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Speech Therapist visit

I was wrong on two things. First, this was her 6 month review because she's been in the program for 6 months. Second, speech therapists, with children this young, also do play therapy. Basically, play with her and see how much she understands. We're working on words and phrase recognition and trying to get her talk more. That's really the only remaining goals for her. So, we have another visit from Ms. Gina next month.

This visit was kind of funny. Taylor liked Ms. Gina's necklace and, of course, kept trying to chew on it. After being told, "No" on one particular occasion, Taylor cried and crawled over to mommy. It was sweet and it was also difficult not to laugh.

Anyway, that's it. Not much excitement but a good visit.

Meanderings & Milestones

She has just gotten so cute and is so smart and I'm not biased in the least little bit. :)

For awhile now, she's been sticking her foot up for you when you hold up a sock. She's helping with shoes now, too. Within the last week or so, when I put her jacket on her and put her down so I can get the bag & my own jacket, she crawls over to the door.

She knows her hat goes on her head - she got ahold of it while playing last night and crawled around the room with it on her head. Never mind it was on sideways so the earflaps were in her face. Sorry, I didn't get the camera quickly enough so there's no proof but trust me, it was cute. :)

And, she knows mommy & daddy's nose. Last night, while I was trying to rock her to sleep, she was sucking on her left fingers and started playing with my mouth with her right hand. I said, "Where's mommy's nose? Can you point to mommy's nose?" She quit sucking her fingers and reached up and grabbed my nose. I thought it was a fluke because I couldn't get her to do it again. Well! This morning, I was holding her as daddy was about to leave. He said, "Where's daddy's nose?" and she reached up and put the tip of her finger on his nose.

She shakes her head when we tell her no but doesn't always stop what we're trying to get her to stop doing. She waves bye bye more consistently now...even to the Teletubbies. She holds her play phone up to her ear (sometimes her toy remote) and occasionally says, "Hey" into it. And, another cute one, when we're watching a game show or something with an audience that claps, she'll start clapping too. Oh, and of course, she raises her hands when you say, "Touchdown!" and sometimes she'll do it when you say, "Hands up" when trying to put the highchair tray on.

She's still grabbing our fingers to walk but I'm encouraging her to watch and pay close attention to all the walking toddlers in the MDO. It'll come and then we'll wonder what we were thinking in encouraging her. :)

She has her 1 year follow-up with Early Intervention today. She's been "seeing" a speech therapist once a month. I say "seeing" because we haven't really done anything but monitor her. For those who don't know, speech therapy for one this young focuses mostly on eating problems (muscles for eating are the same ones used for talking) but, beyond that, I think all they can do it monitor. Taylor was having difficulty with level 3 foods but that fixed itself when we just went ahead and switched her to table food. Anyway, as soon as I know results of today's visit, I'll be posting it.

Stacking blocks

Taylor has bunches and bunches of blocks now and is finally showing interest in stacking and arranging them. Last night, Brian put some on a coffee table that we let her have access to. While he was watching, she picked each one up and dropped it on the floor. He went into the kitchen to put away dishes and when he came back out, she was dropping them on the floor again. In other words, while he was away, she put them back on the table and then started dropping them again.

She also managed to stack three of them up. It didn't stay standing long but, hey, she stacked them! This is a pic that was taken after they fell.

Daddy's card & Misc pics

Yesterday, Taylor & I went to Walmart and got the stuff to make her daddy a birthday card. Yes, I made two imprints of her left hand. I'll just tell you that I don't recommend doing this without at least one other adult...at least if it's your first time ever doing it. It was fun :) Oh yeah, some of the crayon scribbling is hers, some is mine trying to show her how to do it. As you can see, she was more interested in eating the crayon (they're non-toxic & I didn't let her!)

These are some miscellaneous pics we took. I took the first one after we finished making the card & cleaning up. Brian took the other one while I was at a meeting last night.

Growing up

Taylor wants to do big girl things like she sees everyone else get to do! Here she is trying on a pair of Mommy's shoes, and eating with one of her new forks. She likes the forks better, because the food actually stays put.

Birthday party

Here are a few pictures from Taylor's birthday in Huntsville and from her birthday party. She had a blast. She was particularly fond of Mr. Wippy's punch and Ms. Kathryn's Pooh cake!

Fun with cake

As promised! After dinner Wednesday night Taylor got her birthday cupcake, and we let her go to town. She nearly ate the whole thing.

Birthday card

Taylor received her birthday card from her Georgia grandparents today, and here are special pictures for them. The amazing part - she held onto the card, crawling with it all over the room, and never once tried to eat it. Does that mean she likes the card?

Coming tomorrow - birthday cake pictures!

Some like it hot

I can't believe I forgot to post this... Over the holiday, we had breakfast casserole a couple of times and it was made with the hot sausage. She loved it. On one occasion, Brian got to feed it to her and she did something with him that she hadn't with me. She took a bite, opened her mouth kind of like she was panting and then, from that point on, when she took a bite of the casserole, she giggled.

While in Huntsville, we also went to Chili's. We got her a kid's meal but I wanted to her to have other things besides corn dog and fries so I gave her some of my beans (which were medium to mild by our standards) and the rice. I had not tried the rice yet but she was downing it. After giving her 2-3 bites of it, I finally took a bite myself. It was hot! And she was loving it!

Yep...she's a pepper head and is definitely her daddy's daughter.

Happy New Year!

And here they are - the first pics of 2004!

I decided to finally introduce her to milk. We also got serious with including the sippy cup at each meal and she's now doing very well with it. Up until this picture, she had only had water in her cup. She likes to hold it up over her head and play peek-a-boo around it. In the process, she had a line of milk from her forehead to her chin.

At our last visit to Huntsville we discovered she likes looking outside through the screendoor. We don't have one of those so we put her on the couch and let her look out the window. Brian decided to build her some stairs to climb down. Don't worry, she was very very well supervised.

And these are from today. The last day or so has been trying during mealtime. She's asserting her independence and deciding she doesn't like what mommy's been fixing her. At lunch today she ate as if we'd been starving her. 4 oz Gerber Pasta Pickups, 4.5 oz green beans, yogurt, slice of bread and 5 oz of milk. The bib says Mom's Mess Maker and considering the mess on her and the tray, I felt it was too appropriate and too priceless to pass up.

I got her to raise her arms by yelling, "Touchdown!" :)