{31 for 21} Celebrations

I had a much more serious post in mind for today, but decided to take a different approach. I have 24 more days left this month so there's plenty of time to fit it in.

One of the first things other parents of children with Ds told me was to throw away developmental charts and recognize that Kennedy will do things on her own time. She works a lot harder at everything she does. There's a lot more steps to learning things and achieving milestones. Each milestone, no matter how big or small, is celebrated in a big way!

Kennedy has been taking several steps completely unassisted, and I've been trying to capture them on video for a few weeks now. I finally caught a few! Unfortunately for me, Kennedy is pretty stubborn and only does things when she wants. Sometimes she can be bribed to do things. When she learned to crawl, we used Cheerios. But bribing her to walk doesn't work so well. So I'm left trying to always have my phone at hand, ready to record. Seems simple, right? Yeah, not so much with a busy toddler and hungry baby. I spend many hours of my day chasing Kennedy while nursing Caleb. Who can keep a phone or video camera on hand too?

Every time she takes steps I try to make a huge deal out of it, in hopes to encourage her. Our physical therapist says she has everything she needs to be a walker. It's just a matter of her wanting to do it.

I'm blogging from my iPad, so please excuse my ridiculous formatting of the video and photos.

Kennedy's Independent Steps

Hanging out with the monkeys at the zoo!


The zoo was far too too exciting for someone. She was asleep in an hour.


Stuck. Head first. In the toy bin. Kicking her feet. And yes, I took this photo before rescuing her.