Thursday, July 9, 2009

Letting go

The past couple days, but yesterday especially, Alyna has been practicing maintaining her balance standing up when she lets go of the furniture. She's very proud of herself when she stands there for 5 or 6 seconds before squating down to sit. We applaud every time to encourage her.

Ryan did it today too for a couple seconds, but I think it was an accident. He's much too impatient to "practice" standing still. He just wants to go. He'll let go of something, turn and reach for something else, but he rarely just stands still even when he's holding on to something. I know that one day we'll turn around and he'll just be walking across the room.

Alyna and Ryan have a fun new game they play together. Alyna grabbed the plastic keys yesterday and held them out to Ryan. When he grabbed the other side, she didn't let go. She pulled back. They did this several times quietly playing their new game, and not really caring who ended up with the keys when the tugging gave way.

Nap time has been moved from 9 and 1 to 9:30 and 1:30 or 2. This has helped the evenings go smoother, and they've been napping longer again too. Sometimes 9 am comes and Ryan gets fussy because he thinks it's nap time, but if we can make it to 9:10 he is usually happy again until 9:30.

Alyna is starting to refuse to eat baby food (not that she ever liked it to begin with). They now have to have something to chew for their lunch and dinner or they just won't eat at all. The problem with this is that they still don't have any teeth so any food has to be soft enough to gum down. They love mac 'n cheese, cooked carrots, green beans, toast, graham crackers, rice rusks, diced pears, and cheerios (of course). Ryan will also eat diced bananas, and bites of cheese. Alyna is much more picky. Neither one likes peas, potatoes, or tomato sauce. We also have to be careful handing them anything whole, like graham crackers, because they'll stuff way to much in their mouth.

If anyone else has ideas of food for this stage I'd love to hear it.

1 comment:

deltasierra said...

Can we trade problems? :)

My 16-month-old doesn't care for anything more solid than banana or oatmeal. He will gag on it, throw it all up, and refuse to eat anything else.

He had been eating almost anything I made mushy, but he has suddenly scaled way back on what he likes. I finally broke down and bought him a bunch of stage 2 jar foods, because he'll eat them – and if he doesn't, I can take them to the food bank. Even the stage 3 foods with the little "tender bits" in them "to encourage chewing" make him gag.

Very frustrating! But at least with the jar foods he's getting more nutrition than the applesauce and oatmeal he was living on before!

Toddlers . . .