Tag Archives: down syndrome

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Thus begins transition

Jon and I attended Lina’s first school transition meeting yesterday. We drove down to the county administration building and met with Lina’s TEIS (Tennessee Early Intervention Services) coordinator and a school psychologist who took down initial information about Lina’s current progress, goals and needs. There wasn’t much new information at the meeting, since we’ve already talked quite a bit with the TEIS coordinator about the early childhood special education program. We got a few answers to questions, but the meeting mostly served as an official introduction to the school system and the kick-off for the transition process. From here, the wheels turn until her first day of preschool on September 14.

The next steps, as we understand them, are:

1. Soon – probably in the next few weeks – we will know for sure which school Lina will be assigned to. Early childhood preschools are not offered at every elementary school in the district. Our zoned elementary school is in a “swing zone,” meaning we could end up at either of two preschools, both of which are about 20 minutes away. There is also a chance the district will open a third program, which could potentially mean a closer option.

2. Sometime over the summer, Lina will be scheduled for a full evaluation, which will include motor, communication, social and cognitive assessments. These assessments will show where she is in her development and will be the basis for her qualification for special education services.

3. Once the assessments are complete, the school system will schedule our first IEP (Individualized Education Program) meeting. This will be the biggie, where we sit down with school administrators, teachers and therapists and outline very specific goals and strategies for Lina. We will be attending regular IEP meetings for the rest of Lina’s educational experience. The IEP is a critical tool for making sure she is receiving the support and resources she needs to reach her full educational potential.

4. In August, we will schedule a tour to see the preschool in action so we have a better idea exactly what to expect on Lina’s first day.

It was a pretty uneventful meeting. The most involved discussion we had was about cognitive testing, which some parents refuse out of distrust for the accuracy of the testing and a concern that an IQ score will result in limiting expectations. But really, it was pretty simple, and we were out of there in about 30 minutes. It’s funny, though; I still felt a bit like a wrung-out dish rag. Even when the logistics are straight-forward, a meeting like that requires a higher level of emotional energy. I think any parent who has been in a school meeting to discuss a challenge can probably relate. I have been to similar meetings with her current school or therapists, but this was the first one Jon was able to attend. He commented last night on how it was emotionally a little bit hard; I felt relieved to share that experience with him. He won’t be able to go to every school meeting, but we agreed it’s important for him to be involved whenever he can. I am hopeful the educational realm we are entering may make it a little easier for Jon to be involved in setting goals and knowing what we’re all working towards.

On a less serious note, I’ll share a few pictures from the last day of my cousin’s visit. We had such a good time with family we see too rarely, and we miss them now that they’re back home in Michigan.

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Girl was fearless heading down the big slides.

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Dirty and content

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A boy and his dog

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And she’s off…

Our girl is walking. In the span of just a few short days, she has made tremendous progress. She went from taking a few steps here and there to taking around 20 steps to strolling across rooms and beyond. She turns corners, bends to pick up toys, dances, and generally navigates with confidence. She still stumbles sometimes, and she crawls when she’s in a hurry, but she’s getting more comfortable all the time. The physical therapist was impressed with her form and advised us to stop using the orthotic braces and try just a pair of supportive shoes. (She does still need some ankle support to keep her feet from turning in.) We discovered tonight that we have the perfect pair on hand – beautiful, never-worn Primigi boots handed down to us by a friend. Just in the few hours she wore them, she made huge progress. It looks like we’ve left the braces behind for good.

So, at just shy of 28 months, it has happened. In her usual fashion, she waited to walk until she was sure she could do it well. It’s tricky to catch her on camera, so pardon the dark video.

I guess I officially have to stop calling her a baby now. Toddlerhood has arrived, and she’s not looking back.

 

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Highs and lows

Today was a perfect illustration of how parenting a child with special needs can be a bit of a whiplash experience.

We’ll start with the low.

I mentioned that Thanksgiving induced a hair pulling relapse for Lina. Last Tuesday – her first day back to Mother’s Day Out after the holiday – her teacher greeted me at pick-up with a report of a day spent terrorizing her classmates. Today, I was met at pick-up by the program director. Yeah. Never a good sign.

