Timothy took 8 steps!

Timothy was standing up in the middle of the room, holding the remote.

I had cards.

I asked him "Which one is Machu Pichu?" and he walked 8 steps over and pointed at the right answer. He was so excited about the cards he didn't even realize he had walked that much!! And then he identified Stonehenge, Houses of Parliament, James Prescott Joule, handicap, and The Three Musicians...he got every question right (Well, with one Picasso painting he pointed to both of them at the same time with both hands....why???).

What does that mean? It's time for new cards. Honestly, though, we're going through at least 60-80 Bit cards per week....we don't even have a full week left.

My thrifty mother, though, found that Sams has 600 sheets of cardstock for $8. We've BEEN paying $6 for 150 sheets.

It excites me that he knows so much, that he's really learning this stuff, but it means I'll have to spend a couple hours this weekend making cards for next week.

Folks, I'm not one to waste my time. I'm really lazy. So I honestly wouldn't be doing all of this if I didn't KNOW it was working - Timothy knows the cards we show him and there's no question about that.

I still don't know how long he'll know them, though, but he's still remembering cards we taught him at 4 months! I'm impressed by that.

Pointing

This morning while Timothy was drinking his sippy, I showed him all 8 sets of cards once. I normally read a book and show them all again, but I decided to read another book, the Little Einsteins book.

..

Timothy surprised me! I asked him "Where's Annie?" and he pointed to Annie in the book. Then I asked him "Where's Leo?" and he pointed to Leo in the book. Then he closed the book.

..

When we did Timothy's evaluation, Donna encouraged us to get him pointing in books and we've been trying with no success. Then, all of a sudden, he has this developmental leap and he's doing SO many new things...

..

His speech therapist is coming today at 4:00. I sort of hope he'll be in a talkative mood and just say "No more therapy - I talk now". I'm getting tired of doing this...it's silly.

Easing in to the Cortex

Yesterday, I emailed Donna.

While Timothy was eating breakfast yesterday, daddy was showing cards. Timothy was looking at the cards, but at the same time he was feeling through his ham and egg looking for his raisin. He located the raisin by feel alone, and he knew the difference between the raisin and the ham and egg. This is his "goal" for 12-18 months tactility.

Now, his tactility was the ONE pathway out of six that was perfect, so apparently it still is (and he's 7+ months ahead in it).

But I asked Donna if he could be getting into the cortex of his brain because we've seen SOOOO many changes in the past week. (Background information - the cortex is the outer layer of the brain. You and I function using our cortex). Normally, the cortex is associated with walking, so when a child starts walking he's in the cortex.

Donna said, though, that it sounds like Timothy's gradually easing in to the cortex and that's a good thing. It's much better to gradually enter a new brain pathway than suddenly start everything in that pathway. She really believes he'll be walking in the next couple of weeks.

You can see where he'll be going with the corext here:

http://www.familyhopecenter.org/pdfs/FHC_I&DPChart_8_to_36_Months_Eng_0507.pdf

Oh, and our dollar store was having a sale - we got TONS of great books (and I mean really great books) for 79cents each!

We miss our STUFF

Office Max is offering free lamination to teachers every Thursday through September 13th. Yeah!!

So I took my stuff up there last Thursday. I took our math dot cards, our days of the week cards, our posters off the wall, a bunch of other stuff...

Yeah, tomorrow will be a week and they still haven't even *started* on our lamination. Timothy misses math, and our math dot cards are at Office Max.

I'm glad they're doing the lamination for free, but with no lamination in sight I don't know how long I want to leave my math dot cards up there.

We miss our STUFF!

Ahhh!

Timothy likes to play with blocks!!

Horray!

Guess what - our library is starting story time in September. Some weeks it's 3 days/week and some weeks it's only 1, but there are tons of homeschool families in the area and I just *know* there will be lots of kids there.

And guess what else - I called up the children's museum and they said they would start a toddler program 1 day/week!

I'm excited (and late...I teach at 11).

Etah

Timothy has a cousin, Elizabeth, who has autism. Suffice it to say they are not the best of friends, but they are around each other quite a bit. Apparently, Timothy has picked up some habits from her.

If you ask Elizabeth to do something she doesn't want to do she says "Etah", usually while hitting herself or throwing something.

