Nearly Crawling

At 8 months, Addie is nearly crawling. Tonight after getting her all ready for bed, she protested at the highest volume possible, making it impossible to put both kids to bed in the same room. So I brought her back to our room to nurse and snuggle until Ryan had Dylan settled. Addie had other plans for our mommy-daughter date. She was going to show me her new tricks. At first she cooed and tried her best to clap her hands (still a ways away on that skill). But then then her BIG tricks came out. She was rocking and rolling and showing off. See the video for a peek.

And yes, Dylan came back into our room to watch Addie's show and tell. It was a family event. Nevermind that everyone is tired and NOBODY was in bed yet.

3 months

Addie is just about 3 months old now. She's changed in the past week, I've noticed. She likes constant movement and went from dislike of the swing to total contentment in them. Thank goodness we now have one upstairs and one downstairs for her.

She found her hands and loves to suck on them.

She likes to hold my fingers while she falls asleep.

She loves being in the bathtub. Smiles, coos, and has learned how to kick her legs to push off the tub wall when I'm holding her so she can 'swim' across the tub while I hold onto her. She was proud of herself yesterday when she figured that trick out, practicing for at least 30 minutes at it!

She doesn't like a lot of noise. In fact, she prefers a quiet room with just one or two people around. If we are in the car, she seems to like the Dixie Chicks and her hanging turtle toy to look at.

She has had a lot of gassiness and constipation, which causes her great discomfort, but we are working on it and I think today I learned a few new tricks to help her out. If nothing else, she's always happy when I put her in a warm bath.

Update: 2 Months

Addie had her 2 month checkup and shots today. First the stats:
Weight 8#, 6oz (5th percentile)
Height 22.25" (50th percentile)
Head circumference 37cm (5th percentile)

What does that all mean? Well, her weight is on the low end, especially since she's moving down from the curve she was following in previous visits.
The pediatrician suggested supplementing a little and see how that goes. We have a scale thankfully here at home, so we can monitor her progress and make adjustments as needed. The usual trend is to see about a 1/2 to a full ounce of weight gain a day for her age. So I'm going to shoot for that, if possible.

And the doctor mentioned slight concern for Addie's high tone, which she described as at the upper end of normal. So we need to keep an eye on that in the next few months. As an OT, of course now my radar is on high alert. Not good for the 'ol anxiety, to be honest. But I'm going to try to trust Ryan's gut instinct that she's fine, just on the 'high end of NORMAL' like he keeps reminding me.

Also, the doc took a quick peek at Dylan's scar on his nose and said it looks like it's healing nicely. So maybe that vitamin E did some good, eh?

We've been getting a few more smiles each day now from little Addie. I think we've seen a handful of them by now and Ryan and I still beam like we just won the lottery when we catch one. She's a sweetie, for certain.
But after those shots, I doubt we'll be getting too many more of those smiles tonight... Poor bug.

Bursting With Words

Again, looking at last year's calendar, I noticed that Dylan had spoken his first 3 word sentence just around his second birthday: "Water Truck Out" in reference to the firemen around the corner with their firetrucks one morning, practicing some water drill of sorts. Firetrucks and little boys = something worthy of a first real sentence.

And now, at 2 1/2, he's bursting with new words everyday. Just about a month ago, Dylan was saying 3-4 word sentences.

Tonight we counted one of his sentences: SEVEN words! Go Dylan!

And to think just a year ago, I asked my Speech Therapist friend if she thought Dylan was delayed at all...

Time-outs

Here is our little man in a time out, kitchen-corner style.

And here is what we found the other night, carefully placed in a time out of it's own: His MACK truck. And when I asked if his Mack could come out of time-out, he readily agreed, telling him "all done time-out, Mack" like a little boy who clearly understands the routine. I have no idea what Mack did to earn his spot in the corner, but I'm sure it made perfect sense to Dylan at the time.

The funny part was when we turned around a few minutes later to find this one. I guess his Lightening McQueen deserved one too!

"ABB's"

Dylan is very interested in letters. He loves his "ABB's" as he calls them. I found an alphabet wood puzzle for $1.50 last week and it's been one of his favorite activities since then. He knows nearly all of the letters, often surprising me with his verbal identification as he puts the pieces in their correct spots. He even has his favorite letters: the letters B, W, D (for Dylan), and A. I've told him that M is for Mommy and he often calls that one "Mommy!"
I'm working on getting him to sing the ABC Song with me, and he tries his best, but still struggles to put the letters together fast enough.

Place cells

Dylan has great place cells. These are neurons in the hippocampus that fire when an animal (or person) is in a specific spatial environment. We've noticed some things recently that have astounded us:

1) Dylan knows when we are close to Taco Bell when we are driving around town, and will say his word for taco, which is "pow-k," (over and over) to indicate his desire for a tasty, nutritious dog-meat taco. Yeah, you know your family is eating WAY too much Taco Bell when your two-year-old can identify the streets around the local drive-thru.

2) He knows when we are even remotely close to a certain tunnel on the 710 freeway here in LA. We sometimes honk the horn when we are going through it, so he yells "beep, beep!" when he senses we are near it.

3) This one is cool. We go for walks in our neighborhood sometimes, and they are often quite long and take us over 2 miles from our house and often end when it is pretty dark out. On our way back, when we are still many blocks away and have several left and right turns to go before we get home, we will be very upset if we turn in any direction away from home.

The other thing he can do, though not exactly a spatial awareness task, is he can recognize any Volkswagen on the road. At first we though he was just recognizing the shape and pattern of the logo on the front of the car, but he can recognize it just by the shapes and contours of the metal (we know this because he has often pointed out a Jetta or Passat - being those are the cars we have - when the logo is covered by another car on the road). When he sees a VW, he declares "a-daddy," indicating for us that there is a daddy-car until we acknowledge this fact for him. It's pretty remarkable.

I'm sure you have gathered by now that this is being written by the resident nerd, err, neuroscientist in the family. Aren't kids amazing!?