Swimming and other indoor fun on rainy days

It's been a chilly and rainy week here in Austin, and so we've been looking for fun things to do inside. Fortunately there are lots of fun places to go to play inside. Not necessarily free, of course, but still fun.

We went to a nearby inflatables place on Friday, called Extreme Fun. It's a huge place and full of gigantic inflatable slides, the sort you'd usually see outside at carnivals. I've been to other inflatable places around town, and this one has the biggest ones.



Of course, Carter isn't yet so interested in jumping on them. He did, however, spend a good 20 minutes running up and down this ramp, and laughing as if it was the best thing in the world!



They have a nice baby area, and he liked the toys there.



At the top of that ramp is a huge foam pit, and he got in it and played a little, though he wasn't too sure about it. I imagine he'll be diving into it in another year.



This morning we went to Jungle Java in Round Rock, which is basically a big indoor place place and a coffee bar. Yes, pretty much exactly what moms of little kids need! There's even free wi-fi, for those who have kids old enough that they can take their eyes off them for a while.



We came here last spring, and Carter was a bit young to really enjoy it, even the toddler area. Today he really had a lot of fun.







Here's a little video of him going down the big slide. Oddly enough, this was the only time he didn't go down on his stomach.



I got a coffee drink and watched him play, and it was really fun. We'll definitely be going back!

He also had a swim lesson this morning, and I remembered to take my camera this time. (He goes to Emler Swim School, in case I haven't mentioned that before.) There are 4 two year olds in the class, and they sit on little turtle mats while the teacher works with them one at a time. Carter still gets up from his mat every now and then, but is getting better at sitting on it and waiting.



I took videos of several of the times Carter was in the water with the teacher and edited them together into one video. The quality seems a little off, but you can still get an idea of what the class is like. In case you were wondering what the heck a swimming lesson for 2 year olds looks like. :-)



His language seems to have taken another jump in the last week or two. He'll come out with funny little sentences every now and then, though it's mostly still 3 words at a time. He's also been very explicitly pluralizing lately, which is funny. He'll say, "I likes truckses, I like trains, I like cars." This morning he was licking a bar of soap (don't ask) and saying, "I like soaps!" He likes to sort through his set of alphabet magnets and find matching upper and lower case letters, and then bring them to show me. He'll say, "I show you L-ses! (or E-ses, S-es, M-ses, etc.)"

He's also starting to sing entire songs more clearly, particularly ones from the TV shows he likes. I keep waiting for him to be able to carry a tune. I'm not sure when that's supposed to happen, heh. His current favorite TV show is Ni Hao, Kai-Lan. He LOVES it, and gets ridiculously excited when we put the DVD in. He requests it all the time. He's starting to get into Dora and Diego and Blue's Clues too. Yo Gabba Gabba seems to have lost his interest lately, but he still loves Signing Time and Wonderpets. Okay, I really let my child watch too much TV, don't I? :-P

One week later...

I can't believe it's been a week since I last posted! This is one of those times of year that everything goes screwy. Since I last posted, I gave and graded finals, and calculated course grades for 140-ish students. The last of that was due this morning, and now I'm free for a few weeks! Yay!

There's so much to say about what Carter's done in the last week, and I'm not sure where to start. I try to make mental "blog notes" throughout the day, but things invariably get forgotten. I'll start with some pictures.

Ah, Christmas clementines! We eat lots of them this time of year, and Carter loves them. I've been trying to teach him to peel them, but he doesn't have the patience for it. I'll peel one halfway and give it to him to finish peeling, an this it what he does instead:



Messy, but effective.

We had a brief respite from wintery weather and had a few lovely days. The following two pictures were taken by Michelle when they were out exploring while I was grading.



Like all little kids, he loves being outside. He just wants to walk around and touch things and explore, and he'll do it for hours at a time. He'll play on the playground equipment a bit, but what he really wants to do is dig in the dirt and splash in puddles and climb up on big rocks.



I took a break from grading on Sunday morning and went to the park with him, and he had a blast. I don't have a camera right now and so can only take pictures with my phone -- and it's really hard to get him to stand still long enough for a decent picture! This was the only one that wasn't blurry:



It's funny that all of these pictures are of the back of his head, because when we're out and about, that's all I see!

On Saturday morning we went to a Sara Hickman concert. She's a local musician who is well-known for her children's music, and she was doing a Christmas concert for children last weekend. It was a lot of fun, and Carter seemed to enjoy it. He loves music, and REALLY got into some of the songs. When they played "Winter Wonderland", he was waving his arms up and down in time with the music, and then started banging his head! The bass player in the band was cracking up at him. Then some songs you'd expect him to dance to, like "Jingle Bell Rock", he completely ignored. It was Carter's first ever concert! :-)

I just snapped this picture of him sleeping:



What is it with toddlers and sleeping with their butts in the air? Speaking of sleep, a month or so ago my sister mentioned that ever since she started putting fleece PJs on Emma, she's been sleeping really well at night. I forgot about that until about a week ago when I bought some fleece PJs on sale and put them on Carter one night. And he slept from 9:30 to 4:00, without waking up! I didn't know he was that cold, poor baby. Actually, I think the issue was that he was alternately too hot and too cold, being in and out of the covers all night. With the fleece PJs, he doesn't need covers (which he kicks off anyway), and he stays warm. It's a no-brainer, really, isn't it? Of course, I'm used to him waking up to nurse every couple of hours, so I still wake up to peek over at him every hour or so. Do you ever go back to being able to sleep all night after you have kids? I doubt it!

