5 month update

April 2009

Back in December

It's been 5 months since we received Timothy and he's now 19 months old.

His favorite toys - any type of ball - he likes to gather as many in his arms as possible and let them free. His next choice would be to walk and run down the sidewalks of our street in his walker, with frequent stops to look at birds, trees, grass or sticks. We stop quite a bit.

He seems to understand so much English and will actually do what you ask most times. He's also starting to sign his needs to us - such as drink.

We've started to work on transitions between activities - when we first started doing clean up before we brought him upstairs to play, bath and sleep he would cry and try to stop us. It took about three nights. Then he pointed out a ball that Greg had forgotten to put away (mind you, did not bring it over himself) and now will just wait by the stairs for us (we let him climb the stairs at night). He kisses us - everytime we kiss each other and before he goes to sleep at night. I love that so much.

His favorite food is watermelon and would eat an entire one each night if we let him. We are starting to try to get him to drink from special cups with, sigh, little success but we are still working on it.

The speech therapist told us to remind him whenever he is drooling and close his mouth - which he doesn't really appreciate but is starting, finally, to close his mouth (due to the surgeries and the scar tissue formed, he doesn't have as much sensitivity in his lips as we do). We still have plenty of drool though. If you don't see him with a bib in a picture it's because we wanted to take one without it for a few minutes, not because he doesn't need one anymore.

We have only occasional success getting him to say the "m" sound. In fact, he's kinda regressed a little bit, which is normal. He's learning new signs all the time. The latest are "please" and "bear".

He's started to walk in little circles continuously, very strange but he thinks it's funny.

Still continues to be a big cuddlebug, loves loves loves to be held, lucky for us because we love to hold him.

We've let him start eating from a bowl and plate on his tray and it's working very well. He gets very bored when eating so this gives him something to occupy his attention.