Butterflies flutter by

Addy's AFOs are really cute and they seemed to help with keeping her ankles stable while she works on standing. I had some trouble finding shoes to fit over the braces, so I was glad to have Addy's PT appointment this morning so the therapist could give me some pointers on what to try next. Apparently the best thing is going to be to start over. Grumble, grumble. Shoes will never fit right due to all of the bulk around the ankle and the right AFO has too much "toe pointing" to it. The therapist also recommended getting a 2-piece brace that can be used for both floor play and standing. I guess as long as we're starting over, we might as well start all the way over.

Thanksgiving dinner

We've been enjoying a visit with Aunt Katie, who arrived this afternoon. Since she came today, we decided to hold off and do our Thanksgiving dinner tonight. (Yesterday was a very pleasantly lazy day of eating veggie soup made from stuff I found in the pantry/freezer, and spaghetti with meatballs, also made from stuff I found in the pantry/freezer.) But tonight we feast! Italian turkey breast roll, green bean casserole, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and sweet potato pie. Mmmmmmm. Hopefully next year Addy will have enough of her gag reflex resolved to try some of the yummies!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Addy is thankful for "tens" today. She had used her jazz hands made-up sign for puffs during breakfast earlier this week, so I got out the puffs and started counting them out on her highchair tray: "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. You have 10 puffs on your tray, Addy." She replied by nodding her head yes and said, "ten." Since then, she sometimes says "ten" while she uses her puff sign. It's actually very helpful because the meaning of the sign seems to have morphed from puffs specifically to any-old finger food.

Presents and ice cream

Derek had been out of town for several days at a conference, but got back just in time for celebrating Addy's birthday. Yay! Apparently Addy missed her daddy a lot because after dinner and a Skype chat with Aunties Katie and Rachel, she snuggled up on his lap and fell asleep for the night. So ice cream and presents had to wait until today.

We did presents this morning:


I'm hoping that now that she's getting pretty good at using her wheels, Addy will have some fun shooting hoops with her new basketball hoop and balls while she's in her stander.


We (okay, I) decided that cake might be a little more texture than Miss Sunshine could handle--she gagged on a small bite of angel food cake not that long ago--so we opted for chocolate ice cream instead. And since you only have chocolate ice cream to celebrate your first birthday once, we went ahead and had dessert first tonight at dinner. It turns out that ice cream is very very cold, and not very easy to pick up with your fingers.

Birthday Girl!

Happy birthday, Addy!  It's hard to believe it's been a whole year already!

Second day of "school"

Play group went better today, but it's still not real high up on Addy's list if "Favorite Things To Do." Using her stander and wearing her butterflies (AFOs), on the other hand, seem to still be quite enjoyable.

In other Addy news, she seems to have made up her own sign for "I would like some (more) puffs, please." (I might not have the exact translation quite right.) It looks very similar to the sign for "more," but with her hands open and just her thumbs tapping together. Now I wonder what else she's been trying to say!

What's that Imelda? There's no such thing as too many shoes?

I found some shoes at Payless this morning that will kind of work with the AFO's. The selection was pretty weak--we got the smallest high-top, wide, non-masculin, toddler-sized shoes they had--so I'm going to keep my eyes out for some less institutional-looking ones that preferably have Velcro instead of laces. And in a perfect world they would actually be more like a 2T instead of a 4T.

Addy's AFOs

We went and picked up Addy's AFOs today.


In general she needs to wear them inside of shoes, but they're too wide to fit any of the shoes she already has, so tomorrow we're going to find a pair of kid-sized, wide-width shoes.  She did get to wear them the whole way home from Nashville.  She slept most of the way home, though, so I don't really know what Addy thinks of them.

Not sure about old dogs, but you can definitely teach Addy some new tricks

• If you ask her "How big is Addy?" she puts both hands up over her head.  Then she grabs her hair, but she does the "So big" part just perfectly.
• High 5.
• If you ask her "Where is Addy?" she'll pat herself on the chest.
• Lots of words (usually with the correct meaning): cup, cat, book, door, Mama, Dada, call, phone, car, go, bob-bob (bottle), dipe-dipe (diaper).  Mama and Dada are special words, though, because she only says them when we aren't in the room and she's looking for us.  She also says "oooh-eeee" as an exclamation.  Yes, it's even cuter than you're imagining.
• Nodding yes and no.
• I've been trying to do simple signs with her to help with her gag reflex.  My theory is that she has some anxiety because she isn't sure what we're trying to stuff in her mouth, she isn't ready for more food yet, she's full, etc.  I mostly use ready, eat, cup, drink, mommy, daddy, more, apple, and all done.  Which ones has she picked up on?  "All done" and occasionally "more."

First day of "school"

Addy went to her first play group this morning. It's a drop-off deal and it went about as well as I expected, though I was pleasantly surprised that I did not get a call saying "Please come collect your child. She cried so hard she barfed." I'm sure she'll like it more as she keeps going, but this time I got a very, very sad earful the whole way home.