He's just started speaking in short sentences in the last week, and every now and then will come out with something completely clear. For example, Doug was trying to get him to eat some sweet potatoes the other night (which Carter is really suspicious of, for some reason). Doug offered a piece of sweet potato several times, and each time Carter said "no". Finally Doug offered him a bite from his own fork, and Carter looked right at him and said, "I said no." LOL! He also has little phrases he likes to say, like "What are we doing now?" That one is often, inexplicably, followed by "hot dogs!" Just now he fell down and said, "I fell down. I'm okay!"

He likes to sing, and his efforts are now not only recognizable as singing, but it's usually possible to tell what song he's singing. His current favorite song is the ABC song, and if one of us tries to sing along with him he'll get upset and say, "No, no sing!" If I'm signing the alphabet, he doesn't seem to mind as much. He also sings "Twinkle" and some songs he learned in Gymboree, and several silly songs from "Yo Gabba Gabba", like "Keep Trying", "Happy", and "I like Fish."

Speaking of signing, he's really into "Signing Time" these days, and requests to watch that as often as he requests to watch Gabba. He still signs a lot, and it remains very helpful in communicating with him. He gets frustrated if I don't immediately understand what he just said, but when he signs at the same time I almost always understand him. So it cuts down on that frustration quite a bit.

He's very interested in his stuffed animals lately, and loves to put them to bed at night and to kiss each one good night. Any toy that looks like an animal gets picked up and kissed, which is SO adorable! He has a huge stuffed elephant and stuffed hippo that my mom bought him before he was born, and he loves to carry those around. His favorite stuffed animal, though, is a rat we call "Rat", appropriately enough. He likes to bring Rat to me so I can give him hugs and kisses too. :-)

He's VERY Mommy-centric right now, which is totally normal for boys his age, but I think is hard for Doug. I am the person he goes to for everything, his "home base" that he comes to check in with every now and then. He needs to sit in my lap and nurse and recharge his batteries every now and then, and then he's off again.

I don't mind being the center of his universe, I must say. I am enjoying every moment of it! ;-)

Quick update: communication

It's a lot of fun to watch Carter's personality start to emerge these days. The more he communicates, the more we see it. I'm really glad we stuck with the sign language now, because it's seriously paying off. Carter generally signs and speaks simultaneously, but the accompanying sign means that those vague-sounding toddler words are completely understood. There's very little frustration around communication issues, which is a big deal for non-signing toddlers of this age, from what I gather from listening to other parents.

Every morning I ask him what he wants for breakfast, and he runs over to his tower, giggling. He usually doesn't respond until I offer choices, like cereal, fruit, eggs, yogurt, etc. But this morning, as soon as I asked, he said "pizza!" We had pizza for dinner two nights ago and happened to have one more piece left in the fridge, so I heated it up for him and that's what he had for breakfast! He also had some fruit, but it was funny that he had a specific request this morning, for the first time ever.

It's fun to see his sense of humor start to come out too. This morning he was wandering around the kitchen making a horrendous shrieking noise. I said, "Wow, that's an interesting noise you're making. What is it?" And he grinned and signed/said, "baby". LOL! I guess that's what he thinks a baby sounds like.

He's suddenly started being very affectionate, which is SO sweet. He will pick up toys and kiss them, and then bring them to me to be kissed as well. He won't necessarily give us kisses when we ask, but a couple of times a day he will decide it's time, and will come over, climb in my lap, crawl up my body, take my face in his hands, rub his nose against mine, and then plant one on me. How cute is that? I love that he just decides to do it spontaneously, every now and then. He's also starting to repeat "I love you" but it comes out more as "I love-love."

Speaking of affection, he's started noticing little girls lately. It's really weird how he seems to know the difference between boys and girls. I could be reading too much into it, but I don't think so. For example, we went to a toddler LLL meeting yesterday, and there were three other moms with toddlers. One was a little boy a bit younger than Carter, and they generally ignored each other (except when one had a car the other wanted). There were two little girls, and one was about two with brown hair in pigtails, really adorable. Carter kept going over to her and signing "monkey" (she had a shirt with monkeys on it) and then staring at her. He would also hand her cars, which is really significant, because he NEVER gives his cars to other kids. At one point she was holding three cars and he was trying to hand her another one. Then he would stand there and just stare at her. It was really cute!

We got some new outside toys recently, and I hope to post pictures of those tonight. I just need it to stop being so hot so we can actually play outside more...

