That’s our girl dutifully tucking in her chin while she sucks up kefir in her honey bear! Way to go Quail! We’ve been thickening her breastmilk with a variety of foods- mangos, prunes, pears, cinnamon to coax her into complying with Sarah Rosenfeld Johnson’s straw hirearchy. We regularly lecture on the virtues of the chintuck and the importance of it during drinking to her overall health. But try explaining the physics of a straw to a nine-month old. It’s been slow going. The beauty of the flexi-straw in the honey bear is our ability to squeeze some of the liquid up into her mouth. We’ve been working on it since October. We’ve gotten good lip closure and she greets that bear like it’s Yogi Bear come to life when she spies it in any corner of the room. But it wasn’t going much beyond our squeezing the liquid up. And then we realized that Zuzu’s favorite drink was the right consistency for the honey bear- and better yet- Earthfare Grocers sells drinkable plain whole milk yogurt! We added it and voila…she sounded like Maggie Simpson…suck…suck…suck. After one or two more tries with me appling a tiny bit of pressure she managed to start sucking it up without help. We’re still working on straw positioning in her mouth and her not leading into the drink with her tongue. But there is still much happy drinking doing on at our home!

Life is full of balancing acts right? How to get enough attention to all who need it? Well synergy fell into our nest this past weekend as a braincell or 2 of mine perked up and suggested I spend time petting and brushing Chula  Cat at an adequately safe distance from the Quail. The Quail is a big fan of the Chula Cat. Nothing gets her wings flapping and her eye’s trained as hawk’s eyes on her target as our dear Chula Cat. And Chula Cat since she has arrived in our lap has been slowly letting us know she would like to be more, albeit safely, centered into the mix. The latest milestone we have been working hard towards is the elusive crawl. Mark the PT suggested it looked like the Quail may skip it and go to standing and walking in the next year, which is fine if that is what is to be. But we would like the crawl to happen if at all possible. I was inspired by this family’s bribe to get their lil one to crawl. But while Cheetos would definately get Zuzu and Lovey motoring across the room, I’m less convinced it would work with the Quail. For Zuzu she started first going backwards, as had her Momma, and then eventually forward when the telephone was in site. I felt less sure about the appropriate motivational tool for the Quail until Chula Cat happened into a therapy session with us this past weekend and voila, amongst a lot of wings flapping, feathers and fur flying we had backward motion! Fly baby fly!

ps: No cats were harmed in the production of these shots.