Maybe spring is finally here...just maybe. Aubrey sure does like to play outside, so I hope it stays nice for a while before we have to suffer through the 100 degree/99% humidity days of summer.
Smiling in the back yard swing
Like I said, Aubrey is an outside girl right now. Or maybe it's just that she likes to walk walk walk walk walk everywhere, and the outdoors gives her the most ramblin' space. She wanders around the yard, babbling away, to see our dog, Murphy, who resignedly endures baby fingers up his nostrils with stoic grace. She sits in the driveway and examines rocks, then hurls them backwards over her head with flair. She picks bark off of the trees and scatters pine straw to the wind. We must go up and down the steps to our deck a minimum of 15 times a day--she loves steps. She goes up on her hands and knees and we have to hold her hands for her to walk down. She'll immediately turn around and want to go up when she gets to the bottom. Good extra exercise for mom. Though she'll let me hold her hands on steps, she doesn't want me to help her much anywhere else. She'll snatch her hands away and put them behind her back, the stinker. There's a slight possibility she got her mother's independent streak.
"I can do it myself!"
Therapy went well last week. They let me stay back in the gym area with her, and, while she got upset a time or two at first, overall she cried very little and did what they asked of her. She did have to step away and get a mama snuggle a couple of times, but I always put her back and made her finish what she was supposed to do. She loves a good ball right now, and she took a bunch out of the ball pit and threw them everywhere. They wanted her to step over a small rubber speed-bump-looking-thing to see how she does with her balance and walking, and after crawling over it the first time and putting both feet on top of it the second time, she stepped back and forth over it like a pro. Her pinching is getting better as well. The OT said that next week she and the PT will do their official assessments (they have a guide that specifies what she should be doing and how at her age) to see if she can be done with therapy for a while. They both think she's doing really well, so hopefully she'll graduate.
Therapy is SO exhausting.
Aubrey likes to ride in the cart when I go grocery shopping, so after wiping it down with 2 germ-killing wipes I put her in. She smiles happily when I go over bumps and watches all the people and holds onto Adam's bagels for me. When we were checking out last week, the cashier looked at Aubrey and said to me, "was she a preemie?" I was a little taken aback; what would make her ask that? So I said, yes, and she said that her son was born at 29 weeks and weighed about 2.5 pounds. I told her about Aubrey, and then she said that her son was 8 years old now and doing just fine. There was a line behind me, so I didn't get to ask her what made her think that Aubrey was a preemie; she doesn't look different from any other baby as far as I can tell, besides being small. I thought it was strange, but then I don't really mind having a chance to tell anyone who'll listen how amazing my kid is. :)
Aubrey's first "selfie," taken with my phone. I was holding it and she pushed the button!
So, how's everyone doing? It's been a while, I know. See, when our power came back on after the ice storm, our internet worked. The cable line was down, but it worked. Well, the cable people came to "fix" the line, and when they left our internet didn't work anymore. We got the runaround from them for 12 days until someone finally showed up to actually fix it--took all of about 5 minutes. Gah! Anyway, we have internet again, so here I am to give y'all the low down on Feisty Pants. Oh, and is she ever feisty.
Turn away for a second and suddenly your kid's not wearing pants.
She's walking like a pro now. She doesn't want you to hold her hands (she'll snatch them away and tuck them so you can't get them), and she wants to go up and down steps by herself. Um, no. Her legs aren't even long enough to get up a step. But, headstrong girl that she is, she wants to try. She also likes to step on things while she's walking--toys, pinecones, other people's feet...whatever happens to lie in her path. Godzilla baby.
"I know you aren't thinking about taking my blankie away, mama."
She did better at therapy this week--not nearly as much crying. They like how she's walking, but she's still doing some little things that they don't like. She's not picking things (food, small items) up with two fingers yet like most 16 month-olds would (and they know she's only technically 16 months old); they just want her to be caught up to her actual age and not her adjusted age. The therapists say she'll get there though. She's still not saying any actual words...we don't think. She has said "dada," and it sounds like she's saying "bye-bye" on occasion. When she's walking and falls on her tush, she'll get right back up and, we swear it sounds like this, say "it'sok, it'sok." It's pretty cute.
She's learning to brush her teeth, but obviously she already knows how since she's helping her mama.
I took this video of Aubrey walking around the house over a week ago, I guess. She's even better now. And yes, she's brandishing her weapon of choice, a big, red, plastic spoon. :)
