magic

kids are magic.

they learn and adapt and change so fast.

i have to admit,

its a bit frustrating to not have my kiddo

naturally progress on my schedule.

crawling at nine months - - walking at 12 months.

that's the way i had it in my head.

but as you know,

every kid is different.

and every kid goes at their own pace.

i never thought anything was wrong with brette,

i just thought she was either

a- lazy

b- wasn't strong enough

or c- couldn't figure out how to

get herself moving.

but brette has had a magical few weeks.

something clicked when she turned one

and we've watched her learn so much in just the last few weeks.
she said her first word.

ah oh.

every time she drops something.

ah oh.

so stinking cute.

sure, she's been talking for months...

mamma, dada and she now says

mimi and all done.

but i'm not truly counting those because

i don't know if she knows what she's saying

or if she's just repeating what i say.

i think her language skills will be one of her strengths
because she seriously doesn't shut up.

we had her on the phone with ronnie's mom and

they had a full blown conversation.

ronnie's mom was sure that she was speaking in sentences,

she just needed the words.

 

next, and almost more exciting,

she is crawling and getting herself back to sitting!

holy cow, call the president.

this needs to be a national holiday.

a physical therapist came to our house on saturday

and did an evaluation on her.

in order to be qualified for the "first steps" program

you have to have a 6 month delay.

our PT didn't think b would qualify

so she showed me activities, exercises and positions

to help brette naturally learn how to move.

she said that brette has hips that turn outward

instead of forward, which is why her legs frog out

instead of move straight as she would need to crawl.

she suggested i order special shorts called hip helpers and

she said the best thing i could do for her is to keep correcting

her legs and do it over and over and over.

(here's a picture from the internet of the hip helper shorts.)

 

she also said we would need to work on her muscle tone.

so that's what we've been doing and it only took

two days for brette to figure this all out.

i feel [a little] bad that i didn't think to go through the steps with her before.

it seems like such a logical thing to do

and it obviously works. 

i only wish i had been doing this with her for the last three months

and then she probably wouldn't be categorized as "delayed."

even though now i think she was just learning at her own pace.

something i'm sure i'm going to have to get used to.

now?
on to walking!

jaime caught brette crawling this morning at their house:

 

and i made sure to catch her this afternoon.
she is non-stop and i love it!