Frigid Temps. and the NEED to get OUT

Being that we live in coastal SC, we are mostly warm weather people now. Occasionally, the cold northern air creeps down this way and we are always completely ill prepared. It is just hard to spend money on extra warm clothes... that we wear a week or so in the course of a winter. Let alone, convince Ayden Jane that such layers should go on her! She still fights the light jacket with a passion. She much prefers short sleeves and in fact, would skip the whole clothing thing all together if she had an option. The result is that we just become house bound like we have this week. My solution? Last night we headed to Leaps-n-Bounce. It is basically a playhouse of big inflatable jumpy houses and slides. Mckenna was awesome and played with AJ for about an hour and a half. They climbed the giant slide and slid down over and over. I let the 2 of them head off for the first half and then I joined in for the second. We all had a great time and warmed up quite nicely. Wow did Ayden Jane need that trip!

Today we had PT. Jen was happy with what she saw considering the recent road trip and what AJ looked like after the last one. I told her the 2 new things I am noticing are that AJ is playing with tiptoeing a lot. Not that she has to, or does it in a way that raises new concerns, just having fun playing with it. The other is the extra amount of falling from leaning on (melting into) everything. She also falls off the edge of things a lot, like the booth at a restaurant.... Sounds like body awareness. We are guessing AJ maybe growing again and trying to adjust. Although, tonight after PT and a nap, Ayden Jane was a wild woman. I am beginning to wonder if we are headed into another spurt of some sort. I am not sure I am ready for 2 weeks of wild woman. I guess I will know for sure in a couple of days.

Jen is working hard on some core things for AJ. Jen now combines fine motor, balance, core... so much that I am not totally sure of her focus sometimes. Today she had AJ do a lot on the ball. One activity she had AJ lay back and get some pegs for a tower on the floor behind her. Then made her use the abdominal muscles of Jen's choice to sit up. I am not sure I could do it. No complaints from AJ though. She just threw herself back to get the next ones... Also working shoulder girdle with some prone reaching on the ball, definitely not AJ's favorite. Finally, Jen had AJ stand on a wedge that can be blown up, or in this case deflated a fair amount. It is bumpy which AJ loves but is definitely hard to balance on. Of course, Jen had her do something with her hands while on it, in this case string some beads. I had to chuckle because AJ would do great but begin to struggle with balance a little when she added talking. Brings new meaning to the saying, "can't walk, talk and chew gum at the same time."

So what does the possible beginning of wild woman look like? Well last night AJ just did not sit still. The night before she had been to leaps-n-bounce, then went to school all morning, had PT after school and a nap. She then proceeded to climb all over and wrestle with the big kids endlessly. She pulled out nearly everything from the closet, played with toys for moments a piece and managed to get into things quicker than we could notice. She was also spotted doing things that are a bit dangerous. As I began this post last night (which I had to stop to put her to bed) I turned to see her climbing on top of the exercise ball which she had placed on the sofa! I asked her what she was doing and she told me she wanted to bounce high. Of course, she had not considered the landing!

With all the craziness, though, she has sort of 'found her play zone' a few times. For a bit last night after all the big kid wrestling and a trip to the play place she settled for a little while (before attempting to launch herself off the sofa). It is really cute to listen to her. She was playing with her Noah's Ark and the animals. She was talking for them and making up all sort of things. It really reminded me of Noah at that age. He played with corps men for hours. We would hear conversations, sound effects....

Changing and growing so much. Maybe we will be lucky and this will be a smooth little spurt.