Walking

And another month has flown by!  I can't believe how fast time is passing.  It's now been over a year since we brought Keragan home from the hospital.  It's almost hard to remember what life was like before she was a part of our family.  She's certainly been a blessing to us and made our lives quite entertaining and full of joy!
I think we're in that stage where she just continues to grow and change and develop at such a fast rate that it's hard to keep up!  Every day she says a new word or does something new.  I'm not sure why I'm surprised anymore, but she always catches me off guard with her cuteness and craziness.
The biggest development has probably been her speech.  She babbles non-stop at home.  When she finally starts saying full sentences, Troy and I both agree that she's never going to stop talking.  She can communicate what she wants pretty well most of the time.  She says the important words like up, down, out, no, juice, all done, more, etc, plus we hear more random words every day.  She doesn't talk much around others at first, but once she gets comfortable with you, watch out.  She's also started making animal noises.  That's a lot of fun.  :)
She's still not walking.  At twelve and thirteen months I wasn't worried about it, because I wasn't really ready for her to walk.  However, now that we're at fourteen and a half months, I'm feeling the pressure. Partly because everyone and their brother asks if she's walking, and also partly because she LOVES to be outside.  She crawls around, but her hands and knees get scraped up, she picks up every stick, piece of trash and rock that she finds on the ground, and she's got that independent streak where she doesn't really want to be held when we go out in public.  So, although I'm sure I'll change my mind when she does start walking, I'm ready for it to happen.
I'm not really worried that she CAN'T walk.  She pulls herself up on everything, cruises very easily around furniture, and walks holding on to our hands.  But she's just not able to take those unassisted steps.  Because of her prematurity, Kera has had a physical therapist working with her for the past 7 months.  Initially we were concerned because of her delay in sitting unsupported, so we had her evaluated and it was determined that she was behind.  However, she started sitting on her own before we even got to our first appointment.  Our therapist has continued to work with her since then on her motor skills.  Keragan loves her, and she does a great job of giving us small things to work on and ways to help Kera develop and grow.  At 6 months into the program (about a month ago), they did a reevaluation, and she has caught up to where she should be.  Even with walking, they say that she won't be considered behind until 17 months.  So, we are just continuing to help her build her core muscles and encourage her to cruise and walk holding our hands.
What else... I feel like I could write an entire blog entry on her hair.  We probably get more comments on her hair than anything else.  Maybe because it's so dark and unlike mine or Troy's, but mostly because there's just so much of it!  I'm also surprised at how many people ask when we're going to cut her hair.  And their reactions when I say that I have no plans to cut it.  She's gotten better about letting me comb it and put clips in and things.  I am finally able to get it all into two side ponytails, which is so incredibly cute but makes her look way older.
Troy finishes with school in two weeks, and I'm really excited about this summer.  We'll each have a part time job (mine 25 hours/week, Troy's 5-10 hours/week), which will be very different from anything we've ever done before.  With the setup of our schedule before, we rarely had family time or even much relaxation time for ourselves.  In fact, other than our weekly babysitter on Wednesdays when I work, Keragan has only been babysat once in over a year.  I'm excited for a chance to catch up on a lot of things that seem to have been neglected over the past year.