Holding onto MORE stuff!

One of the areas of development that has been very hard for Maddy has been the use of her hands. In January I blogged about the topic in this post - Holding onto... STUFF!

It was really only back in January when she was five and a half months old that she was just beginning to hold onto any object at all. Back then, she would hold things for only ten seconds before she lost her delicate grip on it. The objects that she could hold were very limited. I believe that at the time of the previous post, that particular rattle was one of the only things, if not THE only thing that she really managed to hold onto for any significant period of time.

This particular skill of holding an object between her two hands has improved greatly since January and she is now able to hold a much wider range of objects too. Her grip, though improving, is still not fantastic - but it is getting better and better all the time.

One of the best suggestions that I have had has come from some other DD parents, and they advised me that Maddy will need to learn to use her hands as they are in her own way and in her own time. My responsibility is to provide her with the opportunities to learn how to do so by providing her with lots of opportunities to hold many different things of various shapes, sizes and textures. Lana is getting involved in the process too - she loves to give Maddy toys whenever she needs them ;)

Over the past couple of weeks, I have noticed a HUGE improvement in Maddy's motor skills, in particular her fine motor skills. She can now hold objects quite well with only one hand and  has also developed a "modified pincer grip" for holding small objects - two actually! 

First: the thumb to ring finger pincer grip, demonstrated below:

Secondly: the index finger to ring finger pincer grip: (if you look at the picture of Maddy's hand in the header of this blog - or way back in this post if you prefer, you can see why this works for her - these fingers are naturally very close together, and the middle finger is more "set back" so it's not in the way)

It has been really fantastic seeing Maddy develop these new skills! I never even thought much about "hand function" when Lana was a baby - but seeing Maddy struggle more to achieve these skills makes the milestones SO much sweeter when she gets there! 

And you can't deny from the grin on Maddy's face that she feels the same way :)