Milestones: 13 months old

It has been almost two months since her big day, and we have reason to celebrate.

Elina has been making some major leaps this past month. It seems like everyday she is doing something new. 

I am finally sitting down to highlight some of her progress. 

Crawling

Elina's crawling is not quite "typical" yet. She uses one foot to push forward and the other to scoot her butt. However, she is doing it with her belly off the ground, which takes a lot of strength and coordination.

 

She has always hated to practice this position. In fact, we thought she might skip crawling altogether! Just today she chased her ball all the way across our house. Praise God.

Standing with Support

Elina loves practicing to stand. She will do it for an hour if you are patient enough. Recently she has become more confident in using the couch and tables to practice standing and even a bit of cruising.

We are trying now to transition her to using just one hand to hold on. The biggest challenge is her mind. She sees that we let go and panics. To try to ease into it, we give her a small toy in her hand, so it doesn't feel empty.

Self Feeding

We have been working with Elina on self feeding. Self feeding with a spoon is a major work in progress right now, mostly because we end up feeding her to avoid a mess and a headache (she is in her "throwing everything" stage). 

Finger foods have been much more successful. She is a pro.

Pulling to StandThis has been a tricky one. Elina is shorter than most babies her age. This makes it really hard to reach onto coffee table tops and sofa edges. However, we have found out that using lower surfaces allows her pull to stand by herself.

Walking with SupportIt seems like we waited forever to see that walking instinct kick in. Now she takes off whenever we set her on the ground. 

She is doing too many things to document them all. Every little thing is something to celebrate. Babbling, blowing bubbles in the water, reaching with both the left and right hand. Just a few days ago I was thinking about how excited I was that she could crawl over and get into my stuff (that novelty will probably wear out shortly).

We know that hitting milestones at a certain time is irrelevant. She may not even do somethings that I take for granted. We are okay with that. Accepting her does not mean that we can't help her to grow and learn. We put hours into mastering the smallest movements. 

There is no words to describe the feeling when she gets something; something we have practiced for hours, thinking she might never pick up. It is like witnessing miracles everyday.