My big girl. A story in pictures

So there have been times over the past 18 months when I have been worried that Miss K might be a bit different. My little sister even refers to her as a window licker occasionally.

Yes that is a picture of my daughter hitting herself in the head with plastic bottles.

She has always seemed to be just a few steps behind every other baby her age and that is enough to make any first time mum nervous.

Wait for me guys!

But lately I have started noticing little things that she does that make me realise I really need to trust that Miss K knows what she is doing. For example we went to my big sister's place the other day, and she spent a good five minutes removing the lids from felt tip pens, to swap them to other felt tip pens. Now this may not seem like a big deal to anyone who doesn't have kids, but you have no idea the amount of fine motor skills a task like this takes. And the concentration too.

Who knew playing was such serious work.

And today she has surprised me yet again, by spending half an hour trying to put a lid on a plastic bottle. Now this job was made impossible by the fact that the bottle already had a lid on, but she persevered for a full half hour, ignoring the flash and beeping of my old and obnoxious sounding camera as I snapped her from my little corner. 

That kid has truly mastered the art of ignoring anything when it suits her

Now normally when a child keeps doing the same task over and over again to the point of obsession the first thing you think is Autism. And trust me I have been watching for signs of that for a while. But I don't think this is the case. I think this is her learning about the world around her.

But she's so darn pretty I have to forgive her

She knows that bottles have lids, she knew that there was one bottle and one lid on the floor, so the logical answer is that they must go together. And she kept trying to make them go together, for thirty whole minutes. There are times when my attention span isn't even that long. After ten minutes of a particularly boring task, I usually need a good lie down and maybe some chocolate.

Alright, now where's my chocolate?

So it's only a little thing, but I'm pretty proud of Miss K right now, for showing such determination and concentration. And after hard work like that, a girl really needs a drink...

Umm no, you may not drink that energy drink...

That's better.