What do you know - in addition to "yeah" Timothy's started saying "Etah".

Timothy do you want cheese? Yeah.
Timothy do you want carrots? Etah.
Timothy, let's go change your diaper. Etah.

He doesn't say it with nearly as much force as she does, and he doesn't hit himself while saying it, but he says it nonetheless. I just model the proper response "No? You don't want to change your diaper?" That's really all I can do at this point.

.....
I teach today and I woke up early to try to sort out my thoughts and my lesson plan.

Daddy and Timothy came in about 10 minutes ago. In those 10 minutes, Timothy:

Crawled into the room and said "Hello"
Crawled to daddy, looked at him, and said "Dade"
Crawled to the window and said "Hi"
Called "Lady" at the window
When daddy said "Do you see lady?" he said "Yeah"

That's in 10 minutes!!

We're still not getting consistent, meaningful speech like we want (Note: Saying mama and dada would be a nice start). But when your child has problems, you take what you can get, and we're very happy with what we've been seeing these last few days.

Bath

Look, Timothy took a bath without having to go to the Emergency Room!

Failing our Geniuses

I found an interesting article published recently about a girl genius who's been failed by the public school system. The interesting thing - she lives in Longview, TX. Her parents couldn't find a single school (not even in Dallas) that would let her skip more than 2 grades even though she was academically there.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1653653,00.html

I don't know what I think about it, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Horrible Night, Verbal Day

I think Timothy's teething.

He was up for 2 hours in the middle of the night screaming. He was fine when we held him, but whenever we moved close to his bed to put him down he would start screaming. It was miserable.

We ended up pulling him into bed with us - which we rarely do. I was up all night, worried that I'd roll over him, worried that he'd crawl off the bed and crawl away, worried in general.

This morning, though, he's still been really verbal. He said "bath" and "yeah" and then he took 3 steps.

Developmental leap - WOW!!

If I weren't home today, I would *never* believe all of this happened.

Timothy had a sort of developmental LEAP today.

He took 4 steps and then sat down

He also was really watching me brush my teeth, so I gave him a toothbrush and he brushed his (back and forth and all!)

He also started "writing" (scribbling) today...never really cared before

Language-wise, he said about 5 or 6 words

"Yeah" was his word today. You wanna go to Walmart? Yeah. You wanna go outside? Yeah. Are you hungry? Yeah. You wanna read this book? Yeah

He also said NO though, when I tried to take one of his toys

He picked up the phone, held it to his ear (upside down) and said "Hi"

He said "more" while we were eating

AND (this impressed me the most) he was playing with one of his toys that counts and then sings a song. It was up to nine and singing the 9 song when he yelled out "ten"

It's just been an incredible day.

I told daddy that the child he's coming home to tonight is not the same child he was with yesterday - amazing!!

Dissertation

I'm sorry, I'm just so excited about my dissertation I'm talking to anyone who will listen. You are a captive audience, so I'm talking to you.

The argument of my dissertation is that people are being guilt tripped into reading to their child - it's not a pleasurable, fun, experience but rather a DUTY.

Have you ever heard of Prescription for Reading Parters? Hillary Clinton was behind it and she had doctors all around the country writing prescriptions for reading. Honest to goodness. Here's a quote: “When we think of a prescription, we think of those slips of papers that were handed out by our doctors, and we actually wanted doctors to prescribe reading on a slip of paper. So don't just take two aspirin and go to bed. Take this book and read it before bedtime. So all of a sudden, doctors began writing prescriptions for reading.”

ALSO McDonalds had this big campaign in 1999 telling parents to read to their kids. McDonalds? When we have to take advice from McDonalds on how to raise our kids, it's a bad day.

Got to run, Timothy's waking...

Dollar Store

Timothy's been REALLY verbal today. Not necessarily words, but sounds in general (some words). I'm really excited!!

We went to the dollar store. Yeah, have you ever heard of a dollar store having a sale? Ours was. Everything in the store was 79 cents.

Anyway, while we were there I saw a father kick his 3 year old. Well, I'd guess the boy was 3. I didn't say anything and I really thought about calling CPS, but I didn't. Then, he left the same time I did and I saw his car was covered in religious bumber stickers. I still can't get the little boy off my mind, though.

