the week in review

so we've had a pretty positive week around the ol' palm ranch. of particular note, our emmy girl is getting really close to smiling, we believe. we spend a lot of time playing with her legs and feet. . .stretching them, bicycling them, keeping them moving. this started months ago to attempt to loosen them up. they used to be stiff all the time she was awake. they have gotten much better and are just stiff when she gets upset now. and they are much easier to loosen back up. last weekend during grandpa's visit, we were showing him how we work out her legs and she suddenly had a very distinct curling up of the corners of her mouth. it wasn't a full smile, but she certainly looked happy and it wasn't a face we had seen before. needless to say, it delighted us both and we carried on trying to get that smile. since then, every time we play with her legs in that particular fashion, she seems to get happy and consistently so. so guess what i've been doing? yesssssss. . . playing with those legs!

i've yet to capture a great photo, but you can kind of see the glimmer of content in her face here:

therapy sessions continue to be positive with all her therapists acknowledging how much more organized she is and her ability to handle much more in terms of movement, positions, objects, etc. dare i say, she even actually seemed to be exhibiting a bit of interest in an unusual "toy" her developmental therapist brought over today! it was a silver strainer with a smooshy ball, slinky and a strand of beads all dangling from it. the rationale was to provide a metallic visually interesting object with various dangling textures. she seemed to look at it a few times and actually bat at the ball, beads and slinky and open and close her hands around the objects ever so slightly. let me tell you, that's a big deal around here, so we'll take it!

yesterday at feeding therapy, the therapist suggested trying baby food! i had to admit to her that we actually had already tried mango puree at home. she didn't give me too much of a hard time. but anyway, that was exciting to be getting the go ahead to be moving forward with new foods. not sure she was too impressed with the sweet potatoes, but they say to give each new flavor 10 tries before you officially decide whether they like it or not.

finally, we continue to work on the dreaded tummy time. and she's actually gotten to a point where she likes being on her tummy at times. . .and will fall asleep! well this kind of defeats the whole goal of tummy time and building up neck strength, however, we do like that she can settle and be happy in this position. we are always exploring comfy new positions for sleeping since she seems to have such a hard time staying asleep. so when we got her in this position and looking quite happy, i had to get documentation.