Mea Culpa

Under pressure from husband and friends, I hereby publicly announce that yeah, okay, I'm actually not a Bad Mom. Are y'all happy now? Sheesh!

I do get hard on myself, I know it. Kipp gets the brunt of it. Honestly when I go public with being a Bad Mom, I'm not even in a bad space; I'm actually poking fun at myself.

I know I'm not UberMom, but nobody is. Hey, I try! And I have self-esteem problems, and I'm scared to death of failing my kids. It all adds up. But in all honesty, I know I don't utterly suck. I have my positive attributes.

I have approached UberMom though in that I've begun feeding Kiki fresh fruits and vegetables instead of the Gerber stuff. Go me!! It actually doesn't even take that much time to do. I thought it would be all time-consuming and stuff, but in light of everything else? Not so much.

Okay. Enough about me.

Kiki's making strides again. She seems to go through spurts of sudden milestones, then cools her jets for a while in preparation for the next bundle. I'm so proud of her! And of myself that I'm proud of her accomplishments instead of continuing to focus on what she's not doing yet. Oh, I still have my moments, but they're getting fewer and fewer, thank God.

So now it's bragging time!

She's actually moving herself into a sitting position all by herself now! She's still not sitting straight up without assistance, but she's getting there. The PT is happy because she's not pushing herself up from a full splits position, like many Downs babies do, due to their hyperextendability. Instead, she gets on all fours, then extends a leg out to the side, then sort of pushes back onto her butt. She's getting pretty good at it too.

And she's handling chunkier food better now too, and even starting to make chewing motions, instead of just pushing it around with her tongue. And every now and then, we catch her babbling a couple of consonants. We're always going "ba ba ba, da da da, ma ma ma" in her face, so of course she prefers to say things like "ga ga", "pa pa," and "ja ja" just to be persnickety.

She's really interacting with all of her toys now, and is reaching for everything. She doesn't sit quietly in our laps anymore; she's constantly trying to escape and explore. She's absolutely fascinated by the dogs, particularly Sugar. If she's on the floor and Sugar comes to check her out, Kiki often will scoot over to her and then fall on Sugar's back in a half-crawl tackle. She's already pulled ears and tail, and Sugar, bless her heart, is completely tolerant of all of it.

And that is our update for the week. Happy February, everybody!