she only touched three items that she shouldn't have.  We used to have issues often even in the parking lot before getting into the store!  Getting through the entire shopping trip without one fit is a dream come true.  We got a little help from an employee when she gave her stickers for being so cute, but still...Sweet Pea did it!  I am so proud of her!!!!

Back to the park...both girls enjoyed the trip.  Sweet Pea showed off her climbing skills and her lack of fear of the big winding covered slide immediately.

Angel decided that going down slides on her bottom was for novices.  She much prefers this new method:

Angel was having a blast on the rocking animals with a little assistance from Auntie R.

This doesn't fit with this post, but seeing as I don't do many posts I better include it while I'm here...Completely random, but it's so strange that I have to write it...Angel has a few different toys in her crib that she has two different versions of the same basic thing (often because one was Sweet Pea's but she never played with them)...two pink my first dolls, two Tiggers, two chewy blanket things, etc.  The other day I walk into her room after a nap and find that all 6 of these items on the floor.  Not a big deal.  She tosses her toys out all the time.  Daddy says she is interrogating them and if they don't talk, they are goners.  Anyway, the toys on the floor wasn't the interesting part.  The fact that these toys were paired up...even on the floor was!  She had dropped them in such a manner that you had the 2 dolls right on top of each other, then the two Tiggers next to that and about a foot away the 2 chewy blanket things.  It was very odd.  I should have taken a picture, but didn't think of it at the time.  On Friday when I saw her manhandling her two Tiggers again I had to get a picture of that.  She has both of her poor Tiggers by the tail and is loving every minute of it.  And yes, I love it even more because of the twist on "Tiger by the Tail".

Professional Photos!!!!

Yep, you read it right...we finally had family photos taken again!  The last time this happened Sweet Pea was only about 6 months old.  So much has changed since then and I really wanted to capture our new family in a professional manner...my daily photography skills are definitely lacking!  We were very lucky to be able to work with an amazing photographer, Andrea Moore (www.mamamoorephotography.com), who wanted to build out her portfolio a bit more.  It takes a daring individual to take on the monumental task of photographing this family!  Take a look at some of the moments she was able to capture.  I tried to narrow it down to a smaller set of photos, but it was too hard so I'm sharing many of them with you here:

































































I hope you enjoyed them as much as I do!

Merry Christmas

We wish you all a merry Christmas!

Happy Friday!

It's been a very long week with Angel being sick and dealing with the ups and downs that come with potty training so when I was handed a copy of Sweet Pea's latest testing results, I was more than a little nervous.  Did I want to read them or should I put them in a drawer until the new year.  If you know me, you know that I can't put them in a drawer so as soon as I got home and got the kids settled I pulled them out and pulled out the last test to do a comparison.  This test puts age equivalents to Sweet Pea's skills in a variety of areas.  It's sometimes extremely heartbreaking to read because while I know that Sweet Pea is delayed, seeing how delayed right there in black and white is rough.  There are often times when I am surprised by how far behind she is in a certain area, but I'm often pleasantly surprised by how well she is doing in another.  This time I was thrilled by most of what I saw!  This was called the discharge report, but since she has three more months until she turns 3 I'm a little confused by that.  They tried to explain it was due to the holiday, but even still it seems a little early, but oh well.

The specific report they did was the Hawaii Early Learning Profile (HELP).  "This is a non-standardized assessment that examines seven domains of development: regulatory/sensory organization (self-regulation capacities and a child's capacity to perceive and organize various sensory experiences), cognition (mental processess related to thinking, remembering and reasoning), language (expressive and receptive), gross motor (whole body movements such as crawling, walking, jumping, and climbing), fine/perceptual motor and finally self help (oral motor, dressing, feeding, grooming)".  Here are the results from the previous test and the current test:

Chronological Age	28 mths	33 mths
Regulatory/Sensory	Atypical - Concerns are with hypersensitivity to vestibular and proprioceptive processing	Atypical - Concerns are with hypersensitivity to vestibular and proprioceptive processing
Cognition	20-24 mths with scattered skills up to 29 mths	28-30 mths
Receptive Language	22-24 with scattered skills up to 30 mths	26-29 mths
Expressive Language	15-18 mths	21-24 mths
Gross Motor	18-20 mths	25-29mths with delays in jumping and stairs (22 mths)
Fine Motor Foundations	intact with exception of bilateral and midline skills (8.5-12 mths)	intact with exception of grasp and prehension (23-25 mths)
Perceptual-Motor Integration	18-23 mths with greater concerns in paper/scissor tasks	26-28 mths
Self Help	20-24 mths	30-34 mths

Just writing that out made me question a few things in it, but overall I am extremely proud of how hard Sweet Pea has worked these past few months.

One of the things that gets me frustrated is that she has finally started to sleep better and I wonder if that has anything to do with how strong she is developing in so many areas.  I know I do a lot better with sleep!  The only two things we changed were 1) putting Angel in the same room as her and so Sweet Pea had to learn to sleep through crying 2) giving her Nexium at night instead of in the morning.  I wish I knew if either of those were the magic bullet for her sleeping better, but as long as it continues I really don't care.

I need to try to get the data behind these numbers on Monday as it seems that some might not be completely accurate.  For example, in the 28 mth results she was intact on fine motor foundations except for the bilateral and midline skills which would typically be in the 8.5-12 mth range.  From what they explained to me last time that meant that she had met all the skills (except for the bilateral and midline) up to the 28 mth level.  This time it says she is intact with the exception of grasp and prehension (which I just looked up in the dictionary as "The act of grasping or seizing") which is listed as 23-25 mths.  Did she regress?  If she was intact up to 28 mth before (except midline/bilateral), how is she now missing this other area?

This is good practice at trying to understand the tests and trying to figure out what they really mean since I'm told I need to learn to do that when it comes time for IEPs.  I have a lot of learning ahead of me, but I do enjoy most of it.  It's fascinating learning about development!  I just wish that my child's education didn't depend upon it!

Now for some random pictures...

The girls are having fun playing together these days and I can't adequately express how much joy it brings me to watch them.






Christmas Parade with Grandma and Grandpa.  We are surprised Angel survived as she had 102 fever and was doped up on Tylenol, but she rallied and made it through.