Use your imagination

And just pretend I wrote an update when I promised I would. No fancy excuses here, just life.

and as long as we're pretending, just imagine that Olivia's pants match her shirt today. They matched when I got her dressed in the dark this morning. It's magic.

We're making incredible progress. Olivia is averaging about 3 ounces per feed these days, up from zero. And she's taking pediasure (her big girl formula), fruits (peaches, bananas, applesauce, strawberries, "fruit cocktail," etc), and a few veggies (sweet potatoes, carrots) in the form of a puree from a squeeze bottles and sometimes spoons. Cec, if you're reading this, I'd love to see a sentence diagram of that sentence. It could take two pages if we did it right.

There's a really wonderful, unforseen benefit to bringing your child to the hospital and forcing her to interact with nice people even though she's terrified of them- Olivia is now much more sociable. She no longer goes into hysterics the first, second, or third time she meets someone. In fact, she actually waves at strangers from her stroller as we walk through the hospital or the park. I love it!

She's also learned to stand up on her own, without even using furniture. No independent steps yet, but they've got to be just around the corner. I'm interested to see what Olivia's PT says when she gets home- we've been working towards this for a long time. We've talked about ankle support braces, at least temporarily, so I'd really like to have him look at her stance and see what he says. In the meantime, Olivia's favorite pasttime is climbing on top of anything and everything, and then standing on it. Dogs, furniture, toys, laundry baskets, wagons. Olivia thinks she's king of them all.

Also, spending so much time with older kids, and especially sharing toys with them in an enclosed space has, ahem, encouraged Olivia to try interracting more often. We've noticed that she's learned three new oral words (baby, ball, fish) since coming here. That brings her to a grand total of... four! She's also learned and uses the signs for papa, all done, and more.

More is my favorite right now. Today, when Olivia's timer went off and she turned it off, she refused to do the all done sign. Usually she can't wait! But today she looked her therapist in the face, and signed more. Then she did it again. Charles and I were watching from the other room, and we were speechless. Kacie held up a cup of yogurt and a cup of carrots, and asked which one Olivia wanted more of. Olivia pointed to the carrots, so she got a spoonful of carrots, and then we got to go pick her up for playtime. I never thought this day would come, but it's here! Olivia is having fun taking her bites!