It's happening!!!!!!!!!

I have such exciting news to report -- Amelia is commando crawling! She's been heading in the direction, between the creepster action she's been getting and the unbelievable motivation she has to fly, fly ,fly...she is finally pulling herself around the room on her belly. You can see how much work it is for her and we're still using the creepster a lot so she can feel the sense of accomplishment in zipping around, but she is finally, finally using her arms and getting herself around on her belly. It started yesterday, but didn't seem to sink in for us until today when Lia, her nurse and her OT and Speech therapist were here and each exclaimed "Oh My God! She's crawling!", then Nestor and I were like, yeah...she is isn't she. I know it seems sort of air headed of us...but it's just been soooo close for sooo long -- but without results -- and now, all of a sudden -- there it is. We are so proud of her.

And if that isn't enough, another huge milestone was reached yesterday. Banging, hitting, shaking, clapping are all things Amelia does not do on her own. She has this huge drum/container that has all kinds of musical instruments in it. Well, yesterday Nestor was on the floor playing with Amelia. They were playing with the maracas and she started mimicking what Nestor was doing with the maraca by shaking (slowly rotating the wrist high up in the air) her maraca with his. The other day she held onto one of the drum sticks and was making a real effort to hit the drum top -- which was so cool. She's really starting to respond to modeling (when they watch you doing and try to do for themselves). Such an amazing girl.

She's still doing great with the feeding. Amelia had about 8 bites of strawberry-banana puree today (thickened) and got it all down before fatiguing. We're stopping the feeding before she fatigues so she ends on a high note and food remains a tasty, fun experience. She is definitely enjoying herself.

This weekend we met up with our friends Donna, Shawn and Darmia. Darmia is 3 and Amelia was just loving her. We went to the park before getting brunch and on the way from the park to the restaurant Amelia was getting quite kvetchy. Darmia would walk up beside her stroller and Amelia would let out the biggest smile and laugh when she saw her. It was so precious. Amelia was so responsive to Darmia...much more than I've seen her before. At one point, Darmia was standing in front of Amelia, when Amelia decided to reach out her little saliva-full hand and touch Darmi's face. It happened so quickly and I wasn't expecting it. Darmia scrunched her nose and kind of laughed. I said "Ooops! Amelia loves you a lot!" and tried to laugh it off.

To sum it all up, when Amelia's OT, Amy arrived today and started working with her. Amy looked up at me with this big smile on her face and said "I feel like she's this whole different person." I couldn't agree more.