1) Reilly’s eating habits continue to evolve. She now understands how to position a hard piece of food (like a pretzel) between her back molars in order to break it up. So, instead of sucking on the pretzel for five minutes in order to soften it up, she can now crunch away on her snack.
2) Reilly is also learning how take bites of her food, instead of stuffing the entire thing into her mouth. For example, yesterday I gave her a whole wheat hot dog bun to eat, and after taking a few bites, she then used her fingers to tear off smaller pieces to pop into her mouth.
3) When Reilly is done eating she will wave her hands back and forth while also wiggling her fingers. Though we never taught her sign language, this clearly means, “For the love of God, dad, please stop putting Cheerios on my tray!”
4) Reilly has been teaching herself to walk backward. She is very tentative, taking very small baby steps in reverse, one by one. Her learning how to walk backward has had the following two effects: One, she will make anything into a seat. She will sit on the dog, her toy piano, your foot, anything that happens to be in the path of her bum. Two, she will walk up to me, back up, and sit down in my lap to read a book, or to just have a little snuggle.
5) Reilly has learned how to ask for a bottle. If she is hungry for milk, she will walk over to the stove, pull on the handle, and say “Bot?” She chooses this location because the stove is directly below the microwave, which we use to heat up Reilly’s bottles (5oz for 30 seconds). I believe that this is the first real “conversation” Reilly has had with us.
Come to think of it, she also will go to the front door and say “Bye!” when she wants to go outside. This new ability to communicate with us has already cut down on the number of tears required to get through a day, and that is a development that is good for everyone.
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