Good Morning

It's looking like it's going to be a great day today!

Yesterday, daddy and Timothy spent ALL day alone together while I was in meetings from 8am to 8:30pm. I really missed them!

Daddy did have good news, though - Timothy turned his head away from rubbing alcohol because he didn't like the smell (once). The first time he tried to drink it. No alcohol poisoning, please, Timothy.

Book Recommendations (And the opposite)

Did you know that 1 out of 4 Americans read NO books last year? I'm serious. 25% of Americans didn't read a single book.

You can read the article here

I guess I'm making up for those Americans, then, because I've read about 13 books in the past week. Here are some reviews/summaries.

Taking Books to Heart: How to Develop a Love of Reading in Your Child Paul Copperman

This is a book I'll talk about in my dissertation. It gives a "program" for helping your child learn to love to read. It also suggests that if you don't follow the program precisely, your child's educational future will be doomed. Copperman directs the reader to read the entire text cover to cover because, “Only if you have an adequate overview of the entire process will you be able to ensure that your child becomes a good reader” (Copperman 5).

He also says that if you read your child books without happy endings, your child will hate to read.

I don't recommend this book, unless you're writing a dissertation about guilting people into reading to their children.

Reconsidering Read-Aloud
Mary Lee Hahn

This book is written from the traditional elementary/junior high perspective.

**Oh, I'm sorry, that was just the weirdest thing ever. I think we were just the victims of a drive-by...a drive-by visitation. Honestly, the people from the church we've been visiting just threw some cookies at us and ran. They didn't even shake our hands. They didn't even come in when we invited them in. They left their car running. That's so weird.**

Anyway, Reconsidering Read-Aloud talks about the "magic" of time spent reading aloud. Sounds pretty good to me though, of course, I already knew all that.

The Mozart Effect for Children: Awakening Your Child's Mind, Health, and Creativity with Music
Don Campbell

I thought I was going to love this book, but I really, really don't. Basically, classical music has been shown to help kids concentrate/raise IQ/so on and so forth. This says to listen to good music with your kid, dance, let your kid see you enjoy music. Yeah, I know that. What else is new?

How to Talk so Kids Can Learn: At Home and In School
Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

**Sorry, interrupted again. Reliant Energy knocking at our door this time. We switched**

Anyway, I LOVED this book. I highly recommend this to all parents, teachers, grandparents, uncles, and aunts (and anyone else). It talks about how to talk to children while acknowledging their feelings. It's a GREAT book!

I'd post more but, believe it or not, our doorbell rang again.

Clinical Study Results

An independent study was recently conducted regarding neurdevelopmental programs, specifically the one at the Family Hope Center.

You can read about the results here:

Summary of Results

Children in programs like these made up to 300% more progress compared to children in traditional therapies...that's REALLY significant!

If you really like to read scientific study reports, you can view it here:

Results of Study

The results just helped to convince us that we're doing the right thing with his program. Actually, we're doing the traditional therapy AND a neurodevelopmental program so...maybe he'll made 400% the progress? Let's hope so!

Confession

Okay, I have a confession to make.

I sometimes cheat Timothy out of the ending of books.

Like this week, we've been reading Frankenstein. I've never read it before and I've never seen the movie, so I didn't know how it ended. We spent 2 days reading it and only had 2 chapters left when he went down for a nap. So, while he slept, I finished the book...the suspense was killing me!

When he woke up, I had finished the book and I started reading a new book. I didn't think he was following the story line of Frankenstein or anything...he's only a year old. Reading is reading - it's just about hearing words (I thought).

Well, he went over to his bookshelf and I *thought* he was taking down his Quincy doll, but instead he took down Frankenstein and brought it to me, placing it in my lap.

hahahahaha

Sorry! So, I read him the end of Frankenstein.

Kids are RESILIENT

We're back from the ER. I was hoping the triage nurse would send us home, but he didn't so we had to wait another hour.

He's fine - just a big knot on his head. Kids are resilient, the doctor said.

If we fell onto a ceramic tile floor from 2 feet, it would not be good.

*Sigh* and he's not even walking yet.

Fall - Horrified - ER?

