Surprised

I discovered a surprise in my garden recently. Back in September I planted a mystery plant courtesy of the Jenney's. (They brought garden baskets to adorn the tables at our St. Michael day feast at church and sent one home with me.) I just discovered that it is an artichoke! Hurray. The fruit is currently about fist size and growing fast. I can't wait to eat it.

Claire has been making progress in many areas while I was away from the blog. Just yesterday I got her to stack 3 blocks on a tower I started. Sometime within the past week she started using her pointer finger to point to pictures in books as well as objects. (These are both milestones the OT has been working on for months.)

She is able to recite entire sentences from books and nursery rhymes. She says, "This piggy went market. This piggy stayed home."

She is running-- mostly on tiptoe, but quite fast. She can go up the front steps standing and holding the side. She can go down crawling, but prefers to hold someone's hand. We are looking forward to seeing her jump for the first time.

Her sleep is improving too. She's been having some 5 hour stints and occasionally will sleep for 7 hours without waking. She is also starting to self soothe when she wakes up during the night. I'll hear her wake up and call out but she'll go back to sleep within the minute. For a while she was spending an hour or more of each night awake. thankfully she is doing this much less frequently.

We visited the eye doctor who said Claire's eyes look fine and she is less far sighted than she was a year ago when we last went in. We don't need to go back until age 4.

Gotta run