Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Ali takes first steps!

June 16, 2006
Ali was not born with anything in his mouth but his cute little pointed tongue that is so good at clicks. He likes to stick it part way out and run it back and forth between his lips while humming. He certainly wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he’s taken to carrying two little coffee spoons around with him. He usually has to have at least one in his hand during dinner, and then somehow acquires another. They are ballast, somehow, to the swells of life. He really wants to feed himself but we won’t let him- not yet. The spoons end up in unexpected places, like the one I found in bed today.
Today Ali took his first steps alone! Wow. I missed the first few, but Emeni came running in to tell me and I hurried outside to witness Inez coaxing him to walk on his own. Luckily I then remember the video camera. I had been trying to get him to walk on his own earlier, but my method was the learning to ride a bike one where you have to get the person going and then let go. Every time I let go, Ali promptly sat down. Inez, on the other hand, tried the entice and push approach. She’d stand behind him and get him standing up, and then hold her fingers out in front of him, bending over to reach down, and he would walk toward her hands as she followed him with her legs. She also helped him by holding on to the back of his shirt a couple of times until he got going. He did several attempts and walked several steps at a time. But then he was done and returned to his funny, shuffley crawl.
Leila had a fever this morning and a red throat when we took her to the doctor. Of course, once she had some Motrin she felt fine and ran around as usual. She was excited about Ali walking, too. At first I was trying to get her out of the way to film Ali, and then I decided to have her do some narration. She was great.
I won’t be washing super dirty knees on Ali much longer.
Today- Ali took a few steps just for me today after several days of not doing any steps- he was holding on to a chair next to me, and he let go to take three steps over to me, grinning with pride. He knew he'd done well.

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