Timothy and daddy were both in the bath and I was sitting in the bathroom reading a book out loud. Timothy was playing, then all of a sudden he grabbed the edge of the bathtub, used his arms to support all of his weight to push up, and then flipped over the edge and hit his head on the tile floor. He landed right on his head.

He screamed for a long time and now he's sort of in a daze. I called his pediatrician and they're going to call us back within minutes.

The suspense is killing me - we're all packed and ready to go if they tell us to. He hit his head HARD - I feel so bad for him. We were both right there...we had no idea he could do that.

If you DON'T hear from me, it means we're at the ER

Maria

Timothy played with Maria today while I went into the college to get started on my syllabus, schedule, move offices, etc. He had a really nice day!!

His aunt got him a bounce house and Maria said all day he crawled in and out, in and out, in and out. He won't crawl through the big crawl hole, either...he only wants to squeeze through the tiny holes.

I let him crawl around outside when I got home today, and he picked up a worm and tried to eat it. I told him "No" and he put it down. Wow!! I'll enjoy that while it lasts!

Reading

We just finished 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. It was a really good read - daddy and I alternated reading it to Timothy. When's the last time your family enjoyed a good book together? I highly recommend it - it's a lot of fun for us. Quite refreshing.

**By the way, 20,000 Leagues is actually about a submarine. I really did not know that. I was under the impression that it was going to be about a whale, but I guess I'm just so familiar with Moby Dick from my education. 20,000 Leagues is much more entertaining than Moby Dick.

We go to the library about twice a week. Last week, we got the book on tape William Faulkner reads William Faulkner...I do NOT recommend this. It was SO boring!

Last week, we also read the book Math Curse (I don't know the author). It was a comedic book about horrors of math, written from the perspective of a math-terrified child. When we went to the library today, Timothy remembered where we got that book from and wanted to read it again. We normally get a couple different pictures books, and at least one book in Spanish for Maria to read to Timothy while she's here.

What will we read next? Um, it won't be Moby Dick.

Healthy Pumpkin Yum Yum Balls

Oatmeal, whole wheat flour, wheat germ, organic applesauce, pureed squash, pumpkin, cod liver oil, egg, nutritional yeast = Healthy yum yum balls

I made up the recipe.

Does Timothy like them? Well, he eats them so I guess so.

Daddy doesn't like them and I won't try them. Pop said they taste like plastic.

Around Kids

Yesterday, I took Timothy into the church lobby because he was a little upset in church. A couple rooms down, some children were playing and you could hear them probably a mile away. I put Timothy down, and he crawled the other direction. Now, those kids were WILD and I probably would have crawled the other direction, too, but it just made me sad that Timothy didn't go towards the sound of children playing.

He hates the church nursery, the one time he's even around kids.

We've tried and tried to find some way to get him around some other children. We called 6 gyms in the area, and we found one that starts the kids at 18 months (good), but that's not for another 5 months. We called dance studios and we found one that takes them at 2 years, but that's not for another year. We called the Children's Museum the next town over and they don't have the preschool playgroup there anymore. We called our local library and they're going to have a children's story time, but they don't know when. We called Kindermusik and they don't have any classes in the area.

*sigh*

The Dallas Arboretum has toddler days on Monday and Tuesdays, so we are thinking about doing that once a week. They have art classes, movement classes, and Kindermusik classes. BUT it would mean driving all the way to Dallas once a week, and I'm not sure we could do that. It is pretty, though.

It's so hard to try to always make the "right" decision!

Not Lacking any Groceries

Well, tonight we took Timothy to church. So far, very few people have introduced themselves to us at this new church. Today, we were so excited when an older man came up and talked to us!

However, we were a little confused when he said "Well, that baby doesn't look like he's lacking any groceries!" hahahaha Thank you? I don't know what the correct response to that one is.

We took Timothy into church with us and, as expected, he threw a big fit. We had to leave early.

That's what happens when he misses an afternoon nap...

Brain Injury, Program, and Thoughts

As Timothy took a nap, Daddy and I talked about his brain injury and the prospect of getting another evaluation to see the progress we've made.

Our hearts were both very heavy, though, as we had this discussion.

Timothy's hurt. We both know it...we both see evidence of it everyday. Timothy has vision problems - as Donna told us 3 months ago, he won't be able to stack blocks because he can't see well enough to stack blocks. Timothy still has some social issues. He still has some problems processing sounds. He's made lots of progress, but he's still hurt.

