Henry Reaches New Heights

On Thursday, Henry learned how to make a fishy face. In the morning, I observed him sucking in his cheeks. In the afternoon, he did it again and also responded to us making fishy faces back at him. Selah, his new occupational therapist, came in the afternoon. Henry has done well pulling things out of containers, so we are now working on putting things in containers. He was more interested, however, in closing the container than putting objects in it. The appointment with Selah went well, but as usual, he was fairly reserved for a little while, observing her, as he often does with people whom he does not know well. At first, she was concerned because he was so quiet and asked if he knew how to make noises. We assured her that he has no problems making noises. What else? My mom came over in the afternoon, and my dad came over in the evening. I think that was about it.

On Friday, Veronica said that Henry had figured out how to cruise the furniture. He pulled himself up on the museum bench and figured out how to turn around the corner of it. Later, I was sitting on the steps leading into our living room talking with Veronica. Henry crawled from where he was sitting with Veronica to me. As I talked with her, he played at the steps. And, he figured out how to get up the first one by himself. Veronica was stunned. She said that she figured that it would be a month before he figured it out. She thinks that he's a baby genius because of his problem solving abilities. She said that even when he wasn't crawling, he'd figure out ways to get from A to B. Or, if he wanted an object, he quickly learned that if the object was on a blanket, he could just pull the blanket toward him. Before Veronica left, Henry repeated his step climbing abilities, this time making it up both steps by himself.

Tara came in the afternoon, during which time we also met with Shirley, Henry's new physical therapist. Having read Henry's file, Shirley wasn't expecting to see Henry look as good as he does. Our assignment from Shirley is to work with Henry on balance shifting and reaching for objects on the floor from the standing position (balanced of course against something like the bench). Shirley seems very nice. Tara is looking for a speech pathologist to do an evaluation on Henry. We don't anticipate any problems in the speech department at this point in time. But, as always, we want evaluations done, as we believe strongly in prevention. After Shirley left, we went through some questions with Tara. On some skills, Henry is pushing toward the 12 months bubble, which is great. Jeff and I are thrilled that he is meeting (or surpassing) the milestones for his adjusted age.

We went for a walk in the late afternoon/early evening. We met a new neighbor, Kim, who has a big puppy. Roger had fun with the puppy. Marley reprized her role as the most crotchety three-year old on the planet. She isn't a fan of other dogs, especially vivacious puppies. We also ran into some other neighbors, whom we don't see very often. Henry gave them a thorough looking over.






We came back and sat on our patio. By 7:30PM, Henry was becoming very fussy. So I got him a bottle, and Jeff took him to bed, while I fixed dinner. His evening fussiness is usually a sign that he's tired. Now that he is so incredibly active during the day, he truly needs his beauty rest, which means that he's no longer staying up until 10PM. By 7PM, we can see the signs that it is time to hit the hay. His pattern now seems to involve some type of early morning feeding (somewhere between 2-4AM), but he does go back to bed afterward. I've been trying to make his bedtime bottle mainly breast milk, because his reflux is minimized with it. That does, however, mean that it empties more quickly from the stomach, which results in him being more likely to get hungry in the middle of the night.

Other news. We are continuing to give Henry goat's milk in small quantities. We gave him another ounce today (day 3). So far, so good. He seems to like it (or at least not dislike it). We haven't detected any signs yet of allergies. If we can make it a couple more days, we'll start increasing his intake little by little. There seems to be a fine line between having an allergy and having a food intolerance. If we see evidence of either, we'll stop giving the goat's milk. It does have casein in it; we are just hoping that the form of casein is different enough from cow's milk that it won't have the same problematic outcomes for Henry as the cow's milk has. And, I have stopped eating soy products (sigh) and haven't had much dairy either (trace amounts of cheese). If we can make it to Wednesday without any problems, we'll probably start giving Henry some probiotics and see if that helps his digestive system.