Potty humor

Here are two cute videos. The first is a quickie of Carter playing the kazoo.



Our toilet seat broke, so we decided to replace it with one that has a built-in potty seat for kids. You know, just in case Carter can actually sit on the toilet in the next couple of years. We got it out of the box, and he knew EXACTLY what it was, as this video shows.



LOL! I'm going to go ahead and make a potty tag for this one...

First haircut!

Carter got his first haircut this morning. I love his hair long, but it needed a little trim and some shaping up, so we decided to go ahead and get it cut. We went to Pigtails & Crewcuts, a kids salon down the road. It was a really cute place! They have a big waiting room with lots of toys, couches, a kid-sized table and chairs, and a big flatcreen TV that was playing Nemo while we were there. It was such a fun playroom that I found myself wishing we could wait longer, heh. Here are some "before" pictures.







The little boy who got his hair cut before Carter came back in the waiting room with a crew cut! Doug looked at me with a horrified expression and said,"Um, no. No way." I said, "Don't worry, that is NOT going to happen!" I love my little guy with his hair shaggy and curly!

The chairs for the haircuts are little vehicles. Carter sat in the fire truck, and spent most of the actual haircut "driving" it.





Here are some "after" pictures.







So he's trimmed up, but still long enough to keep his rocker-baby cred. ;-)

They also gave us a little "First Haircut" certificate with a picture of him and a lock of his hair. So cute!



Here are a couple more cute videos. In his first one, he is showing me all the animals in a book. The interesting thing to me is that the pictures in the book are kid-drawn, so they don't necessarily look like the actual animals. But he has still somehow figured out what they are.



The next two videos are posted by special request! They show him opening a package sent my Nana Anna and Papa Marion (his great-grandparents).



I tried to get him to go to the box and see what else was in it, to no avail. He wanted to play with the first vehicle he pulled out. So I eventually pulled out the rest of the cars and trucks and just piled them around him:

Flash cards

I got Carter some sets of flash cards a while back, and he LOVES them. He sorts through them and carries them around, and loves it when you flip through them fast so he can name them all. He's getting more and more of them right these days, too. I bought them with the idea they would help him start to recognize words and get a head start in reading. We'll see!

Here is a video of him telling me what's on some of his cards. He does a combination of speaking and signing here.



In the one where he's looking at a ball and saying "apple", he's signing "ball", so I think he just got a little confused, heh.

In other news, this afternoon Doug watched Carter walk to the front door, open it, and walk out into the driveway. 0_0 So yeah, we're keeping the deadbolt locked all the time from now on!

Washing hands and other neat tricks

Carter started to sign "wash hands" to me a few days ago (I think Michelle taught him that one), and I realized I hadn't ever really let him wash his hands at the sink. I've always washed them with a washcloth or wipe. So I put a stepstool at the bathroom sink, and we started working on the handwashing process. He LOVES it! He will stand there for half an hour and wash his hands, over and over. I actually have to pick him up and carry him out of the bathroom, usually while he's crying and kicking his legs. Here's a video of the handwashing:



He's trying to say "wash", "soap", "off", and "on" there. He can also say "towel" and "water". At night when his bath is done, he will open the drain and say, "Bye bye, water". Sometimes he'll sign "water", but it's hard to tell it from "hot", as he does them both in a similar way.

He's started blowing and giving kisses, though it's easier to get him to kiss a toy than to kiss one of us. He loves dogs and giraffes all of a sudden, and goes around looking for them in books and on his toys. He signs "dog" too, but I don't know the sign for giraffe, heh. He has made up a sign for elephant, but can't come anywhere near saying it. He also says "bunny" and signs it, but it looks just like his sign for airplane, so you really have to hear the word and see the sign to get what he's saying.

Actually, that's one of the cool things about the signing these days. A lot of his words are still a bit off from what they will eventually be, but when he signs them at the same time, you completely understand him. I hadn't expected that, but it's quite a bonus!

Here's a cute video from this morning. We were playing in the downstairs bedroom, and he opened a drawer and started playing with the contents in his own unique way:



After a little bit of that, I gave him a little change purse so he could put the coins in that instead. He had fun doing that for a while.



In other news, we're all sick. We've been going to lots of playgroup-type things in the last few weeks, and it's a wonder Carter didn't get sick earlier. He finally picked something up, and now we all have it, boo. It's also exacerbated by the fact that he hasn't been nursing as much lately since I'm away from him all day, and so he's not getting those infusions of antibodies from milk.

I have a week and a half of class left before the summer session is over, and I'm really looking forward to having a few whole days a week with Carter again! I miss having lots of time with just the two of us. :-(

Soaking it all up

Carter is learning so much these days. I thought about trying to update his list of words, but I'm not sure I know them all. He constantly surprises me with new ones! I've been trying to get him talking on video, and it's sort of hard because he presence of the camera pretty much changes whatever he was doing to the extent that he stops talking. But tonight, I caught some on camera!

In this video, he's showing me things in a book.



