First steps!

Almost 22 months

Nathan took his first real steps tonight! He was standing near my son Benj by a rocking chair and took two steps to me on the bed. So, of course, I shouted for Ben and the rest of kids to come watch. We proceeded to take the next 20 minutes making him walk from person to person. Each of the kids wanted to be a part of this great moment. So he kept walking and falling from one person to the next. We are so excited to see how much he wants to walk. From my experience, once Nathan wants to do something, then we really see progress.

This morning I was discussing how to help him learn to walk with one of his therapists. We are currently trying to figure out why he loses his balance. There are times when he falls over really hard on his head or just decides to lay down from the standing position by falling straight forward or straight backward. He often loses his footing. As you can imagine, this causes all types of bumps and bruises. He seems to have a high tolerance for this type of pain. (We are currently contemplating some type of helmet for him.) So I spent all morning discussing little things we can do to help him learn to walk. Then tonight, he just takes off and walks 2-3 steps at a time. What fun!

Nathan favorite activity is stacking. He will stack DVDs, magazines, his toys rings and blocks. He is so funny as he goes about it. He likes to stand with his feet flat on the ground and balance with his forehead on the ground in a V position. (Test your flexibility and try it.) Then he can use both hands to gather toys and stack them underneath him. It is quite funny to watch him as he moves around the room gathering toys in this position. As I told you before, he crawls all the time now. Lately he has been really gaining speed as he moves in the bear crawl, with straight legs and arms.

He has also been able to do so many thing with toys that he has never done before. Nathan would never let go of any toy that he enjoyed. Just this month, he learned to drop a ball at the top of a ramp to watch it roll down and then get the ball to do it again. He has another toy where he drops blocks down the hole and then finds the blocks on the tray underneath. Nathan seems to enjoy more complex toys now. A couple of his therapists starting to call him their "Little Einstein" because he is refusing to have anything to do with toys that are too easy. Always makes a mother proud.

There are many toys that are hard for Nathan to work because he has poor fine motor skills. He still has difficulty picking up things in a pincher grab using his pointer finger and thumb. He also has difficulty with anything where he needs his hand to be flat. When he runs into trouble getting a toy to work for him, he comes up with a new solution. He was having a tough time getting a lever to make Elmo pop up in a jack-in-the-box type of toy. He just couldn't push hard enough with his fingers. So he picked up a stacking ring and began hitting and pushing on the lever until Elmo popped up. Then he grinned, so very pleased with himself.

Nathan can eat most foods now except for really hard foods like carrots. This makes life so much easier. He still drinks mostly from a bottle. We have been trying to help him learn to drink from sipper cups. He likes to throw them against the wall and watch the juice run down. I don't like this nearly as much as he does. So we taught him how to drink from a straw last week. He actually picked it up in one night. We were using one of the cups with a straw that doesn't drip. It is awesome. I need to find some more of those.

For the last 8 months, his vision therapist has been trying to get Nathan to pick things up and put things in a bowl. He just refused to do it. Since his stacking mania began, he has really improved this talent. In fact, now he is just plain trouble. He loves stacking things in his dump truck. However, the bowl that he likes to put things in the most is the toilet bowl. He likes to play in the water. He goes and gets the kids toys and books to throw them into the toilet. So we taught the kids to make sure that the toilet seat was always closed. This only took him a day or two to figure out. Soon he had that lid resting on his head while he was playing in the water again! Ugh. I swear he can hear the bathroom door open from anywhere in the house. Closing the bathroom doors at all times is a must in my house. Wait until he discovers that the toilet paper unrolls. Good for development but not so good for my sanity.

Today, he finally figured out how to start down the stairs. For the last few months I have been turning him around and getting him onto the top step. Once there, he could go down the stairs with ease. He just couldn't seem to start. Now he is no longer stranded when he crawls upstairs.

Nathan has been practicing standing all the time. Today, I caught him standing near the tub without holding on for about 20 seconds. He is getting really strong.

It is so fun to see him actually on the growth charts. We are on a vacation from doctors. I do need to take him into the pediatrician soon. He was supposed to go in for an sedated echo cardiogram to check on his heart last week. He was really congested from a bad cold, so we ended up cancelling it. We couldn't reschedule until the end of October. We are fine with this postponement since we hate to see him sedated. Breathing becomes so difficulty for him after anesthesia. So we will put that off for a while.

I just had to share all of his great achievements.

Tara