Spotlight on Jenya!

Our little Jenya is delightful and beautiful and spunky and fun-loving and social and charming and wonderful.  Each day truly is a delight to be with her.

As you can imagine, Jenya LOVES being with and doing anything her big brother is doing.  Yesterday Jozef was watching VeggieTales (our tradition while Daniel does Cub Scouts) and Jenya scooted up to his special small chair and pulled herself up and just looked at him, then smiled and lay her head on his shoulder.  If she can play with whatever Jozef is playing with, Jenya is pretty happy.

Jenya linguistic skills are phenomenal!  She can clearly say and correctly use more than 50 words.  Mommy and Daddy understand a lot more than that with context and with watching her learn and apply the words.  Some of her favorite words: grackle, pillow, thank you, milk, snacks (as in, fruit snacks), Seth (yup, pretty clearly, too), GO!, yes, no (unfortunately), splash, Mommy, Daddy, etc.  Additionally, Jenya will quite accurately repeat words she hears from people, including on VeggieTales and on Starfall.

Jenya is a dancer!  She has always loved to move and will sing and/or dance whenever she hears music.  She's got great moves.  Once she is up on her feet, I have a feeling that she will swirl and leap and dance.

Now, a lot of you probably know that Jenya never liked tummy time and once she learned to roll onto her back from her tummy, she never wanted to roll back onto her tummy.  She didn't really scoot until at about 13 months, she learned to scoot on her bum-bum, using her legs to propel her forward.  If we pulled her up to a stand, she would not put weight on her legs.

At Jenya's 15-month doctor's appointment, the pediatrician referred us to an evaluation by a physical therapist, who also recommended an evaluation by an occupational therapist.  Both recommended some things we could try at home to strengthen the muscles in her extremities and in her shoulders.  The physical therapist said that Jenya should learn to crawl before learning to walk.  Hmmm...

Well, due to some communication difficulties (slight euphemism), we have not started either professional therapy routines, BUT we have had tremendous success at home!  Jenya has learned all kinds of games where she must climb over Daddy, or army crawl across the room, or reach under her tummy in crawl position, all to capture that miniature marshmallow.  (Don't worry, we let her finish one before doing another one so that she doesn't choke.)  We had seen immediate results.  We have "caught" Jenya sleeping on her tummy, army crawling to get something, and even regular crawling of her own accord!  She can pull herself up to a stand on nearly anything and loves to stand leaning against the couch, or Mommy or Daddy. 

I have been so impressed by Jenya's determination and willingness to learn and try new things.  I know that those are qualities inherent in all children, but somehow seeing this as a family effort, I see her amazingness with better perspective.

 

We love our sweet Jenya, and oh, I LOVE these little ones!!