Princess P Cruiser

Guess who’s CRUISING???

Not efficient.  Not prettily.  But she IS moving by herself. 

It’s been a long time coming, I think.  She’s really getting tall enough that she can stand up to the couch (with no cushions, or with cushions providing that someone’s sitting on it to squish the cushions a little)- it’s really the right height for her to cruise on and works out nicely.  I don’t think, however, that my husband enjoys the new furniture arrangement in the living room (cushion off couch, table pushed up to the chair and turned the other direction), but it’s all in the name of motor development and therapeutic “design”, right???

Anyway, I gave her a snack the other day, and since my brother was over, I just put in in a little plate on the floor.  She thinks a treat to get to eat not in her chair sometimes.  This day, though, she wasn’t eating them.  She started really getting frustrated, so I went over to see what the issue was.  She sat up and pointed to the couch.  I asked if she wanted her snack on the couch.  She got ultra excited and started crawling over.  She stood up once I put the plate up.  I put the plate over a ways from where she was standing (one of the tricks I play to get her to move from the very balanced, very stagnate “zero” position- it’s been working, by the way) so that she had to reach.  I went back in the kitchen to get her milk, came back, and she wasn’t reaching for it- she was at it!!!  She did the half-couch distance about a dozen times (both directions, even!) while she ate and drank.  And she did not want to sit, thankyouverymuch. 

And to what do we owe the credit?

Why, a princess crown, of course.

Oh, the Horror!

There’s nothing worse in this world than when your internet goes down.

Okay, I admit to being a little melodramatic.

But only a little…

A full day.  A full Saturday.  And, really, I don’t know if I would have been so upset if I wasn’t supposed to be working.  Yup, and I need to be online in order to do so.  Greeeeeat. 

Thankfully, it finally came back about 8 tonight, so I could get a couple hours in before the system goes down at 12.  Only 9 hours shy of what I was hoping to get done today.

Ugh.

Anyway, while we were home with not a lot to do (I didn’t remember how absolutely, positively glorious that feels…), we decided to go for a walk with the dogs.  Piper was refusing to go to sleep anyway (even though she was way past exhausted from the last couple days), and it had just rained so it had cooled off nicely.

We let the dogs off-leash once we go to the open space stretch and the dogs flew off in search of something good to smell. 

Piper couldn’t. stop. laughing.  She kept yelling at them telling them she wanted to join (or something).  She thought they were so darn funny. 

I put her in the grass to play for a few minutes and she was yelling at the dogs some more.  She was sitting on a good hill, and was laughing at the dogs so hard that she toppled onto her tummy.  Unfortunately, when she went down to her belly, she didn’t account for the slope, and ended up rolling a couple times instead.  Then she wanted to sit up, but she wanted to go uphill.  It took a lot of muscle to sit up in that direction; I was quite impressed that she did it.

Mid-scream amongst the doggy chaos.  It’s amazing the amount of volume the squirt can produce.  Simply amazing.

Makes me realize that we really ought to take advantage of Saturdays with nothing to do.  Even if that means not getting the volume of work done that you should.  <<sigh>>  Who needs sleep, anyway, right???

Is it bad…

…if your kid doesn’t have a toy box, but rather a full toy shelf???

We needed to do something.  The toys are starting (okay, maybe less “starting”, and more “have been for a long time but we’ve chosen not to notice”) to take over our house. 

They had this at Costco (yes, yes- I am addicted to that place…) and it looked perfect to keep and organize all Piper’s toys.  And best of all, they’re all within reach and relatively easy to get to. 

While Luke was putting it together, Piper played in the box and oversaw the construction effort.

Once it was put up, and filled, she had to inspect the project to ensure it met her high standards.

Yup, structurally sound.

…inside and out.

Gotta train “organization” early, right???

…although I will fully admit that I prefer the act of organizing, and not so much the keeping of things organized.  Maybe Piper can train me a little…    

Park Day

I started the summer this year with the intentions of going to the park at least once a week.  I thought we should go to a different park every time (which is very possible where we live) just to expose her to lots of places.

Unfortunately, it’s now August, and we’re far from the once-a-week part.

But, we have gotten to go several times to different parks- and Piper’s loved every one of them.

She’s learned to crawl in, through, and out of tubes:

(yes, that’s a ribbon that I tie around her waist in a vain attempt to keep her pants up somewhere around her middle…  It doesn’t do loads of good, but at least they’re not around her ankles…)

 

And she’s learned to go up and down stairs (although the down part is not as… graceful?… as it could be):

Parks, though, are exponentially more fun when the dogs get to go with you…

…sometimes.  Other times, it’d be nice if the tongue would stay in the mouth…  Just for a little while…

But watching Duncan’s tongue, Piper remembered about her tongue.  Yes, she’s pinching it…  Ouch??