It's been almost 3 months since we had his evaluation, and it's been hard. Doing his program has been difficult at times, but one thing that's bothered us most of all is that we sometimes feel like we're fighting against our extended family rather than working with them.

I don't know how many times I've heard the phrase "Oh, I don't think anything's wrong with him..." and, honestly, it hurts. I don't want to believe there's anything wrong with Timothy, either, but love isn't seeing a child as perfect. Rather, love is seeing a child as he is and helping him become perfect. Love is accepting Timothy for the problems he has an loving him regardless, while at the same time praying and working with him to resolve those problems.

I am certain that God purposefully gave us Timothy. God gave us the drive to search for information to help our son develop. God led us to the information we needed to help Timothy, and the people to guide us on our neurodevelopmental program. We're not going to sit around and watch Timothy struggle in early life, and then watch him be put into a "special" class at school, and then watch him have problems learning and socializing. We're fighting for him, and we'll always fight for him to have every opportunity imaginable. Helping to make Timothy well has taught us some much about perseverance, about endurance. It's given us more patience and dedication and love than we thought possible. It's done good things for our family. I'm almost grateful that Timothy has problems because it's pulled the three of us closer together to fix them and, later, we will never take his special accomplishments for granted. We'll know that we worked hard for Timothy's wellness, and every accomplishment is a miracle from God.

Yes, Timothy has a brain injury. We're not ashamed of that, and we hope no one else is, either.

Nursery

When Timothy was in the womb, I read aloud several slave narratives. I think he remembers them, because today he perfectly dramatized the heart-wrenching scene of child being torn away from his mother, cluthing mother's shirt, screaming, crying, pleading, reaching. Honestly, it was ridiculous! He did NOT want to go into the church nursery.

Of course, they have him in the baby classroom and there are 2 exersaucers and a swing for him to be put into (and that's it).

Daddy checked on him 15 minutes later and they had taken him to another classroom. As soon as he left that one room, he was fine. They took him to the older kids class to see a puppet show and sing songs and he really liked that, but the older kids are MUCH older and they'll run over Timothy if we leave him there.

He hates that room. Aside from taking him into church with us (which, we suspect, he would equally hate) we don't know what to do.

Clapping and Peek a Boo

After Timothy took his applesauce juice bath, he took a bath in WATER. Then, we played in the playroom for a little while.

As you can see, he now wants us to clap for EVERYTHING. He eats one pea and then wants us to clap for him. He knocks down blocks and then wants us to clap for him. He moves one block and then wants us to clap for him.

And we do it.

Applesauce juice Mess

Well, see, we use these sippy cups with Timothy. They work fine. The problem? He can unscrew them - and does when he's finished.

Yesterday, in the car, we gave him a drink of applesauce juice. He drank some, and then he was finished, so he poured it on himself. He liked it.

We didn't.

But he got to take a bath with his carseat, and he really liked that.

We didn't.

Suffering

After being up from 11-3 in the morning Thursday night while Daddy vomited and Timothy screamed, I thought to myself "How unfair! They both get to have a stomach bug. What about ME??"

Thankfully, I got it too. I was sick last night from 11-4. Thanks for sharing, Daddy and Timothy. I really wanted to see what that stomach bug was like!!

I feel better this morning...just weak.

Just Checking In

We're all still alive here...daddy came home from work early this morning with a stomach bug after being sick all night. Timothy was also up from 11 last night to 3 in the morning.

We're sick, here!

"Don't you be teaching me things I already know"

Just yesterday we pulled out and sorted 50 shiny new custom-made cards for Timothy. He saw them yesterday and today. He refused to look at them at the last "showing" today, so I let him problem-solve. HE KNOWS EVERY SINGLE CARD. I'm not kidding. I sort of wish I were.

He knows the parts of the eye, he knows the Monet paintings, the auto logos, the leaves of trees, the famous buildings and where they're located...wow.

The books say that, eventually, if the child is neurologically well-organized he should be able to see a card one time and know it. We're not there yet. But he's only seen these cards 6 times, which is still pretty impressive to us.