She was very sweet, but the tone was serious. They plan to bring the special education teacher into the room to observe and hopefully make some suggestions on strategies. (She is normally a teacher in Corin’s room.) I talked to the director about what we’re doing at home, and she admitted that today had been better than last week but didn’t hold back from a series of dangling sentences: “If it doesn’t improve, we may not be able to… Not that we’re even close to that yet, so I don’t want you to think… But I need to let you know that if it doesn’t improve, she won’t be able to…” I understood the warning very well.

Believe me, I get why this is a problem. It’s a sensory issue without a quick fix. My girl has a death grip, and it is horrifying to see her attempting to yank hair out of the heads of small, helpless children who invariably manage to look simultaneously confused and pain-struck. It’s a problem at home, too, and we are working hard on it. We’re regaining ground, and I think we’ll get back to a much better place. I don’t expect it to result in Lina actually getting kicked out of Mother’s Day Out, but you can imagine how the entire exchange made me feel.

The good news is the day didn’t end there. Tuesdays, we head straight from Mother’s Day Out to speech therapy at Vanderbilt.

And man, did Lina kick some speech therapy butt today. Her attention to task was phenomenal, she was consistently responding appropriately with words or signs to questions and prompts, her vocabulary had expanded, and her whole manner of communicating was well ahead of where she was just a week ago. Her therapist was floored. I wasn’t too surprised; after all, as I was getting her ready for nap time yesterday, she told me, without prompting, everything she’d just eaten (her version of “cheese,” “raisins,” and “crackers”).

And so it goes. There are highs and lows, sometimes right on top of each other. The thing I’m learning about having a kid with Down syndrome is the struggles are not so different from parenting any kid. It’s just that Lina’s timetable is slower, and her challenges are magnified. But her triumphs are magnified, too. It’s like trying to explain to a person without kids why having them is so hard but also so amazing. Parenting a kid with Down syndrome is really hard. It’s also really amazing. And just like in that conversation about having kids, the take-away is unequivocal: it’s absolutely worth it.

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Baby steps

Lina has taken a couple independent steps several times over the last few days. I feel like she keeps teetering on the brink of really taking off. Her physical therapist sent us home with a walker this week so she can keep practicing and improving her strength and confidence. She’s a pro at standing independently, but the therapist thinks it’s just a matter of that extra bit of strength and confidence to balance on one foot as she steps forward. She has a great foundation of good technique and all that bilateral crawling is actually fantastic for brain development.

Lina is in an interesting in-between stage right now. She’s not really a baby, but because she isn’t walking yet, it doesn’t seem quite right to call her a toddler. Her receptive language in particular is improving, and there are small gains with her expressive, though her therapist thinks that is taking a back seat as she focuses on gross motor. (Just one more reason we’d really like to get that girl walking!) Her play is changing significantly, which her therapists credit to her time with typical peers at Mother’s Day Out. She engages in more focused and pretend play with toys, rather than just exploring them and then throwing them aside (although she still does that some, too). She might pretend to feed me and herself with her baby’s bottle, or spend more time actually driving a car around on the floor, or maybe put people in the proper spots inside the bus. She might be able to focus long enough to put shapes in the proper spots in a shape sorter. We still haven’t gotten much traction with puzzles, and attention span can still be a challenge at story time, though she usually will sit through her favorite books at least once.

We’ve also been experiencing a big recurrence of hair pulling. She’d been doing much better until Thanksgiving, when the house was full of unfamiliar people and constant noise, and my poor little 22-month-old nephew was right at her level with his tempting locks (regrettably now much thinner than they were). The overstimulation set Lina back a long way on this one, and her Mother’s Day Out teacher reported that she terrorized everyone in reach on her first day back post-holiday. Here our tender scalps were just recovering… Back to the slow, steady “redirect and reinforce” approach.

Her sense of humor keeps growing, as does her desire to imitate. She can express herself loudly, especially when she’s frustrated. She loves to use song motions to communicate. For example, she points to her face for happy, as in, “If you’re happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it.” We also get a lot of the round and round motion for the wheels on the bus, and the occasional itsy, bitsy spider thrown in for fun.

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I’m not going to lie: her slower pace of progress can be very frustrating. My arms can testify to the challenges of lugging around a two-year-old (albeit a small one). Inside our little family, we celebrate each step, each sign of progress, each little milestone and feel gratitude and pride in her achievements. It gets harder when we’re in public and strangers ask her age; I brace myself before responding, knowing they are expecting a child much younger. It gets harder when she’s side-by-side with her peers and obviously not at their level. It gets harder in the little kids’ class at church, where managing her short attention span, toy throwing and hair pulling demands every ounce of energy I have.

