new year = new skills

happy new year everyone! we hope that everyone's holidays were safe, happy, healthy, and filled with lots of love from family & friends. kaiya and i spent christmas eve and christmas day surrounded by lots of family members. we rang in the new year together watching the countdown on one of the local channels. we both stayed up just long enough to say happy new year, and then it was off to bed. we have both been on winter break from school, and have been able to spend a lot of one on one time together.

having a break from work has given me a chance to really pay attention to all the cool little things she is doing now. i think that one of the biggest blessings of having a trisomy child is learning to appreciate all of the tiny little steps she makes towards her milestones. one of the things i noticed has to do with her communication. i think i get so used to just sticking to the routine, that i fail to notice how kaiya responds to it. our routine has completely gone out the window these past 2 weeks b/c both akaiya and I like to sleep in and stay up late (school is going to be awful on monday!) when i take kaiya out of bed, she immediately turns and looks at her changing table. if i walk away from it she looks back at it and just stares. i saw her do this a couple of times and i decided to see if she was using her eye gaze to tell me where she wanted to go. lo and behold, she does! as soon as we finish at the changing table in the morning we usually go to the kitchen and get breakfast. she stares in the direction of the kitchen and when she sees her high chair she starts staring at that. i tested her by passing it up a couple times and she squirmed herself around so she could keep staring at the chair until i put her into it. so then i started to wonder if every time we went to the changing table she would expect to go to the kitchen and eat...and she doesn't. if it isn't around the time i would usually feed her, she stares at her mat, or her chair. the kid is making choices, and now i feel guilty b/c i have probably been ignoring her for a long time! so we are going to have to be a lot more aware of the non-verbal communication going on with this lil lady!

akaiya has been trying to sit herself up for a long time now. she gets into a side position on her elbow, and that's usually as far as it would go. a couple of times she launched herself all the way up, but it didn't happen often, and when it did she usually just fell over the other way. well today mama was hanging out on the couch and kaiya was laying on her mat. she was looking like she was going to fall asleep so i just let her be. all of a sudden i looked up and found her almost sitting all the way up. she had her elbow extended and was using her hand to support. i grabbed the video camera, but i didn't get her getting into this position, only sitting in it already. i'm so proud of my little munchkin for teaching herself how to sit up all on her own! hopefully she made a new year's resolution to become mobile!