We're just worried because if we're changing out 50 new cards every 2 days we're going to need a LOT of cards. Oh well, though, I guess we'll worry about that when we get there.

And where in the world is my camera cord? I took a picture of Timothy eating his delicious healthy yum-yum balls that I made him but I can't upload them.

Off to switch out cards...

Daddy (and Timothy) are Volunteering

Daddy volunteered to be a neighborhood campaigner for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. It really is a good cause.I was just reading through the material and 87% of children diagnosed with acute lympocytic leukemia will survive with treatment. That's truly good news.

Daddy has been assigned 15 houses next to us to try to raise money at, and he has a very reasonable goal. Plus, he'll get to meet our neighbors!

I guess he and Timothy will do it this weekend--let's hope that they get a good response!!

Books

Today, we met up with daddy's colleague Dennis and ate lunch together. Then, we all went to the big library at the college. Timothy was happy in daddy's arms until Dennis grabbed a book - then Timothy wanted Dennis. Then daddy had a book, so Timothy wanted daddy. It was really fun to see how much our kid likes books.

While we were there, I checked out some books for my dissertation on reading to children. On the way home, I read some aloud and daddy and I discussed it (Timothy just said "circ-stance?" and then fell asleep...I have no idea what he was talking about).

You know, it's hard. We think it's important for a child to love reading and know how to read and appreciate language, but there's so much more we're trying to do with Timothy. We also want him to be superb athletically and mathematically. We want him to have great balance and respiration. And we want him to appreciate art and have perfect pitch and a love for music. And play an instrument. And have a knowledge of biology, science, and physics. And history. And we want him to fluently speak, read, and write in two languages (or three or four). And we want him to be socially knowledgable - we want him to know how to appropriately interact with peers his age and adults. We want to open up as many doors for him as we possibly can.

Is our kid going to be completely superb in all of these things? Nah. But we want to foster and develop his strengths and weaknesses so he can be well-rounded and decide for himself what he wants to do with his life...not have it decided for him because he CAN'T do something.

Some days, we look at each other and say "We're bad parents"...but the reasoning is always something like we forgot to show the math cards the last time, or we didn't get a mile in crawling, or we gave our kids 2 green vegetables in the same day. We both know we're really not.

There's more we could have done with the last year, but we're happy with what we did accomplish. And we have a plan for the future. So, everyday, we do what we can.

NEW cards!

Timtohy has NEW cards today!!

We're doing:
Vegetables
Monet Paintings
Parts of the Eye
Breeds of Hummingbirds
Car Logos (Nissan, Ford)
Tree Leaves
Tools (Pipe Wrench, Adjustable Wrench)
Famous Buildings (White House, Taj Mahal)

He's really excited about them...especially the Eiffel Tower. He just laughs when he sees it, which I think is really funny. It makes me laugh.

Today, we're going to Commerce. Daddy's wanting to start work on a Master's Degree and he has to fill out some paperwork. We don't know if he'll be able to start this semester...he only has 2 weeks to get accepted into the Masters of Business and Technology program before classes start.

AND tonight we plan to take Timothy to a political "crusade". Alan Keyes and Rick Scarborough are speaking. We figured we'd introduce Timothy to politics as much as we can at this age...

Fun, fun.

FEVER

This is Timothy when he was sick last week - this was about 5 mins. before he had his seizure.

I'm glad that's over with...

Square Roots

We're teaching Timothy lots of things. If he remembers them, great, but overall our goal is to increase the speed of the synapses in his brain. The more an individual learns, the more he CAN learn.

I believe in the program, but I wasn't so sure about the whole square roots thing. I thought "I'll believe it when I see it"

Today, I saw it



Some Doman parents will say "Why were you shocked, of course your kid learns what you teach him!" I just don't know any 1 year olds who can do square roots, so this was impressive!!

On to the realm of ALGEBRA!

Video - Creeping and Learning

Timothy really ENJOYS learning

Today, daddy made a new system and we switch out our Hallway cards every 30mins. He really looks forward to going down the hall to see the new cards, and then we leave him in his room to crawl back out (~50-60 feet). He goes "uhuhuhuhuhuh" while he crawls...it's funny.

Here's a video of our system

Little Caterpillar

We had a little green caterpillar in our playroom. I called Timothy and Daddy to come see it.

