Had a great summer - except for surgery!

Andrew and Matt try to work out energy before the big drive to Nova Scotia

Timothy and Carter at the Aquarium

Note the bottom lipI don't trust you anymore

Wish I had gotten a picture of his look of surprise

With neighbors Mike and Jakey

Girls really dig me

This will be a long post given it's been a number of weeks since I last posted.

Timothy is now doing well recovering from his surgery. It took him longer than expected to get back to his old cheerful self. He had about two weeks of being demanding, irritable and with a borderline fever. That's all behind us now. He was drooling for a bit, lots, just like when we came back from China so we've had to remind him and he's back to where he was before drooling only when intensely involved in a toy.

Lesley, our ST thought he may regress and lose some of the words he's learned. That has not turned out to be the case and he's even trying to say new words. It's still not easy for him as he needs to motor plan many of the things he says and that takes a few seconds. He can say the "o" sound and that is the sound he uses when trying to say "open" or "on" or "off" - he can get the second consonant sound usually enough for us to tell us what's he trying to say as in "boom" but he cannot say the first consonant of a word, for example "mom" sounds like "om". We've been practicing as this is not a word he says without prompting but he's getting better at it and it is taking him less time to motor plan the word. Since we've been working on it he holds the last "m" for a long time trying to make the word sound correct. He tries so hard! He can get discouraged as he knows he is not saying it correctly. We give him lots of props for trying.

He can do a somersault now as well as climb up our slide by himself and climb up the ladder at the gym where he takes a gymnastic class. I love this class but it's been me chasing him around for 45 minutes, and all of the little kids do this to some extent. But they've gotten better since the class began about 8 weeks ago. Now the kids are able to stay still when the teacher is explaining the safety rules. Most of the kids aren't able to do many of the skills but it's been fun to see them trying. And that's why we think Timothy has been able to do the somersault. He is quite proud of himself for this accomplishment.

We took T to our county fair just a few blocks down the street from us and he was less than thrilled to ride the rides. This is our fault though as I tried to put him on his first ride by himself, on "willie the whale" when he either cried or tried to find a way out the entire time, it was so wrong. I tried to put him on one of the animals on the Merry-Go-Round - forget it. He would only sit on my lap - not even next to me. This remained true for the little train. Even though his little friend Carter rode the pony he wanted nothing to do with it! He liked the giant slide with his Dad but was a little scared too. He did like the soft serve afterwards however.

He starts a Parents Day Out program in September one day a week for a few hours. I'm so happy he'll be around other kids and the structured environment with other kids will be great for him. It's going to be hard on both Timothy and I that first day but I know he'll eventually love it. We are also doing a Kindermusik class every Wednesday. I don't want to be as bored as I was last winter so I'm trying to keep us a little busier and we won't need (hopefully) to go to as many doctor appointments since his surgeries should be done and he'll be caught up in all of his vaccinations.

He's still a little guy in the 5th percentile for height (but at least he's on the charts now), tenth % for weight. He gotten a lot pickier about food since the surgery and will hardly eat meat any more. He's growing a lot more teeth.