Small Steps, Big Leaps LLC

Do you know where your tongue should be resting at?

When we aren’t talking, eating, or drinking, our tongue should naturally rest suctioned to the roof of our mouth. Your sweet babe is no different!

Your baby’s tongue that rests up on the roof of their mouth helps support:

✨ Healthy oral and facial development
✨ Proper jaw growth
✨ Development of a wide palate (roof of the mouth)
✨ Efficient swallowing patterns
✨ Feeding development foundations
✨ Stability of head, neck, and body positioning

When the tongue rests low in the mouth, babies are more likely to develop an open-mouth posture, which can contribute to increased mouth breathing.

🌀Why is nasal breathing so important?

Our noses are designed for breathing! Nasal breathing:
💨 Acts as a filter
🦠 Helps trap germs, allergens, and particles
😴 Supports better sleep quality
🧠 Promotes optimal oxygen and carbon dioxide balance in the body
💪 Supports proper tongue posture and oral muscle development

If you frequently notice your baby resting with their mouth open, snoring, struggling with feeding, has milk tongue, or having difficulty maintaining the tongue-up posture, reach out so we can work together to optimize your baby’s airway.

At Small Steps, Big Leaps, we look beyond milestones and consider how foundational skills—like breathing, tongue posture, and feeding—can impact a child’s development from the very beginning.

As pediatric OTs, we get to play for a living—and there’s so much more to it than meets the eye!

What looks like an obstacle course, a game, or a fun challenge is actually a carefully crafted opportunity to build skills. We take engaging, motivating activities and adapt them to target each child’s unique therapy goals—helping a child gain skill and confidence along the way.

The best part? Kids are having so much fun they often don’t realize how hard they’re working.

Play is a child’s most natural way of learning. Through play, children practice new skills, overcome challenges, build confidence, and experience success in a meaningful way. That’s why so many children love coming to therapy—they get to do what they do best while gaining the tools they need to thrive in everyday life.

At Small Steps, Big Leaps, we believe the most powerful learning happens when children are engaged, empowered, and having fun. 🤎✨

✨We all know the “newborn scrunch” is adorable… but “unscrunching” on the floor is where real development happens ✨

Newborns naturally start out curled up in flexion—their little “scrunched” position is expected and so cute. But as babies grow, one of the most important things we can offer them is time to stretch out and move freely on a firm, flat surface like the floor.

Why? Because floor time is where the magic of movement really begins.

When babies are able to fully extend, reach, kick, and rotate their necks and bodies, they’re getting powerful sensory input that helps them understand where their body is in space (proprioception). That feedback from muscles and joints supports body awareness, coordination, and smoother, more intentional movement as early developmental milestones begin.

Unscrunching on the floor also:
🌱 Helps decrease unnecessary tension in the body
💪 Builds strength through the neck, shoulders, core, and hips
🙆‍♀️ Optimize symmetry throughout the body
🧠 Supports sensory processing

While swaddled “scrunch time” has its place, babies need plenty of open space to expand, explore, and strengthen in order to build the foundations for future milestones.

So yes—the scrunch is cute… but the stretch is essential.

At Small Steps Big Leaps, we’re all about giving babies the space to move big, learn big, and grow strong from the very beginning 💚

Family-centered care starts at home for us 🤍

As we work on putting together our new space, I look around and realizing this is exactly what family-centered means to me — building something with the people you love right beside you.

Behind every dream at Small Steps Big Leaps are the little hands helping unpack boxes, the late nights putting furniture together, the encouragement on the hard days, and the love that keeps this vision moving forward. My family has been part of every step of this journey, and that’s truly the heart behind everything we do.

We believe the best support happens when families feel seen, included, valued, and empowered — because babies and kids thrive when they feel connected to the people who love them most.

Watching my own family help bring this dream to life makes this new chapter even more meaningful. Chasing this dream while raising a family has been beautiful and exhausting, but meaningful and worth every second.

Here’s to creating a space where children can meet their goals, families can feel supported, and big dreams can be built together — one small step at a time ✨🫶🏻