It was one small roll for Emmy, one giant Saturday at the Hamilton house (aka Palm Ranch). Little E was laying on her tummy, fussing just a bit, when all of a sudden she rolled right over. I couldn't believe my eyes, so I quickly put her back on her tummy and she rolled right over again. I yelled for Adam. He watched her do it again. I said, quick, get the video camera. I barely caught this one:
Then I tried again and caught this one:
Then she was done rolling.
But I did catch this little clip of a nice pushing up without too much fussing right before my camera ran out of juice:
I do believe our little Emmy Bear is making progress. Slow and steady progress. But then, wasn't it slow and steady that won the race? Yes, I thought so.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
bootcamp pays off
months ago i mentioned we are on a strict "tummy time bootcamp" schedule. well the bootcamp continues and we are starting to see the results in miss em's progress. she still has a tough time resisting the "twist" and pushing up properly. what does this mean exactly? one of her challenges is controlling high muscle tone that takes over and causes her to go into what's called an "asymmetric tonic neck reflex" or "atnr". this is a nasty primitive reflex that is involuntary. most babies that are developing typically naturally lose this reflex after a few months. em still has it and it's triggered at the most inopportune times. it looks like she is pushing up, but really, the reflex is doing the work causing her muscles to stiffen and she has no control over it. it does not help her increase her neck and trunk strength. it is bad. it is our nemesis. but she's getting better at learning to control it and getting out of it. and then she is able to actually use her muscles and push up for real. here's a video showing her ability to fight her way out of the dreaded atnr and do a proper tummy time push up. she works very hard for this. bless her little heart. as always, she's on her own developmental schedule and we are thankful for any progress. oh, and the fact that she is on her tummy for any length of time without screaming is also huge progress. now can we get a collective "hooray!" please?
Sunday, October 16, 2011
which one of these is not like the others
last night we visited the pumpkin patch. actually, it's so much more than just pumpkins. we have the fortune of having the pierce college halloween harvest festival just a block from our house with corn mazes, carousels, hay rides, haunted houses, a petting zoo, bounce houses and so much more. of course this is all much to look forward to in years to come as emmy gets bigger and can enjoy everything it has to offer. this time we just stuck to the pumpkins. emmy wanted to wear her beloved strawberry costume, so we obliged.
she felt a bit out of place with the pumpkins. but it was as we were leaving that she realized where she really belonged. . .with the other strawberries!
i'm a strawberry, not a pumpkin!
in other news, emmy got a new swing. this is swing number 3 in the less the 6 months that she's been home. swing number 1 ran on batteries and we soon learned it would be much more efficient to buy a new swing that had an adapter than continue replacing the batteries every few days. swing number 2's motor blew out last week. no surprise, she spends A LOT of time swinging. so swing number 3 is in full effect and she seems to like it just fine.
she felt a bit out of place with the pumpkins. but it was as we were leaving that she realized where she really belonged. . .with the other strawberries!
i'm a strawberry, not a pumpkin!
in other news, emmy got a new swing. this is swing number 3 in the less the 6 months that she's been home. swing number 1 ran on batteries and we soon learned it would be much more efficient to buy a new swing that had an adapter than continue replacing the batteries every few days. swing number 2's motor blew out last week. no surprise, she spends A LOT of time swinging. so swing number 3 is in full effect and she seems to like it just fine.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Friday, September 30, 2011
added security
me thinks it best to add a little security to our lives and hence the decision to make our blog private. so if you are reading this now, you've sent me a request to access this blog. thanks for keeping up with us!
this week was a little rough. our girl had her first sickness since coming home from the hospital. oh, she's had plenty of medical challenges, but up until now, her health has been good. we're actually really thankful that we've gotten this far without any sickness!
but i have to admit, it's been a little scary. we had no idea what to expect. she started sneezing and coughing on sunday night and we thought she was having allergies. but by monday morning, it was clear that she had a cold. so we set up the vaporizer in her room and added echinacea and vitamin c to her diet.
although she's uncomfortable, she's actually been handling it quite well. her coughing has been productive and she's gotten a bit better through the course of the week. it's good to know that her little immune system seems to be strong and able to fight back. go em!
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
what dreams may come
it's funny, all the time people tell me that Emerson was in their dreams. i'm always jealous as she's never made an appearance in my dreams. . .that i remember anyway. . .until last night!
my friend Rachel once shared a sweet dream where she said Emmy was saying little words and we were laughing at how cute she was. Rachel was holding her and walking her around to see different rooms in her house. in every new room she'd be scared at first, but she'd just tell her all about the room and she'd understand and then enjoy hearing all about it.
my friend Sonja just shared that Emmy was in her dream last night and was smiling.
and in my dream last night, i was leaving the house. i handed Emmy off to the nurse. just as i was walking out the door, i looked back and she was staring at me with a sad look on her face. i asked her if she wanted to come with me and she emphatically nodded her head yes. i remember feeling such joy that she understood and of course i went back for her and off we went.
dreams fascinate me as i'm always trying to figure out exactly what they could mean, and rarely come to any conclusions.
i shared my dream with my mom and without hesitation, she said: "That is a sign you are on a journey together. We are going to see great things."
i agree.
in other news, our E is cutting her first tooth! i have mixed feelings about this. in some ways it's exciting, in other ways it saddens me and in every way it's exhausting. she is clearly not happy and sleeping very poorly, waking up screaming several times a night. she typically wakes up every hour or two. now she's waking up every 30 minutes to an hour! i've been coating her bottom gum with teething gel and giving her Tylenol too when she is beyond comforting. it also seems to help if i massage her little gum and sometimes she bites down and it seems to help relieve the pain. oh boy. . .here we go!
and a look into our lives this week.
bath time
bumbo time (aka naptime)
daisy pose
sunset over the palm ranch
my friend Rachel once shared a sweet dream where she said Emmy was saying little words and we were laughing at how cute she was. Rachel was holding her and walking her around to see different rooms in her house. in every new room she'd be scared at first, but she'd just tell her all about the room and she'd understand and then enjoy hearing all about it.
my friend Sonja just shared that Emmy was in her dream last night and was smiling.
and in my dream last night, i was leaving the house. i handed Emmy off to the nurse. just as i was walking out the door, i looked back and she was staring at me with a sad look on her face. i asked her if she wanted to come with me and she emphatically nodded her head yes. i remember feeling such joy that she understood and of course i went back for her and off we went.
dreams fascinate me as i'm always trying to figure out exactly what they could mean, and rarely come to any conclusions.
i shared my dream with my mom and without hesitation, she said: "That is a sign you are on a journey together. We are going to see great things."
i agree.
in other news, our E is cutting her first tooth! i have mixed feelings about this. in some ways it's exciting, in other ways it saddens me and in every way it's exhausting. she is clearly not happy and sleeping very poorly, waking up screaming several times a night. she typically wakes up every hour or two. now she's waking up every 30 minutes to an hour! i've been coating her bottom gum with teething gel and giving her Tylenol too when she is beyond comforting. it also seems to help if i massage her little gum and sometimes she bites down and it seems to help relieve the pain. oh boy. . .here we go!
and a look into our lives this week.
bath time
bumbo time (aka naptime)
daisy pose
sunset over the palm ranch
Friday, September 9, 2011
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.
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.
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