This one is funny. He decided in the middle of the book that it was time for a diaper change. He's been doing this more and more lately.



He's also saying "ouch" there, something that's really come in handy lately. A few mornings ago, he was really whiny and cranky when he first woke up. He signed ouch, but when I asked where it hurt, he wouldn't tell me at first, but then he signed "diaper" and "ouch". I took his diaper off and sure enough, he'd developed a painful-looking rash overnight!

Here are a couple of cute pictures. We're working on eating with utensils, and he's slowly making progress.



And here is Carter's first art!



We went to an art class at Gymboree this morning, and he made that there. It was interesting, but I think we'll wait a month before we try again. He was far more interested in eating all of the art supplies than drawing with them, and really wasn't interested in standing still at the art table for very long. I think he's just not quite ready for that! The class is for 18 months and up, and he's actually more like 16 months, so it's definitely a bit early. Or maybe he's just not into art, heh.

18 month WBV, lots of pictures and videos

Carter's 18 month WBV was yesterday. He weighs 26 pounds, 5 ounces and is 31 inches tall. He's now in the 50-75th percentile for his weight (for his ACTUAL age!) and 10-25th percentile for height. The doctor isn't adjusting his age any more because he's doing well on his actual age growth curve. He's heavy for his height, but apparently so was I. My mom says I weighed the same at 18 months as I did at 4 years. I went from a pudgy toddler to a tall skinny kid. So maybe Carter will do the same?

The doctor did an autism screening, and Carter is totally normal there. I wasn't surprised -- I researched the early signs of autism last year (since preemies have a higher incidence) and I've been looking out for any signs all along. The doctor asked if he was speaking at least 5 words, and I laughed, because it's more like 50. He also asked if Carter could point to at least 2 body parts if asked. I didn't know, so I said, "Carter, where's your nose?" And he grabbed his nose! I was totally surprised!

Here are some pictures and videos that show Carter doing all sorts of fun things. This first one is really cute, IMO. He's playing "cymbals" by bashing two sippy cup lids together, and dancing! He also demonstrates his newly learned spinning skill here.



Here are a couple of videos from Gymboree. The first shows him tossing and kicking a ball.



In this one, he's shooting hoops! Or trying to, anyway.



Here are some pictures of him playing around the house. It's funny how found toys are so much better than bought ones...



Here we are playing in the yard.



Here's a video of him playing with his beach ball. You can hear him say "wagon" here.



He loves to help sweep. Not that his sweeping is entirely helpful yet, but someday it will be, I imagine.





He also likes playing in the sink. But hey, who doesn't?



This session ended with a LOT of water being dumped on the kitchen floor, one bowlful at a time!



And finally a few eating pictures. Carter has been more interested in eating vegetables lately, much to my relief. Here he is eating peas.



And I'm still not sure if likes raw tomatoes. I can't eat them, and I sincerely hope he can.



And here he is after eating some cherries. He signs "bath" here.



I have a lot more to say, but I have to get going! Hope everyone is having a good week.

Helping, signing, and talking.

Carter is soaking up new words and signs like crazy these days. It's really fun to watch! I have a couple of videos to post from today that demonstrate new stuff he's learning.

In this first one, he's helping unload the dishwasher and putting silverware away.



He protested wearing clothes this morning, heh. Sometimes he'll bring clothes and want you to help him put them on, and sometimes he doesn't want to wear clothes at all!

Here Carter is reading a book about trains. He signs and says quite a few words here.



His teeth are really bothering him, poor baby. But he tries to make the best of it.

Wheels and books

Teaching summer school is keeping me a lot busier than I expected! I've been spending all my extra time working on my class, which hasn't left much time for doing anything else. I have a couple of videos from the last week, but no pictures. I will try to take some this weekend of Carter in his 4th of July outfit. :-)

Carter's current obsessions are wheels and books. I'm actually not sure of the order there; it depends on the day. It's funny how he has no interest in balls or fluffy stuffed animals. I recently bought him some new books about cars and other sorts of vehicles, and he was SO excited! Here is a video of him with one of them, a book about airplanes. Notice how he keeps signing "airplane" (it's his own made-up sign, with his thumb and forefinger extended and his hand bouncing. He also signs "book" and says "bubble", "wheel", and "shoe" here.



The signing has been very convenient lately. Often when he's extra cranky, he will start signing "hurts" and indicate that his mouth hurts when we ask him where. The poor kid has been getting molars for months now. I don't think any have cut yet, but there are several teeth visible just under the gums now. I'm glad he can tell us when it's really bothering him, though, because sometimes it's easy to think he's just tired or cranky or whatever. It's nice to be able to do something to make him feel better!

This is a cute video. He almost loses his diaper in this one! (And um... should I be disturbed that this video already has 65 views even though I just posted it a couple of days ago? Most of my videos of Carter have only a handful. Hmmm...)



Swimming lessons continue to go well. Last week Carter went under for 2 seconds, which is pretty cool. He didn't seem to mind it either. He popped back up and blinked the water out of his eyes like it was no big deal. He likes the pool a lot and when we say "pool" he will get excited and run to the back door! He'll also point to the back door and say "pool" when he wants to go swimming.

