After a long stretch of various illnesses, this has been a happy and healthy month for Nadia (well except for whatever she picked up this weekend). It’s like Nadia was waiting for a stretch of good health to show us all the things she has been working on these last few months.
Finally, Nadia can crawl in a mostly coordinated way, although she still enjoys a good army crawl and janky crawl depending on the day. Nadia loves finding the most dangerous places to practice these skills, such as booking it to the stairs while we’re not looking or trying to crawl off the bed. I hope I never forget the look on her face when Nadia realized she could crawl out of her bedroom into the hallway to get to our room. How exciting it must be to discover a whole new world!
Pulling up has been a big highlight this month– she a big fan of reaching for the neck of my shirt to pull herself up to standing. She has not managed to pull up to stand at the coffee table, but I am sure that’s coming soon. Everyone at daycare is guessing she will be walking in another couple of months, which seems crazy because until a month and a half ago she could barely sit independently. I had myself prepared that she wouldn’t walk until 18 months since most of her other gross motor skills were on the late end of normal. Constantly I am learning the lesson to stop worrying about Nadia, because clearly she is doing just fine.
Earlier this month Nadia moved into the next age group at daycare, although she is just on the other side of the nursery and still has the same lead teacher. Nadia now gets to go outside twice most days and sits at a table for snacks and story time. She is now with a smaller group of children (five total) and seems to be thriving with this group. It’s funny how much older she seems with this new structure.
I believe I started sending a “lunch” to school around 8 months, but now Nadia eats breakfast and dinner at home and lunch and two snacks at school. I guess she really is making progress with transitioning away from milk feedings and towards solid foods. All these little changes are bittersweet, it is exciting seeing her grow up but sad to realize she will never be a newborn again.
Slowly Nadia is making progress on the sleep front. Sometimes she is able to wake up, talk for a few minutes and go back to sleep on her own. She still looks for milk feeding a few times and some rocking and singing before going back to bed. After the stretch when she was waking up hourly due to being sick this has felt quite a bit better for everyone.
Lastly, we got to have a couple fun outings this month– a daytrip to First Landing State Park to play at the beach and Flying Squirrels game. It’s funny- we have done so few activities beyond walks in the park because of COVID, it was nice to have some “normal” fun.