Milestones and 'More'

Today is AWESOME! AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME!

It's a gorgeous Spring day in Canberra....sitting here in a singlet top! Aaaah Lovely. After 10 weeks of sitting on the floor, our lounge has finally arrived. But even better.....the day began with a word. That word was 'More'....and that word came out of Ayla's mouth! The planets, stars and the cogs in Ayla's brain all aligned to produce her first, undisputed word. It may not progress in the same way that other kids' speech does where they say it once and then there's no stopping them, but it's still her first undisputed word. It was said completely in context and at the right time. She wanted more pikelets, of course!

It's a huge milestone and it made me stop and realise that in the last 9-12 weeks, there has really been a string of little milestones.

I've noticed that Ayla is using her stomach muscles to sit up lately, instead of using her arms to push herself into sitting. And that when she topples over, it's a controlled decent instead of a crash! Ayla is becoming amazingly curious about her surroundings, exploring every nook and cranny in every location she visits. Her Preschool teacher told me today that she covers every inch of the preschool room (and it's a big room), each day that she's there. Yesterday they opened the door to let a breeze in and within seconds they couldn't find Ayla and she was sitting outside playing in the dirt. AWESOME! We have a 2-way bathroom and often find Ayla taking herself off to the bathroom to play. When we pull her out of there (it's not really safe to play by herself) and close the door, she knows to roll around to the other door! She initiates games of peek-a-boo, slaps her hands on the highchair to tell me to hurry up and put food in her mouth, passing things to me when I ask for them, rolling to me when I call her over, and attempting to 'put' things into and onto other things, filling up the containers in the bath and throwing them out of the bath, water and all. And it took a word (the biggest milestone of all) to remind me of all these little ones that are no less amazing.

To celebrate all of these milestones....and the milestone that is me finally working out how to embed a video in blog, I have included a video taken in January of Ayla and my Mum's dog, Gus. And at the top, as promised, the painting that I bought for Ayla from the Art show. It was painted by one of the students from Ayla's Specialist School.



Oh and on a slightly different topic.....today we realised that we might be around $800 short for the next ABR workshop which is on Nov 13....so if you have been eyeing something off for Christmas presents on either Don't Tell Mamma or Mum and Dad's market stall, we would love it if you could consider purchasing it;)....it's going to be pretty tight this time around. Thanks so much for everyone's support, we seriously wouldn't be powering ahead like we are without you all.