Wednesday, February 24, 2010

A Piper’s Progress

The last few weeks, I’ve kind of felt like Piper had plateaued in her skills.  She hadn’t even been signing as much or as often (although we continued to see “doggy” religiously), which worried me a little.  I tried to give her some leeway after surgery; I’m still not convinced that was at least part of it.

This week?  A completely different story.

Her sitting skills have exponentially improved.  She’s able to sit for 10+ minutes, flop backward for a second, and sit back up for 10+ minutes again.  And again, and again.  She’s rocking back and forth, playing with toys, reaching to the side and in front of her, she even looking up without falling.  I can’t believe it.  I seriously can’t believe it.  She’s been “sitting” for a while, but we hadn’t hit that well-balanced-and-for-long-periods-of-time part.  She went from mediocre sitting to sitting really well in about a week and a half.  It makes me think that she’s been able to, but she hasn’t had the confidence to do it.  So I’ve been really conscientious to not let her fall or get spooked when she’s sitting, because I’m wondering if that’s what happened before Christmas.

Piper’s been giving kisses lately.  For several weeks, actually, but they’d stopped the last few weeks, too.  She thinks she’s so funny to kiss on you.  Although she does go for you mouth, which I’m not a big fan of.  The cheek is a good second choice.

The last few weeks she’s finally started playing with her feet.  She’s known that they’re hers, and that she can move them, she just hasn’t really played with them until now.  I talked to Becky about it today.  I really don’t think that she was able to physically move that way before.  Becky thought, too, that maybe it was because of some “preemie muscle tone” stuff going on in her legs; nothing big, just things like she likes her legs to be straight, and that’s where most of her muscle is.  I think that her legs are starting to loosen up enough for her to really pull them up.  What does that mean for us?  These are examples of what she did up until about a week ago.  Hardly over a 90 degree bend at the hips.

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…and this is what she does now.  And if she doesn’t have socks on?  Those toes are awful tasty.  I think she tickled herself the first time she chewed on her toes—she started laughing all over the place!

The cutest thing she’s started this week?  She’s learned to clap!  A lot!  She even did it for Becky during therapy today (gasp!!!).  She really liked to hold your hands while you clapped,  but she hasn’t been able to get her hands together just yet.  Church on Sunday had a lot of clappy music, so we clapped with her the whole time.  Apparently it worked—she’s non-stop now.  While we were out yesterday, if someone said how cute she was, she’d clap at them (again, my child really doesn’t have an ego- promise).  And she absolutely does it when she’s proud of herself. 

She’s also learned that she can try to bargain with her cuteness.  Today during therapy, she had the saddest face on when Becky was trying to get her to pull to stand.  Then she’d start clapping like she was either saying “Yeah!  I’m all done, right?  Yeah for me!” or “What if I do this instead?  Would this be okay?”.  Of course it didn’t work, but it didn’t prevent us from laughing at her.  Silly girl.

She’s working on moving from sitting to standing.  It’s really hard, but she’s definitely getting the hang of it.  Because of her tendency to straighten, we kind of have to manhandle her to keep her in the squatting position. 

I have to say—it’s quite comical to see an adult having  to use the entirety of their upper body and torso to keep my 11 pound baby in the squat position. 

What she lacks in size, she makes up for in stubbornness personality.

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