Related to swimming, he loves taking baths, and frequently requests to take a bath by signing and saying "bath" excitedly. The nice thing about that is that he will let us know when he's ready for bed by telling us it's bathtime and going and standing by the stairs. I came home one day last week and Michelle said he'd asked for a bath in the the middle of the afternoon, and even went all the way upstairs and took her into his bathroom to show her what he wanted!

I teach in the afternoons and have a few hours with Carter in the mornings. We've been doing fun things every morning. We have our swimming lesson on Mondays, go to Gymboree on Tuesday and Thursday, and to the Children's Museum on Fridays. We have music class at Gymboree on Thursday mornings as well, and that's been a lot of fun so far. They offer art classes for toddlers who are over 18 months, and we might give that a try soon. Carter will be 18 months old in less than a week, as crazy as that sounds. Developmentally he's somewhere between 16-17 months, but he's definitely catching up. They say preemies are usually caught up by their second birthday, and I'm starting to believe it.

He's more and more mobile, and I'm starting to forget what it was like for him not be be able to run around the house. He's more verbal all the time, too. He can count... to two! Every number bigger than one is "two", basically. We'll keep working on that. He's learning new words all the time, and is getting better about using them in the right context. He now says "achoo" when someone sneezes, and continues to say "bye" and "thank you" at generally appropriate times. Most mornings he's unhappy when I leave for work, but some mornings he's fine and just says "Bye!" when I kiss him and tell him I'm going.

Another thing that's changed in the last week is that he suddenly wants me to read him bedtime stories. Up until last week, he wanted to hold the books and turn the pages himself. If I tried to read to him, he would eventually take the book away and go through it at his own pace, in whatever order he wanted. At bedtime he wasn't interested in being read to; he wanted to nurse and go to sleep as soon as we sat in the rocker. And then out of the blue, he wanted me to read to him at bedtime. He has his favorite books too, and if I read one he's not interested in hearing, he will close it and say "no", and then sign "all done" and look over the side of the rocker into the basket of books for another one. His bedtime favorite seems to be Goodnight Moon at the moment. I always save that one for last, and we read it at least twice before he closes it up and turns around in my lap to be nursed to sleep.

I had a lot more to say, but I'm tired and it's late! I'll try to post again over the weekend, with more pictures. :-)

Talking, swimming, and more

Carter is talking so much these days, and learning new words all the time. I've been meaning to compile a list of all of his words and signs for a while now.

Words:
apple
ball
bath
bird
boat
book
bye-bye
Daddy (so cute!)
doggie
fishy
kitty
hello (when "answering" the phone)
meow (said as a greeting to any animal he encounters)
Mommy (aww...)
no
nom-nom-nom (which means yummy)
nap (occasionally said to indicate he's ready for one)
play
pool
outside
shoe
thank you (repeats when someone else says it)
uh-oh
tree
water
wheel (current favorite word)
yucky (this is a funny word to him)

Signs:
again
all done
airplane
ball
bath
book
bye-bye
cup/drink (these are kind of blended together)
eat
fish
milk (when he wants to nurse)
more
phone (he made this one up himself)
play
poop (sometimes signs when he has a poopy diaper)
tree
want (he also uses this for "help")
wheel

I'm sure I've missed some, but those are most of them, anyway. We were dreading him starting to say "no", but now that he says it, it's actually really cute. It's fun to watch his little personality start to emerge, and to watch him express his opinions. Sometimes he will look at something he knows he's not supposed to touch and say, "no, no, no." And then he generally won't touch it. It's like he's reminding himself that thing is a "no-no", heh.

We have a pool, and Carter LOVES to be in it. He got to swim a lot at the beach, and now that we're home and summer is in full swing, the pool stays a balmy 85 and is really refreshing in this heat. I'd been meaning to sign him up for some swimming lessons for a while, and now that we're actually using the pool (and will be in town for an extended period of time), I decided to go ahead and do it. There is a very well-respected swimming school just a few miles from our house called Emler Swim School. They are just starting their summer classes, and so I enrolled Carter in the Waterbabies program. We had our intro class on Friday morning, and our regular classes will be Mondays at 10:30, starting this week.

The intro class was really fun, and it gave me an idea of what the lessons will be like. They basically went through a regular class, but took time to explain to us what all the activities were meant to do, and gave us the basic safety guidelines. The big skills at this point are learning to blow bubbles (for breath control), learning to hold onto the side of the pool, learning to kick their legs and swim after toys, and learning how to turn around and head back to the side of the pool after jumping in. Carter has already been doing almost all of those things for a while now, so the introductory class was a breeze. I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens this summer during the lessons. I had always said I wanted my kids to learn to swim before they could walk. I didn't quite get that done, but hey, close enough!

We've gone swimming several times in the last couple of days and have had a chance to practice what we learned. I'm expecting our pool will get used more this summer than it ever has!





