Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! We're already well into 2010 and I can't believe I haven't written yet. We have been adjusting (slowly) to the post-holiday world. We had a wonderful Christmas in Seattle and a fantastic trip to Missouri. We returned on January 5th and we've all been getting back into the swing of things. Trying to catch up is daunting, so I will just say we had a wonderful time and nice break from our typical craziness. It was great to celebrate in Seattle and so amazing to see my family in Missouri. The kids had a great time and Taylor was healthy!! She had a bad cold on Christmas Eve, but felt good the entire time we were in Missouri. Last year she was so sick, it was great to see her enjoy the trip this year and for my family to see her little personality shine. She did have some trouble with constipation, as she tends to, and it gets even worse when we travel. Once we got that issue taken care of (which is really painful for her and interrupts her sleep), we had a very relaxing 10 day trip.

Since we've been home, little things have come to mind that I wanted to document. I'll start with Taylor. Almost overnight, we see her trying to communicate and more spark coming through. She is laughing, enjoying playing with her toys, and crying louder/whining when she is unhappy. She is also saying "da da" a lot and making raspberry noises. We can't wait for her to be able to communicate more, so we're enjoying this new development. She has started waving, consistently, to say "night night" and you can see the pride in her eyes as she waves vigorously. The big kids just praise her and are so sweet.

Her big new trick is sitting up - while she has been able to sit for a long time - she now can go from laying down to sitting up all by herself. This is a huge transition skill and has taken so much work. She's been working on this for about a year and I'm amazed when I think back to Susan first showing us the exercise, where you literally helped her little arms "walk" up about 7 times to work herself into sitting. She absolutely hated it and the exercise was awkward. Her little hands had to open up and take her weight and you can still see her little arms quiver with the effort. I videotaped her on Friday and will try to post it to the blog. It takes her about 2 minutes to go from laying down to sitting up - still a tremendous effort but she is capable of doing it on her own. She does it best for Susan - when all she does is tickle Taylor's back. We need her to realize she can do it anytime she wants. I can't wait to walk into her room and see her sitting up in her bed all by herself.

Today, Taylor and I went shoe shopping, as all girls should. She'd never been fitted for a pair of shoes before. We've either gotten her little shoes at Target (Nordstrom didn't even carry shoes small enough for her), or used Lauren's hand-me-downs for her orthotics, which are bulky. Now, we're ready to work on standing a lot more, so Taylor needs to wear her orthotics regularly - we're starting with 45 minutes a day (outside of therapy, where she wears them a lot). She wore them for 45 minutes on Friday in therapy and did great. Her feet are very delicate and non-calloused, so we have to work into them so she doesn't get blisters from her orthotics (which cover the bottom and sides of her feet and go up around her ankle). So today, we went to get "real" shoes that fit her orthotics. I went to three stores before finding good options. The salesman was very kind and took some time trying on various kinds of shoes. Surprisingly, this was one of my first public outings with a noticeable "special need". I could see others in the store, particularly kids, looking at Taylor and wondering why she needed the special orthotics (or some would call them braces). This would have been really hard for me awhile back, but now, I focused on being so proud of Taylor for being able to practice her standing and getting her first pair of big girl shoes. She still wears a size 3 without orthotics (in comparison, Lauren wore a size 6 at this age) - because Taylor is little and her feet haven't had the same stimulus, or weight-bearing, as most kids her age, her feet haven't grown to a normal size. The standing, and hopefully walking, should help her, but in the meantime, we have pretty new shoes! I will take a picture and post it.

Meanwhile, Taylor and I have had lazy Saturdays because the big kids are taking skiing lessons at a mountain about 45 minutes from Seattle. They are gone with David from 8am-3pm on Saturdays for 8 weeks - I miss them, but the kids love it. They are having a great time and I'm glad they are learning a fun sport. Lauren is getting quite good - she is quite athletic. Jacob is good too, but has been a bit fearful of the chair lift - perhaps next week.

Jacob has been busy building all of the Lego's he got for Christmas - he loves them! He is really good at them - he can follow the intricate instructions in the booklets to build airplanes, pirate ships, and all kinds of cool stuff. He likes me to sit with him, but he is really good at building amazing stuff. He flew through a kit today that was designed for 7-12 year-olds. He is our little engineer.

Lauren is having a great time playing with her new toys too, and was so excited to get back to school and see her friends. She was "superstar" of her class this week, so she got to take something special to share everyday and our family joined her for lunch on Thursday. It was the cutest - she decided her something special to share would be Jacob, the magician. Jacob got magic tricks for Christmas and loves performing. He did four magic tricks in front of Lauren's entire class with Lauren as his assistant. We couldn't believe he did it. He was very composed and loved it. Lauren was also excited to show off Taylor - it was heartwarming to see. She also has been very concerned for the people in Haiti - she asked if some of the kids could come over and live with us - she would share her room. Our sweet girl has a heart of gold.

That's all for now - I hope everyone is off to a great start this year - I will resolve to write more regularly now that I'm off and running!