I wonder if the brain has growth spurts. Every now & again, the girls just start doing amazingly complicated new and interesting things. In the past week…
Ivy now carries around a blanket. I’m not calling it a security blanket because she doesn’t freak out like
Linus if it goes missing, or washed, or is made to choose between that and say…her favorite monkey. But, she will bring it in the car, or to the dinner table, and can carry it around all day. She likes wearing it as a cape, so I’m okay with that.
Ivy also (I think) is benefiting from Speech Therapy. I’m not sure what’s going on there, but she is saying more words. Her vocabulary increases almost a word a day. It’s hard to pick em out, but they’re there. She understand the concepts of phonemes, and can string 2 together, but usually gets stuck at 3 (she can say ‘ba’ and ‘nana’, but can’t pull together ‘ba-nana’). I think the word for today was “in”. It’s simply amazing. It’s almost like someone up in Brain Central forgot about the “Verbal Language” switch, and said “hey, I wonder what this thing’s for? Let’s try it”.
Ivy is also imitating quicker, and more accurately. I did a “Hey baby, how YOU doin” move where I cocked my head, & shot both fore fingers at her (shutup, it was cool in the 80s). And she did it right back to me. I was laying on the ground reading a book to her, and she flopped down next to me and imitated me waving my feet in the air and thumping them on the ground. Sweet. Time for kung fu lessons?
Lessa is doing great walking. For whatever reason I am still amazed that she is doing
as well as she is. She’s doing uneven surface (like our pock-marked lumpy lawn) with aplomb, and is more confident walking over obstacles, and going down steps. It makes me so happy.
Lessa also knows that her heart is in her chest. It was a classic parent looks at parent where-did-she-pick-that-up moment. They don’t do anything where we’re not around, so we should know pretty much everything they see. So…? But it was really cool. We asked her a couple times to rule out a fluke too. And somehow, she knows how to drum.
Also, I think they’re both cuddling more. I can sometimes lay Ivy on top of me and we can look up in the sky together watching birds, planes, superheros & trees. And I can cradle Lessa (like I did about a year ago) and chat with her about her day, and she just smiles up at me and nods. Times like these when I wish I could just reach up and pluck the moon from the very heavens and give it to them. Every moment like this (and sometimes they’re literally just moments…like a couple seconds long) I see as a rare & beautiful gem that I can add to a small stash I have. I look back at them and feel richer, and lucky to have them. I tell the girls that I love them as often as I can, and I always mean it.