Yesterday morning we went to the Austin Zoo, which is really an animal sanctuary more than a zoo. I grew up going to the huge animal park in Asheboro, NC, so it was hard to be impressed, but it was still enjoyable. They have a lot of big cats and monkeys, and a bunch of large ground tortoises, and those are the highlights. It was fun, even though it was incredibly hot and humid. Carter likes to say "meow" to animals -- I guess he's decided all animals talk like cats do -- and he said meow to every animal he saw, including the goats in the petting area.







Carter helped make dinner last night. Sort of. He buttered a piece of garlic bread:



But then he ate it, LOL.



That tower was one of our best purchases, I swear!

That's it for now. Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Physical therapist evaluation

This morning the physical therapist came to evaluate Carter. This appointment was made well over a month ago when there were some developmental red flags, but most of the issues I had been concerned about seem to have resolved themselves while we were on vacation, as I noted in the last post. Still, I was glad to have the therapist work with him to get her professional opinion. There is a tremendous amount of research on micro-preemies that indicates they will likely eventually have some sort of developmental delay, and I want to make sure we recognize any potential problems as soon as possible.

It turns out that Carter is generally right on track for his adjusted age of 14 months. In all areas of the evaluation but two he scored right at 13 or 14 months (communication, social, and fine motor skills). On his cognitive skills, he was at 17 months, which made me really happy, as you might imagine. The therapist even remarked, "He's going to be a smart one." :-D

Oddly enough, he scored 13 months for the communication category, despite all of his signing and new words, solely because he doesn't ask for a drink from a cup. He asks to nurse, either by signing or by coming over and pulling up my shirt, but apparently that doesn't count. The developmental skill is that he can ask for a sippy cup by either a sign or a word, and he doesn't yet do that. I thought that was odd, but there you go.

On his gross motor skills he scored at an 11 month level, but the therapist said the only reason for that was because he wasn't yet walking. She said the test assumes most babies walk by 11 months, and admitted she thought that was a pretty high expectation. She said that all of his pre-walking skills were in place, and there was nothing she could see that would prevent him from walking any day now. She said most babies get all the skills in place and then plateau for a while before taking those first steps.

So she didn't see any reason to worry about him, but that low score did qualify him for services, so we'll be getting a visit from the ECI folks once a month to keep tabs on him. If we lived in NC, he would have been getting these visits all along, but in Texas the services aren't quite as robust. I'm glad we'll have another resource for him, and it certainly doesn't hurt to have an extra set of trained eyes, in case something does come up later on.

At the end of the session, the ECI representative was telling the therapist how early and small Carter was born, and she was just amazed at his progress. He really has come a long way. I know so many other preemie parents struggle with significant issues every day, so we're really lucky that Carter is, at least for now, a very normal toddler.

Here are some pictures and video from the last couple of days. Carter LOVES watermelon, and here he's gnawing on a piece of rind.



This is a cute video of him trying to eat yogurt with a spoon. He's working hard on it, but it's still a very messy process. You can hear him say "uh-oh" a couple of times in this video.



He's really climbing a lot lately, so much that we've had to re-evaluate our babyproofing. Here is a picture of him climbing on the couch, mostly taken to show off this diaper. ;-)



Here is a video that shows just how good he is at climbing these days.



And this one shows how he can get on and off the couch by himself. It's funny how it wasn't that long ago that I would physically follow him as he crawled on the couch because I was so afraid of him falling off. Now it's totally no big deal!



You can also hear him babbling a little in those videos. He's gradually adding new words and signs to his vocabulary. Last night at dinner, he finally signed "more"! I had baked a take-out pizza, and he ate almost two slices of it by himself. After the first piece, I figured he was done, so I went to put the leftovers in the fridge. When I walked away with the plate, he made a whining sound, and when I turned back to look, he signed "more". So he ate a second piece. Granted, they were small pieces, but still, that child can put away some food! He can scarf down a hot dog in no time, and regularly eats an entire container of yogurt at breakfast. He can eat his weight in fruit, I swear. If he eats like this now, what will it be like when he's 13?

So we're doing well! Carter is almost back on Texas time. He went to bed at 8:30 last night and woke up at 6:30, which is entirely acceptable. Before the vacation, he was going to bed at 9:00 and waking up at 8:00, so we're really close to normal. His naps are still all over the place, but he'll settle down again soon enough. :-)

Jet lag, new words

We've been home for a few days now, and Carter's still pretty jet-lagged. The first two nights, he woke up at 3:00 and 3:30. He normally sleeps until 8:00 am, so that's actually not too far off from the time zone we were just in. My strategy for getting over jet lag is just to force myself into a regular routine, but that's just not going to work with Carter, obviously! He went to sleep at 6:20 tonight, and I'm pretty sure he's down for the night. Last night he went to bed at 7:30, so I was totally unprepared. He hasn't had a bath and is still in his regular clothes, but oh well.

