GroshLink

This little girl has really taken off in the last 2 weeks! She is now fairly proficient at pulling herself up at the sofa, bed and bathtub (a personal facination of hers). She also can pull to stand in her pack n play now. She now crawls on her hands and knees ("creeping" in PT jargon) more often than she belly crawls. I see more small movements in which she chooses to use her right hand (e.g. touching my face). And her vocabulary is started to expand. Common words include: car, truck, cup, Grandma/pa, mama, dada, some derivation for Hayley/Ellen, hat, sock, thank you, and bus. Most of these words sound pretty similar to "Gock", but depending on what she's pointing at when she gocks you can figure out what she's saying. Her receptive language is huge (how much she understands when spoken to). She'll follow directions such as, "give mama the sock" and when asked, will point to the appropriate location such as hair, nose, piggy-toes, foot, etc. If I mention something about her eyepatch while she's wearing it, she will immediately try to pull it off. She knows when she's doing something she shouldn't do and will look at me and laugh before she scurries off to do it. At least once a day someone in the household will exclaim, "She doesn't miss a trick!" And my grandfather likes to say "there's nothin wrong with her thinker!"

In OT we're working on Eden holding a cracker and bringing it to her mouth with her right hand. She'll do it if she's prevented from using her left hand. In PT we're working on standing in a proper postion (knees not locked, feet under hips) and stepping sideways when at the sofa. She's been using a walker (another word she gocks) and it has helped her balance tremendously. An aside, my grandfather uses a walker similar in style to Eden's (a 3-sided walker) and she repeatedly points at his when we're together. In PT today she even stood on her own for a few seconds. The fact that she can pull to stand is a testament to the increased use of her right arm/hand b/c she cannot pull up without using that arm, at least a little bit. We also play Head and Shoulders (learning body parts while increasing range of motion) and clap (requires bringing both hands to midline).

For reasons unbeknownst to me, Eden has been waking up around 5am for the past few days. This means that by 9:30am she's exhausted and takes a nap (usually about 45 min. long). Her afternoon naptime is generally around 1:30pm, but lately she has refused to sleep. Now, I'm a believer in crying it out, but after 1 hour and 20 min. of fussing (not all out wailing) she still wouldn't sleep. Then by 6:30pm she's ready to go to bed. So I think putting her to bed a little later may help her sleep later in the morning. Not so. She woke up at 4:45am this morning. She fussed and slept off and on until a little after 5:00 when my dad got her up (a distinct advantage of living with the Grams). When Hayley and Ellen were this little and were tired but wouldn't fall asleep I could get them to sleep if I laid down with them. Not so for Eden. If I lay down with her she thinks it's playtime and it's all I can do to keep her from climbing out of the bed and onto the floor. If she would sleep in until 7am I think she would be happy with one nap. But she can't make it until lunchtime without a nap if she wakes up at 5am. Does anyone have any suggestions??? Besides drugs, of course, which don't seem to help either.

And then there's the ear infections. She's had more with the tubes in her ears than she did before tubes. Her current infection doesn't seem to be clearing up so I'm taking her to the doctor again tomorrow (3 times in one week). Isn't there some kind of little vacuum they can stick in there, suck the gunk out and be done with it?

Ok, I think I'm done for tonight.