A Proud Parenting Moment

I put Howie in his crib for a nap on Monday afternoon, and it seemed like he was pretty lively, so I wasn't sure that he was going to fall asleep easily. I went off to read or clean up or whatever I do during his naptimes (honestly, I'm not even sure usually... I am the queen of putzing). I heard him chattering and then heard the tell-tale THUNK that is his paci falling out of his crib. When you hear the thunk, you can choose to ignore it, but until you go in there and replace that paci, Howie's not going to fall asleep and will usually make enough noise to force your hand into responding to the thunk. So I went into this room to do my thunk duty, thinking all the way that he was awfully cheery and not sounding very sleepy.

Actually, I think I need to give some background for you to fully appreciate the weight of this particular paci replacing trip. Howie went to the physical therapy evaluation last Thursday, and the therapist did several different tests with him. First Howie thought Kate (the therapist) was pretty cool with her slick toys, but as time went on, his opinion of her severely deteriorated. Anyway, we got through the different tests and Kate said that many of his skills were at the level of a 7 month old, and he had a couple of skills at the level of an 11 month old, so in some areas he's pretty behind. Howie was much better extending his back and leg muscles than flexing his trunk muscles, which can explain why he never learned how to sit up when he was lying down and also has never crawled, which requires a lot of flexion. Anyway, that's the basic story. She sent us home with lots of exercises to work on, and we're going to meet with her every other week (Howie will be thrilled). So we've spent a good bit of time since then working with Howie, and by Sunday he had already learned how to push himself into sitting up from lying down flat!! We were so proud and excited for him- now he's able to have more control and doesn't have to rely on us quite as much. Next stop is crawling... we've got a long way to go...

Anyway, back to the paci thunk... I went back to his room, cracked the door so I could see what he was doing before he saw me, and he was STANDING IN HIS CRIB!! That was the first time I had ever seen him do that!! I was sooooo happy for him. He was very happy for himself, too. He was just standing there jabbering and started laughing when he saw me. Since then he's been standing in his crib during naptime and hasn't yet figured out how to lay back down, but the disrupted naptimes are actually wonderful- I'm so thankful that he's passed this milestone. Hooray for Howie!! Hopefully we'll have news of more progress soon!