We are all attached to her and she too us. Interesting she has attached to each of us quite differently. With Livi, I notice that she plays really well by her, much better than she does with other children. Sofie likes to play close to Livi and expects her to be close by. She goes to the toys Livi has been playing with. All common little sibling stuff. So awesome! She is pretty dependent on Livi for sleeping too. Not sure if this is a good thing but they share a room so I guess it is a natural progression of the attachment thing. With Jon, Sofie looks for rough housing. I suppose that is a typical Dad role! She is more chill with Jon too. She is calm with him... I can relate :) I'm generally more calm with him too. With me, she is needy. I love being needed by her, most of the time. She likes to be close to me and climbs all over me when we are home. When we are out she is starting to look back for me to make sure I am still around! This is huge by the way!
This past month Sofie had her first FAMILY Christmas! She was a little confused at times but went with the flow. She also had her first FAMILY vacation! We had a big family reunion in Mexico! Despite our worries that she would regress with her behaviors and eating patterns, she again blew down our expectations. Although she did revert to some of her old coping methods during travel, she progressed in other ways on the trip. She ate and drank wonderfully the whole week, enjoyed herself in the water and began saying "hi" much more consistently and clearer! Sofie started her music class again this past week. She was so excited! When she saw where we had pulled in to park she started screeching in her car seat! She did awesome her first class back. She has come such a long way and this class is such AMAZING therapy for her! She fully participated, did all the actions even though it was all new songs, moved her mouth in the shape of the words we where singing and has better rhythm than I do! Seriously. She is a dancer. You can't help but smile when you watch her. She also had her first experience in snow just a few days ago. She did not think much of it. She did not like it to much but did tolerate standing in it and watching us build a snow man.
As far as her development she continues to progress. She understands us almost completely even though she was ESL. She wasn't talking any Bulgarian words when we got her but this is still amazingly fast in my mind. She is a climber. I see broken bones in her future. She can get out of her crib despite her sleep sack. She can follow a few simple two step instructions, like "Pick that up and bring it to Mommy, gentle!" That one gets said a lot and comes after she throws something. She is throwing much less and only hits or pulls hair when she is over-tired or hungry which I try to be careful to not let her get. She is playing with things all time now and frequently even appropriately! Just this week she walked over to the toys in a waiting room, sat down and started playing with the doll house totally appropriately and by herself! No prompting! (Remember she had no idea how to play with anything besides throwing things in the beginning.)
She can say a few words now and they are coming out more often. "Up" and "Hi" are her most frequently used ones. "Mama" and "Nay, Nay" come out usually when she is more distressed over something. She can sort of say "Hello" but only with prompting. "Dada" is in her repertoire too. These last two weeks she has been making a ton of new sounds which I'm excited to see where they take us. Still waiting on a speech therapist appointment but I just learned that the health unit offers a free clinic once a month. I think I'll try to get her in there. She has about 15 solid ASL signs to communicate with and she is working on more. Jon and I should really take a class. Along side her speech development, her oral development is taking off! She has been putting things in her mouth a lot more! She pretends to be feeding herself with a cup and spoon from their kitchen set and has been eating markers!
We saw her pediatrician this past week for a follow up and to get some referrals. He said she is doing really great. We should finally be getting some referrals for a Cardiologist, Optometrist, Ears specialist (just to rule out any issues before we get in to speech therapy too much), Ped's Dentist and a dietician. She is now in the 5th percentile for weight. She is a whopping 24 pounds! Which matches her 5th percentile of height. She is just about 33 inches. She's gained over 5 lbs in the past 5 months but only grown 1.5 cm. Dr. PP was not concerned about the lack of growth "yet". He figures there is probably a lag because of so many years of malnutrition, but we are going to keep an eye on it.
Orthotics were recommended by her physiotherapist but not her Pediatrician. There is some debate as to what is causing her knock-knees. We have decided to go ahead with the orthotics, but wait to get them in the summer before she starts preschool, when she'll be wearing shoes a lot more.
I should go now since Sofie is sitting on the desk beside me using every bit of self-control she has not to touch the keyboard or screen. I've tortured her enough... time to play with my girls!
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