Crawling and other achievements

March 31, 2009 – 18 months

It has been a little while since I last updated this. Nathan has been doing fantastic and hasn’t been in to see any doctor for about two months. I think that this must be a record. We were supposed to visit the eye doctor but missed the appointment due to our car's faulty ignition switch. It works about 80% of the time and then just doesn’t work. Yes, it is definitely on the very long list of things to do.

Last time, I told you how he has been getting up on his hands and knees. He progressed from rocking back and forth to actually crawling a foot or so by the end of February. Most of this month, he has spent practicing crawling. He would crawl three or four feet when he was crawling to the stairs. He uses the stairs to help himself sit up and he likes to just play on the bottom stair. He also would crawl when he was headed to the couch. Nathan puts his back against the couch and then uses his feet to push himself back and up instead of pulling himself up. I didn’t realize how hard that is to describe until I was just writing it down. This causes problems since he thinks that he has to push backwards whenever he is standing. For the past couple of weeks, I have been trying to get him to stand without something behind him to lean against. Now he can crawl all the way across the room. He tends to bulldoze a little but will look up now and then, especially when you are talking to him. He is scooting on his back less and less each week. I think that he is realizing that crawling can be just as fast as scooting on his back. Hurray!

Yesterday, Nathan was amazing. He was at the bottom of the stairs and started to push himself up to the next stair. He made it to the second stair which he had done once before. The kids and I were in the kitchen watching him. He began to push up to the next stair. Before long, he had climbed up all the stairs. We would then show how to crawl down the stairs, helping him to move his arms and legs to the next step. He thought this was a great game. So we spent the day going up and down the stairs. Thankfully, I have fantastic kids to help or I might have gone a little crazy. Benj was especially great at helping Nathan learn how to go back down. Rachel, AJ, and Emma were great at guarding and making sure that he didn’t fall down the stairs on his way up. We are a bit frantic to teach him how to go back down since we have 5 flights of stairs in our small home. Nathan is now officially dangerous!

He still loves his jumper but won’t stay in it as long because it hinders his mobility. He doesn’t love the walker that Kids Who Count brought because it is difficult for him to stand. I am going to have to see if there is a better one out there. We never bought a walker for the other kids because it seemed like it wasn’t worth the money for the short time they would use it. I guess it is time to investigate them. I don’t expect him to be walking too soon but he is really making great progress.

He wasn’t babbling much for a while but lately started up again. His favorite thing to say is “Mum, Mum, Mum.” It is similar to the sound he has made since he was an infant when he cried. Often when I say it to him, he will start babbling back. This is great news because it is a step towards learning to speak.

My only complaint is that Nathan’s sleeping schedule is all off. He is teething. On the right side, another tooth has come to join the middle two. He is also getting a molar on the bottom right. He gets a little pouty and wants to be cuddled a lot more. He is pretty great about it. Personally, I wouldn’t want to get teeth in for the first time either.

Besides crawling Nathan has a few new things that he loves to do. He LOVES to push the buttons on the TV which frustrates the kids to no end. He also likes to put small toys on his face and roll them up to his nose then back to his mouth. At times, he darts his tongue out to taste his toy. His therapist thinks that he might skip the “put everything in his mouth” stage because he doesn’t like to put anything in his mouth. I am okay with the licking if we can avoid the choking on all the other kids’ toys. It is so hard to get them all to take care of the little toys like the Magnetics that seem to be everywhere at times.

My favorite thing that he does is he gives me kisses and snuggles into my neck. It is the cutest thing and makes everything else in life okay. He is my little darling.