Busy Day

On Friday Katie came over for another session at 9:00 AM. Joel almost forgot again but I happen to wake up at 8:45 and asked him if he remembered, so he went and woke her and got her ready. She is pretty cranky when she first gets up especially if she is woken up. But he changed her and let her get settled before giving her a bottle, it was actually about 30 minutes into her session before she started getting hungry.

We had a lot of fun during the session. We played with the ball push toy again and she is starting to get the hang of it. We also played with the peg board, and with the connector tubes. Also Holly has not learned how to put donuts on the pole. I was so excited a few nights ago when I saw this. She does it with two hands and is very slow, intentional and full of concentration. Although tonight she did it several times and even did a star or two so she is getting better by the moment. This was great news. A few new things we are working on is stacking blocks which she tried to do but isn’t super steady at yet and also asking Holly to hand us something, “Can I have that Please” and see if she hands you the toy.

We were discussing her Oral Motor issues with tie into her eating issues, which By The Way she isn’t eating again, she is taking maybe 3-4 bites of her food and then refusing any more. I might be able to bribe another 3-4 bites with puffs when then she gets smart and decides the puffs aren’t worth it and won’t eat at all, but back to the discussion on her Oral Motor issues. Katie is a little concerned with her constant chewing, not so much that she mouths things so much but the veracity at which she does so, and is worried she might hurt herself. She takes her chewy tube and instead of chewing on it she will bite down on the edge and then tear it out of her mouth pulling hard.

Katie tried this thing where she put pressure on her jaw bone to see if that would be something she liked and fill the need of the biting, but she did not like it at all. So then we tried swinging therapy, which is a lot more like swaying. We let her lie down on a big quilt then picked up the corners and swing her side to side. She loved this. At first she got all excited and was kicking and squealing, but then after a few minutes it made her very calm. Katie says this activates the vestibular system in the same way that biting does, so in the future when she is fussy I will try it some more. We did it tonight and she liked it but it didn’t calm her as much as I hoped but it made her cheerful when she had been rather cranky.

She got mad at me tonight while she was placing donuts and stars on their holders. I got excited and clapped and told her what a great job she did, and the first 1-2 times she liked this and it made her smile, but then she got upset later when I did it after. Wait… Now I have to ask Katie about his, because I think it is a developmental milestone, where she gets “embarrassed” by being the center of attention. I have a “The Human Baby” show saved on Tivo and one of them is on emotions, so I have to watch it now and try to remember what they said about this behavior, what age it starts at and see if this fits. But she kept putting the donuts on but then if I reacted she got upset and cried at me. It was a very interesting thing to see her playing and crying at the same time.

So the other thing we did today was go to swim class which was so much fun. Holly is splashing and playing in the water and she loves it. I scheduled a meet-up there, I am a member of a mom’s meet-up group and 4 other mom’s attended who I had met previously so it was really fun to see them again. Then we saw Sarah and Isabel who I haven’t talked about for a while, but Sarah and her mom are from our Mother’s Group, which I never go to anymore, but we made friends with Sarah and Isobel and run into them all the time, we hadn’t seen them for a few weeks so it was fun to run into them again. Then finally we ran into Heidi and Kareem. These are our new friends from Studio Grow, the one who is exactly 1 day younger then Holly. I was so excited to see them. It was there first time at Swim Class and Kareem really had a lot of fun. I think next time I run into them at Studio Grow I will have to exchange Emails with Kareem’s mom.

After swim class we decided to go on a shopping spree. It didn’t end up that way, I was only going to by some Dreft and Baby oxiclean but it ended up being much much more. Firstly we got Holly a Holly sized chair. We are very excited about it. She thinks it is only useful for using as a tool for cruising and pulling herself up, but if I put her in it she sits. She isn’t very graceful getting down, she sometimes turns like she does for getting off the couch, but other times she sort of lounges forward which is ok if she catches herself but once she bumped her head. It was in slow motion so she didn’t even cry, but I will need to keep an eye on her.

Then they had this sale of getting one Fisher price toy for 19.99 get a second one of Equal or Lesser Value for Free. So I found 1 toy for 19.99 and a Second for 16.99 then I realized the second one that I loved wasn’t actually fisher price but instead of putting it back I decided to get it anyway, because I liked it so much and Holly’s birthday is coming up soon, and then found a third one that was Fisher price. So the extra one I got was a gear toy, which you will have to wait and hear about after Holly’s birthday when she opens it. But the other two were ones we opened tonight. One is an Animal Nesting Box. There is a Lion, an Elephant, and a Zebra that nest into each other they are made of softish material that is cloth and very colorful and three dimensional. There is a little monkey you can put in the last box. The other toy was like a gum ball machine. It actually goes with the round balls Joel got holly for Christmas. You put those in the top and then hit a level on the side and it lights up plays music and the balls comes rolling out. Holly loved putting the balls in the top and she loved seeing them come out, but didn’t quite get that it was the lever pushing that made that happen.

I got her two sets of 12 month Pajama’s because she is getting so tall she is growing out of all of hers, and they were both on sale, one for 3$ and one for 6$ and then I got her 3 new pairs of socks that were on sale normally 2.99 each and instead 3 for 4$ I refrained from getting her any more cloths even though I really wanted to.

The next thing I got was the Frog scooper toy for the bathtub that collects and stores all of the bath toys on the wall. I thought this came with some toys and was disappointed when I found out it did not, but I did get her a few toys including another set of nesting containers that have fish on them and little holes for water to drip through. The smallest has 1 hole, then 2 and 3 and 4 as they get bigger in size. They are very colorful too.

Let’s see. Oh I also for her birthday, not yet opened got her some large baby Lego’s they were normally 24.99 and I got them for 13.99$ so I was excited about that.

I did also get the supplies I needed and ended up earning a 15$ gift card for getting three “cleaning” type items that were on a list that included the Dreft. What was most exciting of all was that any number of these wonderful items could be Christmas Present’s from Granny because we used our Gift Card and it cut the purchase price in Half, so for me it was a steal, and I didn’t feel bad at all about all the shopping I did, because I got deals, free toys, and used our Gift Card.

While we were there Holly did not want to sit in the cart, she was fussing and wanted mommy to hold her. We rocked in the rockers for a bit while I fed her and then later we were looking at the high Chairs and she really liked this one on wheels so I pushed her around the store in the highchair in front of me pulling the cart behind me and continued shopping like that. It had a toy that suctioned on the top and she was happy and content, at least until I had to put it back and we got to check out. Joel was very excited about all of my purchases and we immediately opened most of them, but Holly is still warming up to them and so while she played with them, she wasn’t that excited yet. But soon I am sure she will keep having fun with them.

I still need to get Holly a Big Girl Car Seat, and now I am pretty sure that I want to get her a High Chair, so I will keep an eye out for those, but I have a feeling it will be part of her Birthday Bootie. I mean her Oma and Granny are coming to Visit. The other thing I saw was a little table and chair set that was set up like a tree on each side and then the chairs were four animals, the Panda, Elephant, Lion, and Monkey. It was the coolest little kid table I have ever seen. I might have to get it and keep it in the garage for 6 months until she is big enough for it, but I am afraid they might not have this one in 6 months and well I have never seen one like this before. I will think about it and see.

Holly wanted to get Daddy's glasses so bad that when he took them off and put them in the swing she decided to lounge after them. I have one determined girl!