But! I’m not nauseous and I am eating, so those are good things.

Eli’s favorite part of riding his bike is ringing the bell.  It took him a little while to figure out how it worked.  Andy would help him by holding Eli’s finger and showing him how to do it.  So now Eli’s thinks that the right way to ring the bell is to take someone’s finger and use it to ring the bell, because that’s what he was taught!

Eli’s first bike!  He can’t reach the petals, but Daddy helps him.

Me, March 1st, 2010.  18 weeks and 5 days pregnant with Baby #1

PS: I changed the y-axis on this graph so it can be used for the next 24 weeks.  Last week’s was too limiting.

One of Eli’s bookshelves is on top of his dresser. I was holding him up to it to pick out a book. In an effort to help him talk, I pointed to the spine of a book and said “book”. I did this three more times to three other books. There were about 25 books. When I was done Eli pointed to the EXACT SAME four books. He didn’t try to say anything, but he paused in between each point the same way I did. I wasn’t pointing to special books, I’m really impressed he remembered all four!

Andy was putting Eli to bed and Eli indicated that he wanted some milk. Andy said ok and the two of them started walking down the hall. Andy headed to the kitchen and Eli entered the living room, which we use as his play room. There were toys all over the floor. Andy started telling Eli that it wasn’t playtime and there were just out here to get milk. Eli ignored Andy and seemed to be looking for a toy. Before Andy could do anything, Eli reached down and picked up his sippy cup of milk from dinner. Then he took his cup and headed back to this bedroom, ignoring all the toys.

When Eli wants something he grabs my (or Andy’s) finger and tugs me towards what he wants. If I resist he makes a noise of frustration, lets go of that finger and grabs one on my other hand. When we do go with him (which is almost all the time), he will place our hand directly on whatever he wants, in the fashion that he thinks it should fit. He’s nearly broken my fingers a few times shoving them into the handle on the fridge door.

Eli is fascinated by brushing teeth. He’ll patiently watch me brush my teeth. Then he’ll hold his mouth open while I brush his teeth (for the amount of time it takes to sing the alphabet song, we’re suppose to sing it twice through but that’s too long right now). When we’re done he wants to hold the toothbrush and pretend to brush his teeth. At the end of the day I usually have to search the living room for the toothbrush he spent much of the morning playing with.

Eli is learning how to flush the toilet and is getting an idea about how grown-ups use the toilet and toilet paper and all that. One day I heard Andy and Eli in the bathroom and Andy was saying “push! push! harder!”. I was quite confused until I heard the toilet flush and Andy cheer for Eli. You do have to push the handle pretty hard when you’re a little kid!

Eli loves getting kissed and thinks it very funny.  If I come at him with an exaggerated kissy face he will smile real big and slowly lean towards me.  Once I kiss him he pulls away and giggles in delight.  This is pretty awesome

She gave me some tips to help him talk.  A lot of things she mentioned that she saw I was doing already – getting down on his level to talk to him, talking a lot, reading, identifying objects, etc.  It was validating to have the specialist note that I was doing great things to help him.  She suggested I change one thing, though. I currently talk to Eli in full sentences with proper (to the extent that I care) grammar.  I will say to him “It’s time to go, Eli. Let’s put on your shoes”.  He understands and obeys me (he’ll find his shoes and sit down for me to put them on).  But even though he understands the full sentence, it’s too many words for him to repeat.  She recommends I say “Go! Shoes!” instead.  She acknowledged that this will feel like a step backwards since he understands the full sentence, but saying fewer word will help him focus on words to repeat.

She also recommended that we push him a little more to talk.  For example, if it’s snack time I’ll ask him “cracker?”, wait 5-10 seconds hoping he repeats it back, I repeat “cracker?”, repeat the short wait, and then give him the cracker while saying “cracker”.  Thankfully, she acknowledged that I’m not expected to do this all day long because it would be exhausting and frustrating.  She recommended that I pick two times during the day to really focus on his speech, and then just relax and play the rest of the day.

The evaluation was a brief questionnaire.  She said that if I wanted I could request the full evaluation.  I don’t think that’s necessary, I think the questionnaire accurately represented Eli’s abilities.  I haven’t had a chance to talk to Andy about this yet so there might be another evaluation.  The specialist recommended that we work on the things she suggested and reevaluate in four months.  I told her four months was too long and I’d be more comfortable with two months.  She was fine with that and told me I could call her for another evaluation whenever I wanted.  That (2 months) might be our plan of action.  I haven’t had a chance to talk to Andy yet (he’s working but I wanted to blog about this as soon as possible so I didn’t forget the details).  We still have the option of a speech therapist at Mayo if we’re not comfortable working on our own and waiting.

The questionnaire covered the other four areas of development.  Eli got the maximum score possible in gross motor and fine motor skills and scored smack dab in the middle of normal for problem solving and personal/social.