Baby Steps

When we picked Grace up at the orphanage, we expected to receive a toddler. At her age, a typical child knows about 15 words, is walking independently, and is able to do a lot more than she can.

We knew she was behind just by looking at how small she is and the fact that she couldn't walk yet.

Her first pediatric appointment confirmed the size- she weighs about half what they would expect a child at this age to weigh.

Clothes also indicate this size issue.Twelve month old dresses fit her fine, because they are dresses, but I am having a really hard time with pants on her. Twelve month old jeans, and many other bottom parts (skirts, pants etc.) literally just fall off. Yesterday I put some nine month old jeans on her, and they also were loose, just not quite bad enough to fall off. Most twelve month leggings have worked, but not even all of those. Yet- I bought nine month old sleeping clothes with the feet, and her legs were too long, and the "long sleeves" were more like three quarter sleeves on her. But the body part fit. (If you're curious, I decided to just modify these sleeping clothes to fit her by cutting out the feet part).

I mentioned in the last e-mail about her developmental doctors. Her occupational therapist, who is helping her get caught up in the walking/motor skills area, did the initial assessment to see where she is at. Developmentally (motor skills stuff), she is a nine month old. For some reason, it actually helped me come to terms with her biological age of seventeen months old, instead of always thinking to myself that she might actually be younger, so it isn't so bad. She arrived at the orphanage in December 2011, so she has to be at least 15 months old, and so is still behind even if that is the case... so I might as well accept that she is a 17 month old who is behind. This is part of my title for this post- baby steps. We thought we were getting a toddler, but since she is currently acting like a nine month old, we got a baby instead. Not bad, just different.

We are following the therapist's advice for at home practice, and helping where we can, and she will be seeing her once a week for at least the month of April. Though, she did say that part of the setback is her size, she needs the food to gain strength to do what she needs to do.

Her speech therapist wouldn't even give us an estimated age of her skills, because we realize it is unfair to judge her when she has only been hearing English for a week, but again indicated she is behind, and we will be seeing her three more times at least as well.

The main thing to improve her speech means that we (me more than Blake) are frequently sounding like crazy people. Basically, we are supposed to narrate every thing she does. So, for example, yesterday she was having fun having me open the door to the backyard, and then she would close it. For probably about 10 minutes my "conversation" was on repeat of: "Mommy opens the door, Grace closed the door..." Later that day, she was putting a box in a bigger box- "Grace put the box in, Grace took the box out, Grace put the box in..."

One of the hardest things for us at first was that she wouldn't sleep or eat (or basically anything) without being held by one of us. Even though we took shifts, this meant no real freedom, no ability to do house stuff. It was just hard. Yes, I did say it WAS hard.

We are making progress (baby steps) here at home!

Thursday, as long as there was food Grace wanted to eat, she was sitting in her own chair to eat it:


She ate in her own chair last night for dinner too!

Naptimes were tough, but we were making baby steps of progress all week long, getting her used to sleeping somewhere without us. Yesterday morning, I took the crib mattress out of the crib, and she took a nice long nap on it:

(p.s. I made that shirt she is wearing :-)  )

Yesterday afternoon, she put herself to sleep (basically crashed from being so tired of crying and screaming after a tantrum, but we'll take it) on the floor in our living room, and I got another couple hours of a break then (so nice).

But the biggest victory was last night. After waking up at 1 and being fussy, Blake put her on the crib mattress (still on the floor) while he used the restroom, and when he came back, she was sleeping there, so he decided to try taking it one step farther. He picked her up, put the mattress back in the crib, and put her in it. After a little bit of fussing and needing comfort... she fell back asleep! He was so excited to be able to go back to bed without her, though he expected her to wake up at any moment crying. Well... it is currently past 8... and she is still sleeping peacefully in her own crib!

So, baby steps, but there is definitely progress, which brings a lot of hope and joy to this house.