Wowza

Both kids in Halloween pajamas.

Funny stuff first: While The Boy was sick a couple of weeks ago, he had less restraint in the potty-training department. As soon as I pulled off his diaper, and before I could sit him down, he peed straight onto my crotch. True story.

This kid is impressive. He is potty-training very well. In fact, just a few weeks ago, he signed 'potty'. At first I thought it was just a desperate attempt to get out of his highchair. But when I put him on the potty, he went! He knew he needed to go. He knew how to say it. Amazing. In fact, potty training is going so well that when he sat on his new Baby Bjorn potty the first day, he held his pee until I put him on the big potty. Twice.

Yesterday, he asked for 'water' using sign language. This is monumental both for communication development and nutrition. He generally despises drinking, but the past few days have seen a real upturn in that department. In fact, I let him hold his plastic Ikea cup with two hands and he drank all by himself! When I tried to get The Boy to show off for his Pops, of course he dumped the water all over himself and eventually threw the cup on the ground, but I know the skills are there.

His PT talks about how he progresses every time she sees him. It maybe only a tiny bit, but he has the motivation to learn things on his own. He is on the very cusp of crawling. He can army crawl a bit, but he also pulls himself into quadrapd and is starting to grasp the idea of mobility (and the ensuing freedom).

His OT talks about how his small motor skills have developed ahead of his large motor. Apparently that's a very positive sign of intelligence. He has a very long attention span, often playing with only one or two toys for the entire hour-long visit. He's got pretty good pincer skills, and we never even practiced that. He points with a single finger. He loves books. And it has to be the book that is being read. It's no good giving him one book to play with while you read a different one. No good.

His Speech Therapist talks about how he is always looking at things, working them out in his mind. He's constantly engaged in serious observation, or would like to be. That's probably why his calmer shopping that sitting on the floor surrounded by his toys. Those are old news. The world is a big place and he needs to see more of it!

And it seems like I'm always talking about all of those things: how amazed I am by him, how proud I am of him, how smart he is, and how everybody is predicting he'll be high functioning. Of course, that prognosis could change, but with so much struggle behind us, and so much struggle ahead of us, I happy for the good news and progress right now, even while I stand knee-deep in plenty of struggle, too.