Christmas Eve photos

Just thought I would post a few photos from Christmas Eve.
For the midwest, it was a sunny mild weathered day. Sure a welcome relief!
 Olivia loved her knit Christmas Eve outfit. We think she thought it was her Elmo Costume.

Silly Silly

Olivia has had the worst case of the sillies lately. We keep trying to figure out who is giving her the silly juice. We hope you enjoy and maybe even laugh along.

Olivia is a WALKER

Olivia has been walking for about a month.  PT thought it would take another 6 months for her to get strong enough, but a couple weeks off gluten after her celiac diagnosis and she was off to the races. This is a longer video, because I wanted to share how long of a time Olivia can walk all over the house.  She very quickly learned her way around the house and all its ins and outs.

Some new photos

I know I don't post much anymore (reasons to many to list)  hopefully I will do better in 2012.

Here are a few photos and some thoughts (Olivia is 2 1/2 now and is a walker inside the home but she has not yet generalized the concept of walking to other locations, except therapy).

Here is a typical dinner or lunch plate for Olivia.  She is a healthy eater.  She will eat nearly all on her plate.  What you are seeing is pureed peas and green beans. She will not eat meat so we do this power protein puree.   Peaches, steamed broccoli, canned organic green beans,  cooked carrots.  Then she will eat about a cup of dry Rice Chex cereal  which we like because they are gluten free and fortified.  (Olivia was diagnosed with Celiac Disease about 5 weeks ago.  I will write about that later.  The diagnosis was  a God Send and her development has taken off in the past month!)  She also drinks fortified Almond Milk with her meal.

Olivia loves her sand table (we use moon sand) and she loves putting it on the floor and "cleaning up".   Funny how a toddler makes more mess when they "clean" than if they just left the mess.   No, the vacuum doesn't actually work. But I sure wish it did!

We bought this two stepped step stool for bathroom handwashing.  A small stool would have been disastrous at this point, but Olivia kept telling us she wanted to wash at the sink, so we bought this wonderful helper.

She still needs adult supervision so that she remembers which end is up.

The BIG smile indicates that Daddy did a really good thing in buying her this stool!
 Independence! With help of course!

Olivia and her New Bike

Mommy's Helpers

Everyone knows that a Mommy's life is very busy and is a lot of hard work. Olivia and I wanted you to know that we do our best to be good little helpers ... We'll let you decide who is most helpful :-)

- Daddy and Olivia

Activities

Here are a few activities we are doing at home these days

This is the Lucky Duck game and Olivia practices grasping with it.   Taking ducks off the pond and either handing them to me or placing in basket. This seems to be helping her gain control over her cup and fork and plate. Much less tossing and more handing them to me.

We are trying stickers on paper, but it is still very hard for her.

These are counting bears but I am using then to encourage her to use a pincer or tripod grasp and place them into the small hole.  She uses a palmar grasp a lot still.

We are talking about shapes.  Here is one exercise we did with circle.

This is a sand table. At first she hated it!  Now she loves to go up to it and play and scoop. We are using moon sand.  Yes it is messy, but it took her all summer to get accustomed to playing in her sand box and I did not want to loose that sensory adaptation over the winter.   We have sand all over the house some days. But we keep saying that sand box play makes kids smarter!  We believe that!   Children develop their brain through their senses.

This is a grasping transfer exercise.  Two small bowls and some pasta. She likes to do this and is rather good at it.
   She also likes to throw the pasta.  But such is progress.

Again encouraging pincer grasp. Putting penne pasta into the large hole of a salt shaker

Gee!  Guess what! Pouring!  We use pasta.  Beans and rice go right into her mouth and water gets dumped to the floor immediately.

Again encouraging pincer grasp with pasta into a small hole in a mustard jar.  She also likes to put the cap on and off.

This is her practical life box.  I just have some kitchen things in it and she loves to explore.

This is a better photo of the Lucky Duck game.

This is a splurge! A zipper dressing frame from Neinhuis!  I don't buy much at all from them but I really like three of their toddler dressing frames and could not find a comparable else where.  She will be using these for some time to come as these activities are tough ones and so very important.

This is how I have one shelf set up for her to choose her work and put things back.  I don't know if you can see the bristle blocks and duplos. She likes to work with them taking them apart mostly, but it encourages her to strengthen her hands and use them.  With Ds the hand work is tough!  I am always thinking of new ways to get her to use her hands.  I welcome suggestions!!!!!