I was thinking about this the other day as we were driving home from an outing, and I felt an almost overwhelming urge to rush her home, hold her close and never leave the house again. I suppose every parent experiences the urge to shield their children from the harsh realities of the world, but I find that to be magnified with Lina. I know it’s an urge I will have to fight her whole life, as I encourage her to take those baby steps to each new milestone, out into a world that will not always greet her with the love and understanding she finds at home. It pierces my heart to know someone might even be thinking something unkind about her. I can hardly stand to contemplate the jeers and misunderstanding she may encounter as she grows and ventures out from the nest.

But just like with Corin and with every parent and child, it’s my job to equip her for that big, wide world. I know full well that sheltering Lina at home would do a tremendous disservice, to her and to the world she will enrich. She needs my full-voiced support urging her forward, giving her the confidence for each of those steps forward. Our family will always be a safe haven, but it has to be a launching pad, not a hideout. The trick is to find ways to work now to make the world the place I want it to be for her. I suppose that’s why I keep writing and posting pictures here.

For now, when parents ask if she’s walking, I smile and say, “She’s working very hard on it.” When other kids her age race by her, I am thankful she has them to imitate. When she won’t stay on the blanket at story time, I sit with her, knowing she learns through constant practice. As I exercise patience and cheer Lina’s baby steps now, I know each one is a tiny step toward the future we dream of for her.

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That sweet face – 2 years

I promised some time ago to do an update on Lina’s milestones at two years old. I’ll get to that in a moment.

We’ve been a little crazy trying to get fully settled into the new home now that the old one is finally sold. I do a lot of craigslist buying, which means a lot of running all over creation to look at furniture that may or may not be a reasonable option. My worst experience so far was the woman who told me her couch was in good to excellent condition, stood me up for one appointment, and then on my second try showed me to a couch that had been utterly destroyed by her four children and claimed to just now be noticing the stains. For all its faults, craigslist has allowed us to buy a lot of decent quality furniture on a very tight budget. The solid farmhouse dining chairs were a Goodwill find, although I have yet to get them refinished. Ultimately, I find it very rewarding to piece rooms together from bargain finds. There are a lot of dream projects that will have to wait for a later time, but we’re at least gradually leaving behind the “just-moved” look.

And now, to Lina. Our sweet girl is 25 months, and I owe an update on her progress.

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At two years, Eline:

