thoughts on life, love and the pursuit of happiness from a small town girl living on the edge of los angeles with my rocker husband, chocolate lab and one very special baby girl
we just returned from a week in Kansas with my family. it was awesome spending Emmy's first Christmas with them. it was also her first flight and she did amazing. . .no crying, no blowouts, no major issues. amazing!
she doesn't travel light, but despite lugging way too many bags and accoutrements for my liking, it was pretty smooth and easy. the loudest noise she made on the plane was a hiccup, so i can't complain about that!
we got back to LA today. . .to crystal clear blue skies and 70 degree temps. but i must confess, i'm a little down in the dumps. i always feel a little sad after the excitement of Christmas is over. and i especially feel sad after leaving my dear family so many miles behind and not knowing when i will see them again. i really wish we were closer and could share those visits more often.
Emmy flashed her evasive smile more than ever and the largest one i ever saw was delivered in response to her sweet little cousin Griffon. i think she was pretty excited to see little people that were closer to her stature.
i will leave you with these shots courtesy of my sister.
visiting Santa and getting the obligatory photo was a necessity. fortunately, we had the pleasure of doing this outing with our dear friends Holly and her son Maceo. we had the luck of finding the one-and-only REAL Santa too. there are, as i'm sure you are aware, many imposters out there. but we found the real one indeed. and this is the result:
and not to fret. . .Emmy has many more holiday-specific outfits to model in the plethora of photos we'll be taking over the next few weeks. so stay tuned!
after a week in the hospital for a severe respiratory infection, emmy is home, busy and doing well. this week she tried swimming in her new therapy pool. she wears a little inflatable neck ring and can move freely in a free-standing pool of warm water. the only place it fits is in adam's oversized ultra-luxurious spa shower. let's just say i made a few errors filling it and flooded his bathroom. he was irritated and ready to ban us from further aquatherapy sessions in his room. he even went so far as to move the pool into my bathroom and squeeze it into my bathtub where it did not fit. but we worked out the kinks and although we are on probation with him, he's letting us proceed for now. how could he possibly say no to emmy?
so without further ado, here is her first session in the pool. she was sleepy and not really into it, but she tolerated it for a few minutes.
for the second session, her nurse vanessa was helping me. she was more awake, but still not too sure about the pool. it may take a few more times, but we'll stick with it. she didn't like baths at first either and now she LOVES them.
and finally, a month or so ago one of her therapists brought over a contraption called a "Little Room". the idea is to put her in there and let her move and explore, totally on her own, without any interruptions. it helps her become more aware of her body and the cause and effect of movement (ie: move my arm and a toy will move, or if i move, it's actually me making that sound).
she started out only tolerating being in the little room for a few minutes at a time and not really noticing the various dangling toys. well what do you know, on saturday i put her in and she hung out for at least 30 minutes, batting at toys, grasping beads and just in general seeming quite content.
we've been spending time in the little room each day since and i can honestly say i think she likes it! when her OT saw her in it earlier this week, she was very impressed and said our Emmy has progressed beyond "curious" and now she's "ready to play"! we like the sounds of that. WARNING - TURN YOUR SOUND DOWN BEFORE WATCHING. SOMETHING'S WRONG AND IT'S NOT A NICE SOUND
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.
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?
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.