I've been thinking about how much Carter changed during the trip, and now I finally have a chance to sit down and write about it. He made a huge leap during those three weeks, and I guess we'll never know if it was just a coincidence that it happened during the trip, or if all the new experiences he was having pushed him in that direction earlier than would have happened otherwise. I'm inclined to think the latter, because it was just so dramatic.

Before the trip, I was really concerned about his fine motor skills. He didn't really have a good pincer grasp, he wasn't pointing at objects, and he wasn't really attempting to manipulate small things with his hands much. About a week into the trip, he started doing all of those things, all at once. Now he points constantly, wanting you to tell him the name of the object, or to take him closer to it so he can see it. When he's being carried, he points in the direction he wants to go. He points at things he wants and then signs "want".

His language skills also made a big jump. At some point during the trip, I became aware that he understood a lot of what I was saying, a lot more than he did just a few weeks ago. Maybe he understood before that, but he started responding to what I said in ways that demonstrated he understood, rather than just staring at me blankly. I could suddenly talk to him, rather than just make cutesy cooing sounds at him, and that made him suddenly seem much more like a child than a baby.

He has started soaking up a lot of words lately, which is a lot of fun. He now consistently says "kitty", "doggy", "bird", "wow", "door", and "uh-oh" (he likes that one a lot). He will hold the phone up to his ear and say "hello". He will also repeat words when you say them first, though many of them don't stick so quickly. This morning he said "Good morning" back to me when I said it to him, and he's also said "pool", "window", "outside", and "chair". He babbles a lot, in that toddler way that sounds like they're making up their own language.

In general, he's communicating in a way he didn't a few weeks ago. For example, this afternoon, we were playing on the bed, and he signed "book". I said, "Oh, do you want to read a book now?" and he smiled and giggled, which is the way he says "yes". He always seems so delighted when he is able to tell us what he wants, and it's so sweet! That would have been an unimaginable exchange to me just a few weeks ago, and now it happens all the time. It's really cool!

I think that in addition to him getting better at communicating, I'm getting better at understanding him. Maybe being away from home helped that. In an environment where we didn't have much to do but relax and hang out, we all paid more attention to each other, and that undoubtedly helped us all learn to communicate better. For example, I learned on this trip that Carter can decide when to take a nap and when to go to bed at night on his own. When he's ready, he will let me know by climbing in my lap and snuggling in a very specific way, and he'll then go to sleep very quickly once we snuggle up to nurse. If I try to get him to nap before he's ready, it will be a struggle. He's definitely very independent! It's easier just to wait and let him decide when he's tired enough. That may sound really strange, but it works so well!

Even though he's not walking yet, he's made some progress in his gross motor skills as well. He can get on and off the couch on his own, can climb up and down stairs, and climbs on everything. He's not a risk-taker when he climbs, which is a relief. He's very cautious, and though he will occasionally make a mistake and take a spill, he is generally very much in control. I feel like I can trust him to decide when he's ready to do something like get off of a bed on his own, because he is very careful about it.

He's also started trying to figure out what objects are for. For example, doors are for closing and opening, flatware is for scooping up food, phones are for holding to your ear and talking to, remote controls are for pointing at the TV, and so on. I got him play kitchen recently and put it together today, and I had to go dig up extra screwdrivers because he wanted to help. He would take a screwdriver and stick it in the holes in the toy and twist it around, just like I was doing. It was really sweet!



He likes his kitchen, by the way. It's so cute! I've been meaning to get this one for him ever since he fell in love with it at someone's house a few months ago, and I found it recently at a store. He loves it!



The back is a little living room set-up.



I need to go through his toys and pull out a lot of the baby ones he doesn't play with anymore. We have SO many toys at this point, and it's time to do a little culling...

Anyway, Carter is growing and changing in such amazing ways, and I'm loving every minute of it. I occasionally have moments when I miss my tiny little baby, but when I see the little boy he is becoming, it's so exciting! I can't wait to see what he'll do next. :-)

Sign language

First, here is a picture of Carter taking a water break while playing in the park yesterday.



I take a blanket and put our stuff on it, and he crawls around. He comes back to the blanket whenever he wants a drink from his sippy cup, and I find that really cute! I've been trying to make sure water is always available to him around the house, so if he's thirsty he can just go have a drink. We keep working on the sign for drink, but he hasn't started doing it yet.

Which brings me to the main topic of this post: signing. We've been working on signing for a long time now. I think I started showing him the sign for milk about 8 months ago, and that was the first one he picked up. He now has a vocabulary of about 6 signs, and we work on new ones all the time. He's slowly getting more consistent with them, and I'm getting better at recognizing them. Here are the ones he uses regularly.

Milk: This one means "nurse" for us, as that's the only kind of milk Carter gets. Since this was his first sign, it seems to have formed the basis of lots of other signs for him, including some he's made up.

