At this point I'm pretty sure that Cora is NOT motor-driven. Case in point: the fact that even though she CAN roll both ways she often chooses not to. She'll just lie there and whine until I eventually change her position. She can pivot, but won't when I'm watching. She can inch forward on the crawling track but hollers with every centimeter. For the life of me I can't figure out where she got this stubborn streak. (Sarcasm, anyone?)
Trying to encourage her to crawl? So far, not easy. How the world do I motivate this child? She absolutely hates having her legs bent and underneath her. She needs to develop the strength to do this, so we're working with her on an assisted quadruped (getting on hands and knees) and kneeling, but our efforts are more often than not met with shouts and straightened hard-as-steel legs. We're also trying to get her to put more weight on her arms, which she also hates to do. So crawling may be a ways off. In the meantime, we've built her a crawling track for practice, which has many benefits, but more on that later.
Happy at first. That is, until she realized that this is a torture device...
I'm enjoying learning about the stages of development, the skills she should accomplish before moving onto the next step, and how to try to avoid negative postures and patterns.
The challenge is delivering these "therapies" in bursts throughout the day as play. Gross motor and fine motor and speech and communication and cognition. Sign language and reading and singing. Luckily she loves communication play: talking, singing and reading. Hmmm... she sounds kind of like me. Maybe she did get that extra chromosome from my side after all.
Learning about all of this is time consuming right now. Playing with Cora takes time. But I guess that's why I get to spend my days with her. I think I may just need better organization: A list of the things we are currently working on so that I can incorporate them in our days. I need to start better documentation so I can maintain the motivation to keep moving forward, while still maintaining a balance between learning and living. Especially since we still love to do things like going swimming, playing outside, and meeting up with friends for playtime. Things we do all the time and that are equally important for her development.
Whew! Can you tell that my mind is spinning with all the information I'm taking in right now?
I guess that means it's time for a break. Luckily, we're heading out of town this evening to go visit my parents for a fun escape from our day-to-day. Can't wait to post about our adventures!
Frowning at her teething ring. Working out is not fun anymore.
"This is too much. I'm done."
Ahhh...momma worked her too hard :-). My head spins sometimes with it all. I joke that if I knew what I know now when the boys were little, I would have had them walking at 8 months! Hailey loves going after the phone my iPod.
ReplyDeleteThe last picture of Cora reminds me so much of Ben - he lays in the same position when he's too tired! My head has been spinning too about Ben. It takes a lot of effort to care for him!
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