  • Is fiercely independent. She does not want to be told what to do, and she does not want help doing it! Her “leave me alone” gesture has become very familiar.
  • Speaks and/or signs about 50 words and tested in the low average category for expressive language. She tested a little lower (slightly below the average range) for receptive, due to challenges with things like following simple directions.
  • Crawls at warp speed, pulls up with ease, walks quickly pushing a toy, and has stood independently for up to five seconds, but has yet to take independent steps. Her physical therapist says all the strength and skills are there – she just has to work up the motivation and confidence to try it. She seems to be more focused on language development for now, which is okay with us.
  • Is a fantastic sleeper, putting herself to sleep for at least a two-hour nap in the afternoon and 11 1/2-plus hours a night uninterrupted.
  • Was 24 pounds and 32 3/4 in. long at her two-year checkup. She wears mostly 12-18 month and some 24 month clothes and size 4 shoes.
  • Is starting to come out of a very picky eating stage. She is gradually eating more veggies and fruits again, although the veggies usually still have to be snuck into her food or wind up being cleaned off the floor by the dog. Her favorite foods are cheese (a word she signs and says often), pretty much any kind of bread, avocado, beans, banana, watermelon, snacks like crackers or nuts, and anything sweet. Throwing food is still a real problem, and mealtimes are terribly messy affairs. (See exhibit A below.)
  • Drinks very well from a cup but is not able to effectively use a spoon or fork. She does try to get a little food in her mouth with a utensil occasionally, which is progress from the days when every utensil went straight on the floor. She refuses to let anyone else feed her, which contributes to the ridiculous messes. (Oatmeal? Beans? Again, see exhibit A below.)
  • Will stack two blocks before losing interest and knocking the tower down. Can manipulate stacking toys (like the classic plastic rings on the peg) very handily. Has gotten much better about placing objects in a container rather than just tossing them across the room. Throwing is still a problem, however.
  • Has shown some improvement with hair pulling, although it continues to be a major challenge, particularly with new people or in new or overwhelming environments. I can’t tell you the number of children and adults she has terrorized with her hair grip of death, accompanied with what we affectionately refer to as her “rebel yell.”
  • Loves books. She’s pretty good at entertaining herself and will often be found surrounded by a pile of books, pretending to “read” one to herself. If you sit on the floor, she is likely to get a book and crawl into your lap to be read to. Her attention span can still be a challenge, but with encouragement, she will sit through a complete story. She can identify and point to a fair number of animals or objects, and will often grab my finger and use it to point to objects in a picture.
  • Loves her brother and tries to imitate him at every opportunity, although she’ll also push him away if he appears to be encroaching on her story time or any activity she doesn’t want interrupted. (Corin adores his sister. He often goes into her room in the morning before I’m even out of bed to talk to her and be near her. He certainly picks on her and bullies her, but he usually loves to have her near and is visibly proud of her when we’re in public. “Lina is two,” he’ll announce to anyone who looks at her. Yesterday he made up a song with the lyrics, “My sister is awesome.”)
  • Loves to be tickled, cuddled, kissed and played with. She has this way of wrapping her arms around my neck and melting into me that just about stops my heart every time. She blows kisses and lights up with the best smiles, and you can’t not laugh along with her giggles. She has a great sense of humor and makes the funniest faces, including a new one lately that involves a nose wrinkle.
  • Is very attached to mommy and daddy but has mostly gotten over separation anxiety and will go to other people, especially familiar family members or friends, without a fuss. She may still cry when I leave her at Mother’s Day Out or therapy, but it’s usually very short-lived.
  • Adores music and will usually clap or dance along. She knows the motions to several songs (“The Wheels on the Bus,” “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” “If You’re Happy and You Know It”) and has recently started trying to sing them herself.
  • Seems to really enjoy Mother’s Day Out one day a week, although she naps much less, if at all, while she’s there.
  • Is curious and active and can find trouble in a hurry. Yesterday, she opened the changing table cupboard and discovered the box of trash bags for the diaper pail. She had every bag pulled out of the box and flung around her room by the time I discovered her. She loves to pull the covers off the HVAC floor vents; we’ve lost at least one toy that we know of down the air duct.
  • Is generally a happy, funny, spunky, affectionate kid.

I was rocking Lina before her nap today and realized I have to stretch to fit her head under my chin. Her growth and milestones happen more slowly than for many typical kids, and, as I’ve said before, that sometimes makes it easy to forget that she’s still growing up very fast. I feel such pride in her as we work hard on her next milestones. What a gift, being her mother.

 

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Black beans for lunch, or a scene from a horror film?

 

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And just like that, two years have passed.

Jon and I lay in bed Friday night reminiscing about the events of two years ago. Remembering Lina’s birth is a complicated experience. Sometimes, I regret that memories of her arrival are mixed with clouds of grief and chaos. We – and I, in particular, as Jon pointed out – faced some very difficult times two years ago. As we reminisced, I asked: “What if we had received a prenatal diagnosis instead of being blindsided at her birth? What if we had given birth in a hospital instead of at home?” But ultimately, I come back to the belief that events worked out for the best. We didn’t spend months worrying about potential health problems that never manifested. I was able to have a natural VBAC rather than a repeat C-section that would have required a longer hospitalization and recovery period. And even with the chaos, we spent those days falling in love with our baby girl and finding our way to bright hopes for a future that looked a bit different than we had expected.

Today, as Lina teeters on the edge of walking and every day finds new words and ways to express herself, grief no longer plays a role. The pride and joy of parenthood is sharpened into something even keener, thrown into sharp relief by its contrast with those early fears and worries. The story of Lina at two is not about Down syndrome; it’s about the awesome little person she is. It’s about how independent, curious, bright, funny and affectionate she is, how watching her smile and laugh makes the world sing. It’s about her arms around my neck and her sweet babbling voice. It’s about hauling her away from the dog bowls and toilet bowls and picking up the paper she shredded and spread around the living room floor. It’s about watching her grow and knowing how well she is doing.

