What is this thing you keep calling "gentle"?

I am so ready for Addy to understand the concept of not yanking on my hair when she has it wrapped around her fingers. I'm pretty sure the cats agree with me on this, too.

The Little Mermaid

Addy has a pair of "shorts" that I refer to as her "funny therapy shorts" because they're mostly for her physical therapy work. (They're homemade "Hip Helpers"--basically bike shorts with the legs sewn together to help with Addy's extremely loose hips.) Lately the shorts haven't been working as well because the legs kind of ride up, and her loose hips just aren't kept in check like they're supposed to. So Mommy the Craft Diva made Addy some mermaid pants in the hopes that they would at least keep her knees together and help with the crawling and rolling over. Well, they work pretty awesome at keeping Addy's legs together all the way down to her ankles, but they also greatly reduce the friction between her legs and the floor, so she got herself scooted along the floor pretty well with them on. However, she finds it easier to push with her arms instead of pulling, so she went backwards across the floor this time... Our poor little mermaid will have to work on finding her way out of reverse.

I dub thee Sir Addy

We're working on helping Addy learn to kneel this week. It will help build up her thighs and trunk so she can ultimately work on walking, but it still makes me think of someone being knighted.

If you're going to pull hair...

Addy has been in a hair-pulling mood for the past several weeks, which makes cuddling her not nearly as pleasant. The other day I was pretty fed up with having her pulling on the tiny hairs at the back of my neck, so I told her, "If you're going to pull hair, could you at least pull your own please?" About a week ago she started noticing that she does, in fact, have hair on her head, too. She doesn't seem to pull nearly as hard on her own hair as she does anyone else's (kind of like how she doesn't bite on her own fingers nearly as hard as she does ours).

93 days and counting

I don't know why, but I have had Halloween on the brain lately. I think we've settled on what Addy's costume will be this year, but there's still plenty of time to change our minds. A pirate is tempting, given the cute snarly face that she's been making of late. I think we'll save that for next year so we can have time to teach her a few choice pirate phrases.

The opposite of "no" is "yes"

Every once in a while you can get Addy to nod her head "yes," but it's super adorable because she moves her whole body when she does it.  "No" is definitely the easier gesture to do.

She's finally getting the hang of rolling over (other than front-to-back-over-her-right-side).  Front to back over the left side is finally fun, though easier when she's wearing her funny therapy shorts that hold her legs together.  Back to front is still not exciting, but Addy is absolutely able to do it even if she isn't interested in it. 

Crawling remains a bit of a chore for her--I need to work on finding the magic motivating something that will make Addy really want to put some effort into getting it.  I thought I had a clever idea of making a burp rag with lots of little satiny tags around the edges (Addy is an expert at finding the washing instruction tag on any item she gets her sticky little fingers onto).  Then I saw one at Target for $9.99 (link).

Newest tricks

Addy's latest food adventure is rice puffs (think over-priced Cheerios (R) for the 21st century).  It's a very, very slow process, but she does manage to grab a puff, get it into her mouth, and mush it up enough to eat it.  She also does a lot of pushing the puff across her tray, passing it back and forth between her hands, dropping it on the floor (and picking it back up), and getting it into her mouth and then pushing it back out with her tongue.  But eventually it dissolves in her mouth!

Her other super cute trick is shaking her head "no."  A lot of times when you ask Addy a question she'll shake her head as a response.  I don't think she means "no" when she does it; I think she's figured out that if she shakes her head, it makes us laugh.