Jenna Glatzer, Ghostwriter

Sarina was so ahead of schedule for her first three months-- she was holding in her own pacifier on day three, reliably flipping over from back to front and holding up her head by month three, vocalizing, holding on to toys, and so on-- that nothing could have surprised me. Walking and speaking in full sentences by six months? Sure. By month four, when she was rocking back and forth and hurling herself around the room by dragging her head while she quasi-crawled, we all took bets on how much longer it would be until she really crawled. My bet was three more days; no one bet longer than two weeks. But here we are, closing in on six months, and she's actually made no progress since then. She also makes exactly the same vocalizations as she did at three months. No consonants. Just a steady stream of "ahhhh"s and "eh"s and the occasional "ooh." She doesn't sit up well, even with pillows. She doesn't "razz" or mimic my faces. (On the other...

Dawno asked for them. And what Dawno wants, Dawno gets. (I fear her sparkly powers.) And this one's for psychic Amy Derby, who predicted a few posts ago that Sarina would crawl backwards first. The next day, I took this: Yep, that's Sarina stuck under the couch. How she accomplished that is beyond me. More photos coming soon. Oh, and by the way, no one ever told me how absolutely tear-your-heart-out miserable it is when your child gets her first injury... on your watch. Sarina is still trying her darnedest to crawl, and she's very mobile now (even if the crawling isn't technically accurate). She sort of just hurls herself forward, dragging her head most of the time. Or she gets up all the way with her butt in the air, leans forward, flops down, and repeats until she reaches the desired toy. Like this: Anyway, she was doing this and getting too close to her Pack & Play, so I was spotting her and putting my hand over the plastic bottom piece. Then she suddenly changed...

Thanks to my friend Dawn Colclasure at Palms to Pines , who recently gave me the Courageous Blogging award. I now get the honor of passing it on, which I am about to do. I hereby bequeath this award to three lovely ladies: The first goes to Ann Crispin and Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware , because they kick ass. It's no easy matter sticking your neck out to protect writers the way they do every day. Thanks, literary superheroes. The second goes to Meryl K. Evans, who has a Bionic Ear Blog , where she detailed her progress when she got a cochlear implant, and has since blogged about CI issues in general there. I found it very interesting reading, and have always been glad she gave us a chance to take that personal journey with her.