Special Ginger Snaps: Part 4

During a one of our moves courtesy of the military, Tyler was almost ready to walk. He began to cruise while holding on to someone or something. He also was a master crawler and would crawl anywear (even on bare concrete). But, when we were moving he started to blossom. He was making progress in his gross motor skills. At about 2 weeks before he turned two Tyler would take 2 steps and fall. Then crawl. This began his welcome to the world moment. Tyler went from a really easy going baby to constantly moving. He made up for lost time. He opened the doors to big progress and it started a new set of chllanges.

Soon, I began to joke that Tyler was my own little workout. He did not walk well but yet became soooo fast. He was busy, busy, busy. New behavior challanges arose and in the meantime I lost a lot of weight from always moving with Tyler. It was exausting and luckily Ty has always been a great sleeper and time still took naps and crashed at bedtime.

Tyler started taking interest in Thomas the train! So we jumped on this as an attempt to get speech, motivate his walking and work on fine motor by playing with the trains. The sounds of trains helped and Ty would soon say "choo choo". As a parent we were able to figure out what this meant... video, wanting to play trains or wear a train shirt. But for Ty's grandparents or siblings it was a frustrating thing.

Tyler did not point so the only way for him to communicate was by a smile.. he never really cried. His speech was very delayed at this point and communication was something not only he needed but we did, too. I knew some sign language so I taught him "more", "cookie" "eat" and "water". More became so universal, so did cookie. Cookie became anything food and "more" was everything else. What we learned was when you paired a word or sign they know with another new word you start to open the way for more speech, more words and help give them their own "a ha " moments . It also helped make connections for those around him to help understand what he wanted or needed.

Despite how much he was interested socially, he was alot of times disinterested in things going on around him or playing with toys. When we engaged Ty by trains or by letting him explore (sometimes difficult for the parents :) ) he really blossomed. Now his interests are so vast and he has really becomed so much more involved with the world around him but when we as parents always worried about what would happen if... we were holding him back. This is still something we are constantly learning as parents...

He also drooled like mad. My mom always gave me a hard time with my other two children about bibs... this would change with Ty. We had tons of bibs. He would always have a wet shirt or it looked messy. We had to help Ty become aware of his his mouth. To work on this I used a hand mirror and started showing Ty his mouth. I would model open, close and show him. Then I would have him do it and say the words. His favorite was the " kiss the baby". We used some sparkle lip gloss and kissed the baby in the mirror. Not only did this help with drooling, but alot of his oral motor skills and speech.

Some pictures- His first haircut...