Ava's development

Just a note on how Ava has developed so far. It is easy to track because each skill she has acquired has been painfully slow. When she was three months old I would pull her to a sit and her head would fall back in a lag. She always grinned when I did it so for some reason I thought she was playing. The doc noted it (but of course didn't tell me anything other than hmmm.) When I would put her on her tummy she would scream and scream without moving her head to the side but after a couple months of doing it anyway she stopped and began to raise her head up a bit (five months). The biggest gross motor development so far is her sitting. I remember very clearly the day she first sat. She was 13 months old and I was propping her up against the couch on the floor. When I let go she stayed up and then inched forward and still stayed up. I was so excited. I moved her to the middle of the floor and like defying gravity she did it. Just like that, after five months of propping and trying to help her sit. Suddenly she was sitting like a pro. Within weeks she learned to stop her fall with her hands (another huge milestone) and began getting steadier. A few weeks after starting the keto diet (16 months) she started picking things up for the first time with her hands and bringing them to her mouth. She could never get something as far as her mouth before. At 17 months she began to get into sitting from laying. That is still something she is perfecting. Some days it takes a lot of effort and other times she just pops right up.

We are beginning to realize a learning pattern for her. At eight months she blew raspberries then stopped, she babbled ma da num and nigh then stopped, she shook her head yes and no then stopped, months later she started blowing raspberries again, then she started (not often) slightly shaking her head no again. I was worried about this wondering if it was degenerative but her neuro thinks that it is normal. Like when Meggie would master a skill she would stop it for a week as she learned another and it would come back. It just takes Ava about two to four months to learn a skill she is working on. (Closer to two) For the past two months Ava has been twisting and placing her hands beside her like in a crawl. That is all she ever wants to do. Twist and place then back up and repeat. Last week she started moving her back knee up to try to make it over but can't quite make it. She also is starting to multi task. While learning to get into the crawl she has also started to place her hands in front of her in a sit position as if getting ready to bum shuffle. I have seen her move an inch forward.
She also is twisting to where she wants to go and leaning in that direction so hopefully we will see some kind of locomotion before her second birthday.
To help her gain arm strength I will hold her knees and walk her around the room like a wheelbarrow. She does walk her hands and seems to enjoy it.
We have also begun to work with her standing from sitting. I sit her on my knee and hold her hands and she will stand up on her own (she is so proud when she does it...yeah Ava!)
This weekend the whole family was singing kareoke on the PS3 and I put the mic up to her mouth and she scrunched up her nose in her 'i'm so cute expression' and sang 'ahhh' into the mic, it was no fluke either because the nose thing happened every time. I think I will bring a mic to her hearing and speech class.