Stair Master

Last Friday Henry had an appointment with the physical therapist Shirley. She brought a basket full of balls to play with. She has been encouraging him to throw balls and he has sportingly obliged. He now is getting dangerous, chucking balls and any other objects he might grab. He has a peculiar style at the moment which is more akin to a discus thrower than a baseball player which results in his best throws typically going backward. I'm now trying to think of the best way to protect our television from random projectiles.

Shirley did not have any particular concerns but will continue to visit to make sure Henry stays on track.

Henry and I spent Friday afternoon and evening playing. He loves to be outside and we spent time walking from the front of the house around to the back and back to the front again. Of course I keep a keen eye out for snakes which are active because it is still so warm.

We went to the Desert Museum on Saturday morning. He fell asleep about 5 minutes from the museum so I drove around the area for about 45 minutes while he napped. When he did wake we had a good time at the museum. He enjoyed walking around and exploring and being social. He met a couple small children who were friendly. Chloe, a 3 year old English girl, helped him up when he fell and seemed to enjoy having him tag along for a little bit.

Henry excels at going the opposite way you want him to. One of the cutest things was when he was walking against the grain on a path and two men were walking by. He stopped, looked at them and said "Hi!" very enthusiastically while waving to them. They both smiled and said "Hi!" back.

I dropped him off at Grandma and Grandpa's for a few hours in the afternoon then returned later for dinner. Aunt Erin was there for dinner as well with her dogs which Henry enjoyed.

That evening Kate came home at 10:50pm. I took Henry with me to the airport and he slept almost the whole way.

On Sunday we went to the U for breakfast, as we usually do on Saturday. Henry loves to walk up and down hills and go up and down stairs. We went to the Old Main building and he went up and down the stairs there several times, which is pretty impressive. He's going to have some serious lower body strength if he keeps it up.

On Monday Grandpa came over in the afternoon. They always have a lot of fun. They spent most of the time outside, which Henry loves.

Tuesday, Henry had a follow up with the Developmental Clinic and Dr. Tsai. She had him play with lots of toys and asked a great number of questions about him. At one point she pulled out a board with holes for pegs in it. He grabbed the pegs and put them in the holes like he had done it a million times. He had been given the same test at the occupational therapist a few months ago and couldn't do it. We had not practiced it since then. I was shocked because his fine motor hasn't seemed that great. When we try to stack rings he has real trouble and shape sorting anything but circles is frustrating for him. But pegs in small holes are no problem, go figure.

She was very impressed, particularly by his ability to mimic actions and his calm demeanor. She frequently has kids in there bouncing off the walls but Henry was very deliberate and easy to work with. She pronounced him graduated from the clinic. We can call her if we need but she doesn't see any need to have him visit anymore and didn't have anything for us to work with him on. It's great news, although it is fun to visit her to show Henry off and find out how things are going at the nicu.

We dropped him off at his grandparents for a couple of hours after that and he had dinner with them. We picked him up around 8pm and he stayed awake all the way home. We gave him a bath and tried to get him to sleep which was a struggle.

Today he was very cranky most of the afternoon. I persuaded him to take a nap at 5:30 for an hour and he was in a much better mood after that. However, he stayed up until 10pm and it took almost an hour to get him to go to sleep.

The big challenge for us right now is sleep. He does a good job of taking a morning nap for Alicia during the week and we keep that up most weekends. I think he would be well served by an afternoon nap around 4pm but that rarely happens. Sometimes at night he seems to want to go to sleep but flops around and can't seem to get settled. It could be something he got from me. Through my childhood until early adulthood it frequently took me a long time to get to sleep. As a child I could spend hours trying to get to sleep and would head bang and roll my head back and forth trying to make myself tired enough to sleep. Hopefully that is not it and we can find a routine that works for him.

We tried to ween him off the reflux meds but are probably going to return to full dose again. His intake is down and he rarely finishes a bottle these days. Maybe this also has something to do with his sleep.