What I Say and What G Hears...

Over the last three weeks, G has gone through a language explosion! She's picked up about five new signs, can now consistently identify many of her body parts and is starting to communicate verbally too. She clearly says "hi" and "dog", speaks "ba" for ball and tries to repeat other sounds she hears us say over-and-over, like our dog's name.

When we put her to bed and ask her "Can you turn on your music?" she'll cruise along the handrail over to her mobile and push one of the four buttons to make it start. If we say "give teddy a hug" she will find her pink stuffed bear and cuddle it up between her arm and her neck and say "ugggghhhh".

On the physical front, she LOVES her orthotics (we call them her "daisy shoes" because they have daisies printed on them) and will raise her feet to meet our hands as we are putting them on. She still isnt' brave enough to stand letting go, but she has made major strides in taking steps while we hold both of our hands.

Another thing we've been working on is to remind her that when she comes out of crawling position, she shouln't sit between her heels with her feet splayed. We'll say "no 'W' sitting - feet front." and about 50% of the time, she'll swing one or both of them around.

This weekend, she had just swung her feet front and started patting her knees, so I said "knees, knees, knees!" She looked at me, smiled and rubbed her hand across her heart (the sign-language sign for "please"). She was so proud of herself (and I was too)!