We were watching it and talking about it when Timothy reached down and smashed it a couple of times.

Daddy: Poor caterpillar!
Mommy: Oh, you killed little caterpillar.
Timothy: Dead?

I guess he knows the meaning of the word. He said "dead" over and over again today.

And the caterpillar miraculously survived the beating - he's still in our playroom.

First STEP

Today, daddy's launched a massive creeping and intellectual program...Timothy's seen 60 different Bits of Intelligence about 4x each today and he's already met his daily creeping goal, but daddy still has him creeping. He's seen about 30 words, too.

I took a video of what they were doing and then, just as I was putting the camera down, Timothy stood up and took one step.

I couldn't read his mind, but he looked down and I *think* he was thinking this: "What the heck am I doing? I don't WALK! Silly me, I must have forgotten" and then he sat down and crawled where he was wanting to go.

We made a big deal out of it, "Horray, you took a step!!"...but he really didn't care.

He's still creepy crawly, though.

Na Na? = I want my cd

When daddy got home (late) last night, he put Timothy in his high chair while I finished dinner. Timothy looked at him and said "na na?" David said "Yeah, na na." Then Timothy said "na NA!" David thought it was cute - he didn't *get* that Timothy was asking for his CD. So we put his CD on and Timothy was happy.

It is an annoying CD, though.

Daddy's getting out the steam cleaner to get Timothy to crawl to it...our baby loves vacuums!!

Gentle Revolution Sale

Having kids?

I got this email, and GentleRevolution is having a pretty incredible sale on a kit - this is a perfect "getting started" kit. I thought I'd post it with the discount code for anyone who might be pregnant or having kids soon.

www.gentlerevolution.com
LIMITED QUANTITIES AVAILABLE.
This unique offering includes:• Hardcover book—How To Multiply Your Baby's Intelligence by Glenn and Janet Doman (revised and updated).• Reading cards—30 red, large-print, single word cards.• Math Dot Cards®—quantities 1 to 30.• Insects BIT OF INTELLIGENCE® card set—ten beautifully illustrated cards, with ten facts on the back of each.• Birds of Prey BIT OF INTELLIGENCE® card set—ten beautifully illustrated cards, with ten facts on the back of each.
Discount price of $25 (I calculate that it's about $80-90 worth)
Use code AU07 for discount

Na na na

Sorry, it's been a crazy couple of days. We took Timothy and his cousin to the zoo, and then we had Elizabeth's birthday party, and then we went to a baptism, so it's been a little chaotic. I'm glad things are back to normal...sort of. They'll be better when school starts back August 27th.

This moring, while Timothy was eating breakfast, I showed him his meal cards (we keep these in the kitchen and only show them at meals) and then I tried to read him a book of parables. It was hard to eat cereal AND read at the same time, so I put on the cd that goes with the little book. It has a story and then a song and then another story and then a song...so on and so forth.

The songs are really terrible, but Timothy liked them. One song said something like Faith as small as a mustard seed na na na nana nana. Timothy started singing along saying na na na na na - it was SO cute!!!

Timothy Loves HIs Toys

Someone asked "Did Timothy like his toys?"

Well, the first thing he opened was his animal train and then he was playing with that so he wouldn't open anything else (despite daddy and I opening and saying things like "I can not believe it!! Blue jean shorts!!". Yeah, he wasn't falling for that.

Then, he just played with his old toys while the shiny new toys sat there. Then, he went over to his toys and we were really thrilled that he was going to play with them.













He really liked his awesome step stool (cleverly disguised as a box of diapers). He's been wanting up on that chair (cleverly disguised as a toy box) and now he has a way to get up there.

But, seriously, he played with the animal train, played with some drums and rolled them all over the place, then he took his Noah's Ark (still in the box) and pushed it under the office bed. Then we took a bath with his water toys and then when he was crawling back he pulled out his Noah's Ark (apparently he was hiding it from us). Then he "fixed" the tv by repeatedly hitting it with a hammer.

He wore some of his new clothes to church on Sunday.

He loves all the stuff he got!

Today, he's not really playing with anything. We're just letting him chill, see some words, listen to some sounds, and hang out.

