hilina update

i have to say, hilina's new physical therapist is just amazing and is really doing wonderful things for hilina. he and her occupational therapist (pt works with body mainly, ot works with fine motor skills but because she is so young, their work overlaps a lot) are great people and are becoming extra family members it seems which is great when someone is at your house in the evenings. lately it seems their times have been overlapping and we all sit and joke about how i can't get off the floor anymore, and saida's attitude, it's so great. but really what is great is that they are both just falling in love with hilina and taking such good care of her.
she is making great progress - she can sit on her knees now, she can feed herself, if she is on the couch she can pull herself to standing (she sort of leans into the back of the couch to do it), she can army crawl ALL OVER the place - i mean the list goes on and on. we're hoping she will be up on all fours crawling very soon. her biggest obstacle seems not to be the semi-paresis but her low muscle tone which is very very low.
her posture has improved leaps and bounds thanks to my bony fingers poking her in the back all the time, just look at that trunk rotation!

but the muscles in her legs and arms are a whole different package. so we practice standing a lot. and tucking her left leg under while she's standing so she puts her weight on the right leg. i know i've been saying this for months, but her brace should be here this week and it should really help a lot.
until then we are using some yellow rainboots to keep her ankle from turning in. she was cracking up in this picture, not sure if you can tell through the ball in her mouth.
she is really making me laugh all the time as she starts to become more mobile and take on the world a little bit. she is so easy to make laugh and willing to just go along with whatever. sometimes ben and i wonder if she really is an angel. which makes it kinda funny when she is crying because she doesn't want to have her diaper changed.

she is loving books these days, they both are actually, and this morning i peaked in the nursery and she was laying on her back holding onto her leg in the air reading.
practicing standing at the coffee table

so proud of herself!

and just for comparison here is our first picture of hilina we saw. we think she is about 3 months. gentle and sweet even then.