Making Faces

Ha! I can tell that Andy is working more because recently I've been keeping the blog up more than he has (for once). Plus there was that pesky computer mishap he had, but I won't dredge up ugly memories... Maria is doing something very cool lately. She's been smiling a lot more, especially when we stick our faces in her face. She sometimes grins at her dad when he's not even touching her! Sue (nanny) told me today that there's a face Maria only makes when I'm there--she (Maria, not Sue) opens her mouth with a big grin and squints her eyes and wrinkles her nose. The cool thing is that she appears to be mimicking me! That's one of those things that babies are supposed to do when they are very young, but she's never done it much and certainly not consistently. But she seems to do this over and over and over again. It's very cute!!!

The other thing she's been doing a lot more is moving. She's been rolling a lot and lately she'll be on her tummy and grab the edge of the rug or blanket or sheepskin to pull herself along; kind of like an army crawl, but more like an army pull. We're having to be much more vigilant now about not leaving things around that she can choke on.

The transition meeting with the school district is scheduled for early April. gulp! So many questions, so many insecurities, so little time.

One of the latest things I'm freaking about is Maria's lack of independent sitting ability, so we've been working on that a lot. Our other emphasis has been communication. That's why her making faces is so exciting. The therapists all have lots of ideas about what to do to enhance communication--use sandpaper as a tactile symbol for "all done"; put photos of her bottle, food dish, toys, diaper, bath stuff around and see if she notices them and points to the bottle when she wants milk; put the pictures in a book and show them to her, give her choices; put the actual objects in her little enclosure and respond if she grabs the dish or bottle; use a "Big Mac" switch that she can push and we program it to say something, like "I'm hungry" or "I'm wet"; take her canvas drawers and fill one with kitchen things, another with bath things, another with bedtime things, etc, and let her play with them. All of this sounds just fine and dandy, but which will and which won't work? Is it worth the effort? What's the point? ya know?

We're going to meet another energy healer this Sunday. She sounds great on the phone. She does craniosacral work, which I've been told might work on Maria, and Qi Gong like the chiropractor we've gone to who did magical things. So we'll see. I'm cautiously optomistic and moderately hopeful. What the heck?!