That’s not to say there aren’t unique challenges. We still spend a lot of time driving back and forth to therapy visits. I struggle to be patient with her sensory-related habits of hair pulling and throwing items across the room. Sometimes there is a stab when I see her interact with other kids her age and come face-to-face with her delays.

I used to wonder how to find the right balance between pragmatism and optimism. Did I need to prepare myself for potential pain and disappointment? The answer for me is a resounding, “No.” I have come to believe that our unbounded optimism about her future will be the single most important factor in her success. There will be challenges, no doubt, but we will deal with those as they come. We focus on today, doing our best to equip her for success, celebrating every milestone with everything we have, believing her possibilities are endless.

I will post later about where she is with specific developmental milestones. For now, I just want to say how incredibly lucky we feel to be dazzled every day by our sweet Eline Katherine. Happy birthday, beautiful girl.

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A little celebration at church

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Post cake, pre nap

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First day, and we’re okay

My firstborn headed off to Pre-K this morning. It’s a low-key Tuesday/Thursday program at a nearby Mother’s Day Out, but it felt like a pretty big deal around here. Corin was so excited, and definitely a little nervous. He was more emotional than usual over the little things. For example, there was a meltdown over using too much water to clean the yogurt from breakfast off his shorts, presumably for fear of a wet spot when he got to school. But true to form, he headed right through the door at drop-off with hardly a glance back. Those buckets of dinosaurs beckoned. I managed to avoid tears myself and am left to hope for more than one-word answers to questions about how his day went.

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“Here’s a good-luck whack for you, brother.” (Actually, she was being sweet, and the really good news is she wasn’t trying to pull his hair. This is progress, people.)

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“Put down the camera, mommy, and let’s get this show on the road.”

Lina misses him. She climbed into the little indoor wagon when we got home and waited for someone to push her around the house. (It didn’t happen – handle’s a tad low for mommy.) She has her first day of Mother’s Day Out on Tuesday. She’ll be going one day a week. This MDO program is just a few minutes away, and to our amazement, they have a teacher on staff with a Ph.D. in special education, focusing on Down syndrome. Several local kids with Down syndrome have gone through the program. We are looking forward to giving Lina an opportunity to spend a little time with some typical peers. Her therapists are pretty convinced she will be very peer-motivated in her development. I’m a big believer in kids doing most of their early learning in the home environment when possible, but I think one day a week will offer her a chance to explore a new environment and learn from kids her age. We are very lucky to have this option.

A busy holiday weekend approaches. Our family will celebrate Lina’s second birthday and my nephew’s fourth. We’ve planned a fun little picnic at the park, but thunderstorms are predicted. It may be a rather damp party. Stay tuned for pictures.

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When you’re miles from normal

I remember just a few years ago being in the throes of fertility treatment hell and grieving the loss of the stereotypical family planning experience: have a lot of sex, wait a couple weeks, pee on a home test and watch the bright lines pop up. Hooray, we’re pregnant!

Instead, we waded through countless injections, complicated medical procedures, the agonizing wait for the blood tests and the phone calls from the nurse with the results. So many others have been there and know exactly what I mean, and many go through much worse. It was stressful, expensive, emotionally draining and – for me – physically taxing. Much of the emotional difficulty was coming to terms with how hard we had to work to get something that came so easily for many. I had a very bad relationship with home pregnancy tests.

Time has brought a new perspective. It was hard, and there have been a lot of hard times since then. And to be clear, feelings of loss are, well, normal. It’s just that now, with the luxury of time, I can look back and value what makes our story unique. I can recognize the incredible gifts that have come to us as a result of an off-the-beaten-path experience.

My dad is blind due to a biking accident in 1980. He wrote an article once called “Unusual Gifts.” In it, he explained why he believes his blindness is really a gift in disguise, allowing him experiences and purpose he would not have found otherwise. I realized recently that I feel very much the same about the unusual pieces of our experience. I wouldn’t have chosen them for myself, but that’s why I’m glad I’m not in control.

My daughter is the sunshine of my life. Truly, I can’t even explain how much joy she brings me. I sit and watch her, in awe of the beautiful little person she is. But someone prominent – I refuse to name him and provide further undeserved publicity – recently suggested that it would be immoral to knowingly bring someone like her into the world. She isn’t “normal,” and to a lot of people, that makes her unwanted. To me, she is priceless, perfect, a major part of the meaning in my every day. And thanks to the unusual path we took to her, we have a whole new branch of this crazy family tree to enjoy. Our lives would be poorer without those incredible people to love.

