Joy and Her Daddy

Joy loves her Daddy! She is trying to move beyond 'dada' to "Dad - E". Really cute!

Kissing

Joy loves to kiss! She is getting better. At first it was the total open mouth face plant. She is moving toward closing her mouth. She is very intent on giving kisses!


Joy and Linda (our family friend) kissing

Joy determined to plant one on Lizzy!

Dentist

Joy saw the dentist today! Joy has both our private insurance and medicaid - which is such a blessing, but such a pain. Medicaid has all of these rules. For example, they want Joy to see a dentist every six months. She has no teeth - not one. Too bad, the great state of Texas feels that she needs to see a dentist. They keep telling me so in letters. Sigh. If you don't use your private dental insurance, no one yells at you. :)

Sammi went to our wonderful pediatric dentist today. I was explaining everything and hoping they would accept our insurance and maybe, just maybe, use medicaid as a secondary insurance. Normally, they don't see children until they are three, unless there is a problem - like poor Jessi. Wonder of wonders, Dr. Lewis accepts medicaid, and not just medicaid, our particular kind of medicaid, Texas Health Steps. As Dr. Lewis says, God is watching out for us! Yeah!

So what were her findings? She stuck her fingers in Joy's mouth and told me she doesn't have any teeth! :) We'll go back in six months. Crazy, crazy.

Therapy x 2!

Joy had both communication and OT this week!

First just an adorable picture of Joy and Becca!

We are working on on/off and in/out.

 

She also anticipated a reaction and was doing some mimicking – essential to speech!  Yeah Joy!

I just threw this in because I think it’s cute!

In OT Joy is working on shifting her weight so she can start to cruise.  And we worked on the stairs – ugh.  I’m going to need some gates soon!

Oil Ranch and Pumpkins!

We went to Oil Ranch and had a wonderful time!
Miss Joy in her seat of comfort

Grandma helping Joy touch the goat

On the hay ride

This is the pumpkin I choose!

Joy today

I was right - Joy wanted nothing to do with her bottle today. :)

I had to post this video of the girls - it's on our school blog http://kleintexasacademy.blogspot.com/ but some of you won't be interested in that blog. So I wanted to include it here.
We are currently studying Switzerland and yodeling came up. The girls had so much fun! Look at Joy's face!

Joy held her bottle

We have wanted her to do this forever! She may never do it again. But we found a good motivator! Apple Juice!

Crawling

Houston, we have acheived crawling! At least Joy's version. :) She is really fast.
She uses her two hands, one knee, and one foot. It's really cute.

Therapy

We are working on moving our feet! A pre-requisite to cruising.

Getting some love and motivation from Lizzy! Her poor hair! :)


I didn't take this video, and it's only about 2 seconds long, but........
Joy is working on stairs. It all goes together. It's all about moving those legs.
But you can see her cheering squad! :)
I keep wondering WHY are we doing this? If we teach her to climb the stairs, then I'm going to have to put a gate on them because I don't want her on the stairs!
Crazy things we do!

We had to lower Joy's crib tonight

We put Joy into her crib tonight and she decided she wasn't ready to go to sleep. She then pulled herself up to standing! Her therapist would be so proud! We loved it. We took pictures and immediately lower her crib mattress. Silly, sweet baby!

Turkish Festival

On Saturday we went to the Turkish Festival. I had several reasons to go:
1. The food!
2. Cultural experience for the kids
3. Joy's birthfather was born in Turkey

I have never met Joy's birthfather. I have a brief bio written about him. I know how tall he is. I know where he was born. But what does he look like? As I walked around the festival and looked at all of these men that have the same color skin and hair as my baby, I wondered, "Is this what my baby's father looked like?" I don't know. I do know that he and her mother made a beautiful, beautiful baby girl. I am grateful to them that we have her.

Here is Joy trying Turkish food: As with ALL food, she loved it!


I like to call this picture: "Enough with pictures already, let's eat!"

And a fun video of Bec and her playing ball at the festival. Her therapists would be so pleased. We have been working on taking turns and rolling balls.

16 months!

Joy is now 16 months old. She is working on getting some teeth. She has all four of the front ones working their way down and she's working on some molars - ouch! What a birthday present!

She is a funny duck. She has all of these bright, noisy toys to play with

but this morning all she wanted was the sock ball that Becca had made. Go figure! :)

Joy in Video

Joy is starting to crawl around on her knees - Wahoo! She is so silly!


This is another of her new things. I don't know what we call it nowadays. We used to call it playing Indian.

Joy Updates

Here are some random pictures of my sweet baby: Enjoy!





Yard Work!


I love this! She has always crossed her ankles. It cracks me up!




Joy is so fun!

"Hi!"

Joy is now saying "Hi!" It is SO cute. She has this sweet little voice. She waves her cute little hands and says, "Hi." It's adorable. Of course, she won't perform for the camera, so enjoy Joy and the water bottle (gotta love a hurricane).

Her other words are Mama (sometimes pronounced Nana), Dada, dog, cat, hi, bye.
She also has sounds for the girls, but I'm not sure how to spell them. :)

Joy in the Hurricane

Joy has been doing great during the hurricane.  She has her family and her belly has been full.  She has not seemed to notice anything unusual going on.  She did love having her Poppa home more!  :)

This crazy picture.  Joy is beginning to get up on her arms - yeah Joy!  She'll get up on her arms and then as soon as she starts to move forward, it's down back to the commando crawl.  But it's progress in the right direction and we'll take it!  :) 

The picture tells about our life right now - the bucket holds one of our 72 hour kits (our emergency supplies) and the power cords laying around connect our generator to important things like our fridge!  Life after a hurricane.

Communication Update

Joy had two therapy appointments this week.  Her communication teacher wants us to continue to really push the signs, even though she has a few verbal words.  She says it's just more input going in, more connections for her little brain.  If you are interested in learning some basic sign, here is a good website for Joy's needs:

http://www.asluniversity.com/asl101/pages-layout/concepts.htm

15 month check up

Today Joy went to see Dr. Shirley, her pedi, for her 15 month check up.
She is doing great! He was very pleased. Yeah Joy!

her stats:
19 lb 10 oz (getting close to that 20 lb cut off!) - 75% weight on the DS chart
28 1/2 inches long - 50% length on the DS chart

She got two shots - DTaP and PCV.

I wondered about her teeth- or lack thereof!
He said we aren't going to worry until 18 months. If we still don't have teeth by then, we'll go to the dentist and have an x-ray to make sure we have teeth in there! :) From all of her normal "teething" behavior she has had for the last year, I'm sure they are there. It's just when are they coming out here? :) Time. That's all we need.

Isn't this great? I remember when I used to come home from doctor's appointments with 2 or 3 specialists to go see. Yeah Joy!

Sitting

Joy has been working so hard on getting to a sitting position.
This is huge! I say that a lot with Joy. :) She is an amazing baby!
She can be on her tummy and get to a sitting position. She can commando crawl and then sit up.
Yeah Joy! Also notice that she will support her weight on her arms (even if it's only for a few seconds - yeah therapy!)
My battery died, that's why the video is so short, but you get the idea. :)

And this video is just for fun!
Joy HATES cold milk. She won't drink it - period!
Ice cream, though, is an exception to the temperature rule.
She LOVES ice cream. Enjoy Sammi's video!

Haircut!

Lest you get too excited, I did NOT cut off her top knot. :) And I'm not gonna!

But I did trim up her hair on the bottom - now it's all straight and so cute!