Hopefully, now that the weather’s going to start cooling down a little, we can get out more often.  We still have slides to conquer- I’d like for her to feel comfortable enough to go down, even a little, by herself.  I bought one of those tiny LittleTyke slides at a garage sale this summer- she’s getting better on it, for sure.  Part of my efforts to make her feel more comfortable in movement.  I want to squeeze every ounce of benefit from being outdoors before we head into snowy season.

It’s the definition of a “Coloradan”- with every season, you can’t wait for the next one.  Come August, you’re tired of the heat and ready for the cold.  Come February, you’re so sick of snow you can’t see straight and long for the warmth…  Guess that’s the plight of living in an area where there are 100 degree, or more, differences between summer and winter…

C’mooooon winter! 

…but not until we can go down the slide…

Walking Machine

I got this tip while we were in Florida, and decided to give it a try (thanks, Magan!!!). 

Piper walks, great, with two-hand support.  She’ll go anywhere you take her (or, rather, she takes you), and her endurance is really good, too.  She’ll walk with her little walker, if someone is touching her (that someone doesn’t have to be doing any work for her, however).  So walking with the stick seems to be a good transition piece, because it doesn’t allow personal touch.

And guess what?  It works.  It works, it works, it WORKS!!!

Get ready:

Get set (remember the arms-reach rule with the dogs???):

Go!!!

Instead of using a broom stick, I went ahead and got a shorter stick from Michael’s, because the broom is a little big for our house.  And I could get it a little smaller in diameter this way, too, which made Piper feel more secure. 

Yesterday we were playing this game, and I kept lowering the stick until I wasn’t holding it at all.  Piper stood all by herself (while holding the fairly heavy stick, mind you) for a few seconds by herself. 

The best part about this, though, is that she’s walking with her walker by herself, now, too!  It seems like we always have to give her the confidence to do a skill, and make sure that she feels like she can do something.  Her confidence is always behind her actual abilities; I hope that someday it’ll get easier for her to try new things.  But, in the meantime, we’ll just give her all the chances and make sure that she’s trying to do the things we think she can do!

Piper and the Puppies

This is precisely the distance that the dogs are usually from Piper throughout the course of a day:

It really makes me laugh.  Especially since Maggie, the black one, has always been protective over Piper, but up until relatively recently, watched over her from a distance.  But since Piper’s gotten more and more mobile, Maggie is enjoying Piper more and more.  To the point that she’s almost always within arm reach of Piper.  Which is really saying something, considering that Piper’s arms are pretty stinking small.

To show her appreciation and love of her best friends, Piper decided to read them one of her favorite books: Curious George and the Puppies.  I thought it a very apropos choice.

She showed them he cover, like all good storytellers:

And then read the story page-by-page (albeit I’m sure she forgot a page or two…  Or ten…):

I was especially impressed that she even read the book right-side-up.  And really surprised that Maggie sat and “listened”. 

I think we may have a teacher in our midst.

I know, I know, I know…

Yes, I acknowledge that this has little (okay, slim-to-none) to do with Piper.

But I had to brag…

I love having a garden during the summer time.

When we first moved into this house, I fell in love with the house (I love our house), not the lot.  The back yard isn’t as big as I was used to, and I was afraid that, by buying this home, we were giving up our ability to have a vegetable garden. 

The first summer we were here, we had to landscape the backyard for the first time- all that was here was builder leftovers.  So we put in a retaining wall to eliminate some of the slope in the grass.  Once it was done, we figured that the area above the wall would be a perfect place for a garden.  We planted a few things up there the second year we were here just to test and see how they did.  It was spectacular!  The area is absolutely perfect.

We were so excited for the summer after (last year) because we figured we could plant a lot more than we did the summer before.  We knew that Piper would be coming the first part of the season, so we figured that we could get all the planting done before she came and Luke’s responsibility would be maintaining it all while Piper was in the hospital. 

Well, we all know how that turned out.  And, unfortunately, it never was on our to-do list after she was born. 

So this year, we were uber-uber excited to plant. 

Fortunately (unfortunately???) our plants are growing a lot quicker than Piper…

These are part of the tomato plants.  It’s a lot of plants considering I don’t eat them.  The tall one on the right is a tomatillo- we’ve never grown one before, and weren’t sue it’d work.  It’s obviously having no problems.

Oh, and the tomatoes are caged.  But they’ve overgrown the cage.  Apparently they really enjoy the place they’re at…  And just to make this a kid-centered post, why not kid-centered pictures???

The zucchini plants, cucumbers, beans, and peas…  The yard looks a lot worse here than it actually does- Luke mowed the last time with the mulcher instead of the catcher, so the dry is just leftover grass… 

…aaaaand the daily take.

Kinda glad we don’t have more space for more plants.  I’m already feeling like we have green stuff coming out our ears…