My son is four and growing up SO fast. He cracks me up with his wild flights of fancy, his funny observations of the world, his caution and bossiness, his need for his idea of order. (He recently organized the hangers in his closet by color.) He dazzles me with his adult vocabulary, his sweet affection, his curiosity and growing intellect. If it wasn’t for the hordes of doctors and nurses, the labs and procedures, he wouldn’t be here. Our firstborn would be someone else – equally loved, no doubt, but not this strawberry-blond boy walking around with my heart in his hands.

We have met so many amazing people through our experiences, and been able to share so many highs and lows with an incredible support system. We’ve had to learn faith of a truer kind, with nothing left to do but lean on the only One who knows the future. We’ve had to build a marriage that can withstand a pounding and another pounding, shuddering and rattling but holding firm. We are, without question, better people, because we’ve had to be; because that’s what God can do in the midst of the far-from-normal.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: I do not mean to suggest God sends hardship. He is not the author of pain and heartache. We live in a messed-up world where things do not go according to God’s plan. There are some griefs that are far, far beyond explanation or reason, the senseless result of a broken, hurting planet. But God does have the ability to pick up the pieces and build them into something beautiful and good, something better than we could have chosen for ourselves, a monument to who He is and what He wants for His people.

I suppose none of this is really new; it’s more along the theme of this blog’s title. I guess I just want to say this: normal is overrated. In all the ways it has manifested in our family, the abnormal has become beautiful. If you find yourself miles from normal and wishing for something simpler, let me offer you hope that the path less traveled really can be breathtaking in all the right ways. Acknowledge pain, grieve loss, but then, look up. There really is joy ahead.

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Farewell, bottles

Lina has hit a major new milestone. We just marked one week of absolutely no bottles. She is drinking all her fluids from straw and sippy cups.

Infant feedings were painful with both my babies. Corin has his own story of excruciatingly difficult feedings and nearly a full year of exclusive pumping so he could enjoy the benefits of breast milk. Lina started out pretty well with breastfeeding but didn’t have the oral muscle tone to get what she needed. Even the bottle was a long, hard struggle. You may remember the anguish of trying to find a bottle she would take, and then the many, many months of difficult feedings where she leaked out as much milk as she took in (again, poor oral muscle tone). I once more found myself tethered to that loathsome but necessary pump. We jury-rigged latex nipples to make them faster-flow as she got older, and then those got old and stretched out and we jury-rigged some more, until all of a sudden she would take the silicone Avent bottles we’d used with Corin, and life got easier. Then began the LONG process of introducing about two dozen different types of sippy cups. We saw a feeding therapist a couple times, but Lina really just needed time and practice.

Ultimately, she has been successful with the exact same cups Corin preferred – the Munchkin straw cups and the Avent soft spout cups with the no-spill valve removed. At first, she made a huge mess drinking from them. We would have to hold a towel under her chin to avoid soaking her entire body. But in the last few weeks, those oral muscles have strengthened, the coordination came together, and she is drinking milk and water with very little spillage. She holds the cup herself and handles the whole thing like a pro (except for that whole throwing the cup thing).

The last step was figuring out how to deliver her thyroid medication. It had always gone in her morning bottle, and my finicky girl won’t eat applesauce or yogurt. Thanks to a great suggestion from grandma, we tried mixing it into a little pudding, and wa-lah – farewell, bottles.

As she cruises around the house behind her push toy, I’m realizing that my baby is very quickly disappearing. There has been something nice about her babyhood taking a little slower pace, but it may have lulled me into forgetting that she really is growing up so fast. She will be turning two in exactly a month. TWO!! She is fiercely independent, on the go and into everything. A few days ago, she discovered she can remove the HVAC vent covers and stuff things down the vents. I pulled several shoes out of the duct yesterday. This is unlikely to end well. But then she crawls to me, pulls up on my legs, puts her arms up, and wraps her arms tight around my neck as I hold her close, and I almost stop breathing to better savor the feeling.

And so goes the parental dance, celebrating the milestones with pride while mourning the loss of a little one who is every day a little bigger and a little more independent.

Although, I’m not going to lie: I don’t miss those bottles.