Random Roundup - February 10, 2011

• I won a $20 Kroger gift card on Facebook. Hooray! Money is a bit tight right now (as it usually is in January/February) so the timing of this win was excellent.
• My daughter is amazing me with her progress toward potty training. Look, I am not one of those "I make Facebook status updates about potty training every 5 minutes" parents. I'm not even someone who wants to talk about this type of thing. But at the same time, my kid has CP and although I was constantly assured that she would be able to potty train, I still wasn't entirely sure she physically could. And yet, she's training herself with little help from me. I suspect once she can walk she will just...do it. We're going to buy her underwear this weekend, I think (we cloth diaper most of the time so pull-ups would, to me, be regressing), and give it a shot. She signs "potty," and she says a form of "potty," and at school she's been so consistent with going that she got a shout-out in her regular classroom's newsletter for her progress. So yay for potty training.
• She also has started doing downward-facing dog all the time. This is the precursor to standing up. I don't know if she's doing it because she does yoga at preschool (once a week!) or if she just wants to stand, but she's doing it. If I hold her by the hips, she can continue the process and stand. We're on our way!
• I applied for my blog to be a part of a "Natural Parenting" blogroll. I think that parents of special-needs kids are underrepresented in that universe and I hope I'm accepted. 
• I find more and more that I bristle when someone expresses a concern about his/her child's development on a message board or forum and the chorus loudly shouts "late bloomer!" "don't worry!" It implies that it's a terrible, awful, unredeemable thing to have a child who may need a bit of therapy (or more than a bit). It's not as supportive as it sounds on the surface - because while sometimes, yes, someone's cousin's hairdresser's best friend's neighbor's kid didn't walk until he turned three and then stood up and ran a marathon or didn't talk until she was two and then opened her mouth and said "Mother, I would like biscuits instead of pancakes this morning, if that is acceptable to you," that just doesn't always happen. It feels like it means if the questioner's kid doesn't do such things, there's a failure somewhere in there. I remember reaching out in the early days and asking in general parenting communities for others with children doing PT. I got a few good answers and then a few "just wait it out, she'll do it!" and even "I think you're overreacting! I would never start PT/OT/Speech that early!" If I had waited, I believe that we absolutely would have lost time and progress. And I did think for those first few months before she got her diagnosis that maybe she would simply start doing everything on a later timeline. And when that didn't happen, when we got confirmation that my daughter had cerebral palsy and that there was an actual underlying reason why she wasn't meeting her milestones, it hurt until I shook myself off and accepted that she just needed some help and it would be OK. All of those "she's totally fine, it's early days yet" responses just weren't helpful to me. I don't know if any of that makes any sort of sense, but I wanted to get it out of my system. And as always, do note that not everyone is me - shocker, I know! - and that others may feel that comments like that are helpful. 
• That got long. I think I'm going to drive out to the farmer's market today and buy some veggies and clear my head.