Want: This is one Carter made up, but it's remarkably close to the real ASL sign for "want". He points his hand in the direction of what he wants and opens and closes his fist. This is usually directed at the cat, at toys, and at my food or drink. I read somewhere that if babies aren't pointing by this age, that can be a sign of a developmental delay. Carter doesn't point at things with one finger, which could be a sign that something is wrong. But then again, I don't point at things, so why would he? He lets me know what he wants in no uncertain terms, so I'm not really worried. But I will still bring it up to the Early Childhood Intervention counselor at our next meeting, just in case.

Light: This is a new sign, and one he uses ALL the time. He doesn't do the real ASL sign, but approximates it as best he can by opening and closing a fist with just his middle and ring fingers. He signs "light" at every kind of light fixture, from table lamps to chandeliers to fluorescent lights in stores to regular overhead lights around the house. If I say the word "light", he'll look around for one and then sign. If we're in a dark room and I turn a light on, he'll sign "light". Clearly, he gets the concept. It's pretty cool!

All done: This is one I've just figured out. He kept doing this waving thing with two hands (like the royal wave), and I couldn't figure out from the various contexts he used it in quite what it meant. It was clearly meaningful and deliberate, and so I felt bad that I didn't understand him. But then I finally realized he was using that sign for "all done", and it's been interesting to watch him use it. He will use it during mealtime when he's finished eating, and when he signs it, he means it. Tonight we were having blackberries for dessert, which he loves. He ate at least a dozen, and then signed "all done". Just to be sure, I put one more blackberry in front of him, and he ignored it. It sat there for the whole 5 minutes it took me to clean him up, and he never touched it, even though he had gobbled up every blackberry until then.

We went to Gymboree class today, at 12:15 instead of the usual time of 11:15. He was tired, and with about 15 minutes to go, he crawled away from the group area where we were all playing, sat a distance away, and started signing "all done". He was ready to go! He fell asleep in the car on the way home and that led to a 3-hour nap! He also will sign "all done" when he is finished with a task, whether you are or not, like diaper changing. He'll sign "all done" while I'm trying to get a clean diaper on him, wiggling and trying to roll away the whole time. He'll sign it with just one hand if that's all he has free. It's cute that he's trying to express his independence, and it lets me know when he's getting frustrated.

Tree: This is a new sign we've been working on, and I think he gets it, but it's so close to his sign for "all done" that I'm not sure the difference is clear to him yet. He will sign it when we're outside, though, and if I sign and say "tree" he will look up at the closest tree.

Poop: Michelle uses the "potty" sign for poop, and Carter will sign it every now and then. He's not consistent about it, but when he has a poopy diaper sometimes he will let you know by signing "poop". You can ask him if his diaper is poopy, and sometimes he will sign "poop" back to indicate that it is. Sometimes he'll shake his head "no". Other times, he just stares back blankly, so this is one we're still working on!

Other signs we're currently trying to learn are "mommy", "daddy", "play", "in", "out", "ball", "kitty", "more", "bath", "sleep", "hurts", "drink", and "eat". I try to sign those as much as possible, and he'll catch on at some point. I know he understands some of them when I do them; I can sign "kitty", for example, without speaking and he will look for the cat. It's already paying off, even though it's coming along slowly. The fact that he's learning how to communicate with us at all at this age is fantastic. It will probably be another year before he even starts to speak, so I feel like we're getting a head start on communication.

Clapping, climbing, and generally wearing Mommy out

It's almost 8:00 on Saturday evening, and Doug just got home from a business trip. Which means I now have time to update, heh. It's just been me and Carter for a few days, and I'm really tired today! As much as I love spending time with him, it's really intense these days. One of the things I didn't really understand about parenthood is that it really is 24/7. I'm never really "off". I guess I always thought I could get stuff done when Carter was napping, but no... not really. I do get some online stuff done, and frankly, it's nice to have a chance to sit down. The parenting style I chose is really intense in the first few years, and that is really supposed to pay off later. I'm sure it will, but every now and then I marvel at just how all-consuming it is!

Carter had a big couple of days. He's been signing "light" pretty much constantly, and he signs it at lamps, overhead lights, chandeliers, and the lights over the stove, so I'm pretty sure he gets the concept. It's pretty cool!

This morning, out of the blue, he started clapping his hands. I have no idea why, but he decided today was the day. And he totally understands the purpose of clapping, because he does it at the right time, like when he's excited about something or wants to show appreciation for something he found entertaining. He clapped when Doug came home, which was really cute. I even managed to catch it on video. So cute!



Something else he's really good at now is climbing the stairs. He's scary-good at it, actually.



It was really beautiful today, and Carter and I spent some time outside. He's getting so adventurous, and it's fun to watch. This is what happened today:


"Hey, look at these cool trees."


"Hi, Mommy!"


"I think I can fit through here..."


"I seem to be stuck."


"Yep, definitely stuck. Ooh, look! Dirt!"


"It's all wet and squishy!"


"Hmmm... Sort of earthy, with a piquant finish."

He really was stuck, too. I had a hard time getting him out! A few minutes later he whacked himself in the head with a stick really hard and that was the end of our fun. :-(

It's getting close to bath time, so I need to wrap this up. I'm so glad Doug is home! :-D