Mommy life: A big evening!

Braska's been holding out on her therapists. In the therapy sessions, they try and try to get her to reach for things, but she's completely uninterested in any of the zillions of toys that have been presented. She just recently, like in the last few days, has been starting to reach for my hands when I go to pick her up, and that's been fun for us. She doesn't really reach up, like she's asking to be picked up, she reaches out to hold the hands, but only if I put them palms facing her...like I'm miming a window between us. I say "hands" and she giggles and reaches up to grab my hands. She's done it for her Pop too, and that was good times.

She has also been extremely interested in her tubing while it's hooked up for her bolus feeds to the G-tube. She spends the entire feeding--granted, it only takes about 3 minutes (perk of the situation)-- reaching and following the tubing around when I move it to add more formula or to try to evade her grasp. She's been showing great attention and focus for extended periods compared to just a couple weeks ago.

Tonight, she really went crazy though. Pop was relaxing on the couch with some Sudoku and Braska came for a visit. She took an instant liking to that little paperback book and spent the next 25 MINUTES grabbing, shaking, giggling, kicking, and generally getting a crazy good workout while loving every second. This is a record by far for activity, focus on one object, strength in her grip on something not very easy to hold, and plain old fun. Here's a couple snippets that were about 15 minutes into the fun time... she'd slowed down just a tad and was relying more on her feet.

Every time we'd take it away, thinking she was done, she'd reach out and grab it again. This was right as she was heading to bed, and she was pretty tired, but it didn't stop her from being super jazzed about this book. When she finally did finish, I filled her little belly and off to bed she went. She was out like a light...even more than her normal instantly-to-sleep pattern. Both of us watched her playing with big looks of amazement. It was great to see. I wish I'd have caught more at the beginning. Even though she looked like she was finished at the end of the second video, she went on for another 6 or 7 minutes. She almost seemed obsessed! We're going to test it out again tomorrow to see if the same item is as interesting.