Just Like That

Can't help but laugh when I think about the blessing God gave us yesterday. Was completely unexpected and left me laughing and crying and shouting for you. McKenna learned last week to sit up from the laying position. This is a huge step forward as most kids are doing this around six to eight months. Then last week at therapy, Jean said we were going to start working on rolling to get to things, and crawling although she anticipated it would be a while before McKenna was able to crawl.

So yesterday afternoon Kyle went to take a nap and I was sitting on the floor playing with the kids. Keaton started throwing our DVDs everywhere and one was out of McKenna's reach. She leaned forward to get it. Couldn't reach it still, so she leaned forward more and then started pulling her butt forward, or scooting it, while pulling her body with her arms.

Immediately I started screaming, "She's crawling, Kyle, She's crawling." Kyle ran out and just as he reached the living room McKenna got up on her knees, with her butt still really close to the ground and started moving each knee one at a time forward - probably only an inch at a time, but it was crawling. Yes, yesterday my daughter crawled for the first time. And she did it a couple other times later throughout the night. One of the times I even managed to get on video to send to grandparents.

So after fifteen months my daughter is finally attempting to crawl. Can't believe that just last week she learned to sit, this week is learning to crawl and then next wouldn't be surprised if she started walking. Things are starting to click for her and come together finally. She is watching Keaton continually move around and it seems like she finally wants to move around herself.

Then, in addition to an evening of crawling, McKenna took bites/tastes of chicken with chicken gravy baby food. This one I am completely shocked at because she really doesn't eat anything but the blueberries/apple mixture. But the speech therapist said we need to start introducing other tastes and get her eating other things. So this week we have tried sweet potatoes (She will do occasional bites of them if they are not warm but she really doesn't like them), chocolate yogurt, blueberry yogurt and pears. And she licks mommy and daddy's ice creams. Will try the chicken mix again today and then hopefully tomorrow can introduce a green vegetable.

I think it's important to note when I say she is eating these other foods she is not really "Eating" them. She will open her mouth, allow the food in and then spit most of it out. BUT at least she is opening her mouth and I just keep think that eventually we will find a food that she likes so much she doesn't spit it out.

Still praying for her to start eating. We want that Mic-Key button gone! Unlikely, but praying that we can have a miracle and it will be gone by December when we go home to MT for the holidays, but hey, miracles DO happen. Also praying the retching stops. She is averaging 4-5 a day. Her numbers have gone back up due to the increase in volume during each feed, and each feed takes an hour, but she only has one night feed, which was our goal, but now we just have to pray for her to learn to tolerate the food enough to allow her to not retch.