Adopting the Spectrum: Playful Little Girl

Hannah has become very playful lately. She likes to chase me around while I crawl on the floor or be chased by Mommy or Daddy as she quickly tries to crawl away. She's started to initiate these games herself and will ask for more playtime by signing when she doesn't want to be finished! The other day I got a video of her playing with Kyle that is really cute. She also likes to climb all over us. She thinks it's pretty funny to wiggle

over the top of our belly and flop onto the floor on the other side. Once over her only objective is to wiggle herself right back over to the other side again! As her crawling speed increases she is getting much harder to keep track of. If I turn my head for a second or look away to answer the phone or yell at the dogs she can be in another room when I turn back around! We finally got around to ordering and installing baby gates and I must say that it was not a moment too soon! The poor animals are really taking the brunt of Hannah's new found mobility. She loves to chase them around and pull on their fur. Hannah's grandpa's dog, My, has really been a trooper. Hannah is constantly pulling on her face and tail and loves to

body slam her. We were initially worried about how My would react to Hannah's affections, but so far she hasn't seemed to mind a bit. We still keep a close eye on her though. Today Hannah ousted Abby from her crate while she was taking a nap. Poor Abby seemed pretty confused when Hannah came crawling right into the crate with her. If only my camera was ready when she did it!

Since the weather has been so nice we've been taking Hannah out on little adventures whenever Kyle gets home from work. Lately Kyle has been running with Hannah in the jogging stroller and I ride my bike along beside them. Yesterday I finally bought Hannah a bike helmet so we decided to take her out in her bike trailer

that she and Kyle got for Christmas. Unfortunately Hannah was not very cooperative about wearing her helmet. We think it was uncomfortable for her because it kept her from resting her head back against her seat in the trailer. It kept getting pushed forward out of position so we had to take it off about half way into the ride. She was much happier after that, but Kyle and I really didn't like her out riding without a helmet. We are going to do some fiddling with the helmet and the trailer to see if we can get them both to be more comfortable for Hannah so she will keep her helmet on. Until then Hannah's grounded from riding in the trailer until she will safely wear her helmet.

We've also taken Hannah out in her baby backpack that she and Daddy got for Christmas and she enjoys that quite a bit. This Friday we went to hike at Happy Hollow Park and Hannah even fell asleep in the backpack with her head resting on Kyle's shoulder! It was so cute. One thing I have determined though is that I am unintentionally raising a city girl! Hannah hates to touch grass or dirt! If I set her down in the grass she refuses to crawl or even set her hand down and touch the grass! If she does happen to touch the grass by accident she pulls her hand

away quickly and starts to whine. She's going to have to get over that as I'm not having a sissy city girl for a daughter! It looks like she's going to be spending lots of time getting dirty this spring and summer to get her over that. I even bought her some sturdy play clothes!

Lately Hannah has seemed hungrier than usual so we have upped her formula back to wear it was a few months ago and increased her solid food. We are also trying out a new feeding schedule to see how that works. I'll let you know how things go with that after we have a chance to see what happens. We also increased the amount of regular formula Hannah has been getting and decreased the amount of the special formula for her reflux. So far things have been going well and we have NO spit up! YEAH! We will be quite happy if she has grown out of the reflux and so will our pocket books since the special formula is quite a bit more expensive than the regular type.

Hannah continues to really love eating her veggie puffs and still objects to being told she's finished with them, but we are working through those tantrums. The other day I gave her some diced cooked apples and she liked the taste, but hated how they felt in her hand. She didn't want to touch them at all, but wanted me to feed them to her with a spoon! We had this big drama/battle of wills (which I actually won this time!) Where I was having to make her feed

herself a piece of apple each time so that she wanted another veggie puff. It was so funny to see her bargaining with me and trying to see if she was persistent enough if I would give up. Eventually she would just immediately pick up and eat another piece of apple and then sign more and look straight at the puffs! She knew exactly what she had to do to get what she wanted and she wasn't eating even one extra piece of apple than she had to! She's also been learning some new signs and one she doesn't like is don't touch. When I was teaching her it she thought it was pretty funny, but now that she's got a taste of what it means in the real world she's not sure it's funny any more!

Wednesday I made and decorated a practice cake for Hannah's birthday. I thought it would take

me many tries to relearn my past cake decorating skills, but it all came back to me pretty quickly. I even made my own icing using Grandma Frye's recipe! The only thing I needed help with was knowing what it meant to cream the icing (you all know I'm not a baker) and I wasn't sure how to get the cake out of the pan once it was done. Luckily my friend Sarah who is an excellent baker came over and helped me out. It turns out the cake just plopped right out of the pan with no problems thanks to my over abundance of PAM I sprayed on the pan before I poured in the batter! Oh well, the result was

what I wanted-a cake that came out looking like the shape it was supposed to be!

Here are some more videos of Hannah. Just click on the link to watch the video. Enjoy!

This video is of Hannah in crawling position a few days before she actually learned how to crawl.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3099214653381785705&hl=en

This is a video of Hannah getting Abby's tail.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7063141752235499658&hl=en

This is a video of Hannah up on her hands and feet.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6225684448042506562&hl=en