I really hate Motrin

Timothy's fever update:

Before bed last night: 100.8
Middle of the night: 96.6
This morning: 99.9

I'm going to talk to the doctor about stopping the motrin and only giving Tylenol. Six months ago when he would scream in the middle of the night all the time, we realized it was from the Motrin. One night we ran out of Motrin and decided not to go to the store to get more, and he slept through the night. The next night, we bought more Motrin and he screamed in the middle of the night again. So we took him off the Motrin and he didn't scream in the middle of the night until last night, when he was on Motrin again. Screaming is better than fever, but he certainly wasn't too happy.

Fever Update

Timothy's fever is "down" to 99.9. He's acting much better, also. We just have to keep giving him motrin AND tylenol (together) to keep his fever down so he doesn't have another seizure.

Last week we went to the doctor for his well-baby visit. The nurse had this list of developmental questions to ask us.

Here's a transcript:

Nurse: Does he walk?
Us: No.
Nurse: Does he play So Big?
Us: No...What's So Big?
Nurse: Does he roll his hands with patty cake?
Us: You roll your hands in patty cake? I thought you just clapped and talked about bread or biscuits or something.
Nurse: Does he help put on and take off his clothes?
Us: No.

So, when the doctor came in we were a little concerned that we answered "No" to every developmental question. Daddy asked "Is he really behind in everything?"

The doctor's answer was no, quite the contrary. Apparently, taking off his socks is all he's supposed to be doing dress-wise at this age (and he does on the few occasions he wears socks). I still don't know what so-big is, and the doctor said signing is better than patty cake anyway.

Then we came to the walking issue.

The doctor watched Timothy stand up and balance and sort of bob up and down. He was really impressed. He said:

Do not, do not, do not worry that he's not walking. I know this sounds crazy, but I've seen kids who started walking at 8 months who turned out to be clueless, and I've seen kids who didn't walk until 15/16 months who were gifted. I can't explain it, but I've seen it.

Actually, I didn't think he was crazy - that makes sense to me.

Anyway, he was astounded by Timothy's balance. He said most kids his age do a "drunk walk" and are really shaky when they stand there. So, that's good. I still firmly believe that Timothy will stand up in the middle of the room and walk when he's ready.

ALSO last time the speech therapist was here I was talking to her about an article I read. It said that twisty/crazy straws are good for speech development. She said this was true but Timothy wouldn't be able to drink through a straw until about 2 and he wouldn't be developmentally capable of doing a twisty straw until about 3.

So, yeah, last week I taught him how to drink through a straw in like 15 minutes. We bought twisty straws at the dollar store and he's drinking through them just fine.

Don't tell me that my kid can't do something...

Timothy's First Seizure

Well, today Timothy's fever spiked at 104.7 and it caused him to have a seizure. It was scary, to stay the least.

The doctor saw him and ran bloodwork and he has some ulcers in his throat, so we put him on antibiodics "just in case" - last week the doctor told us that antibiodics cause hearing loss, so I'm worried, but we certainly don't want him to have a seizure again.

It's hard for me to believe that a child can seize with no permanent damange, but the doctor said it doesn't hurt anything.

Blockbuster

I am just *so so* thrilled that Timothy's starting to make connections.

He's still really fussy and irritable because of those ears, so we took him on a ride today to try to get him to sleep. He wouldn't go down, so we went to Blockbuster. We walked in right behind two little boys, and David was carrying Timothy. I heard a child say "movie" and I didn't think anything of it, until David turned around and said "Did you just hear him? Did you just hear him?" I thought it was one of the little boys who had said it but it was our TIMOTHY! He knows we get books at the library and he knows we get movies at Blockbuster!!

As everyone knows, yesterday Timothy called his daddy an idiot. As David walked up to the car, Timothy laughed at him.
Me: He's laughing at you like you're an idiot.
Daddy: I guess I'm the village idiot.
From the backseat, a tiny voice says: Itit?
We're laughing so hard, and then we hear: Iditit? Itit? Ididit?

Timothy kept on saying it over and over because we were laughing so hard.

Hey, I'm just glad he's talking, regardless of what he says!!

And I could try to exlain this picture, but I think it speaks for itself





That's the Spanish-version of Sesame street playing...Plazo Sesamo. He put it on for himself.

And we took TONS of pictures

In the Party Room