Doors!

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know that Luke has an odd fascination with doors.  He absolutely loves to stand and watch automatic doors.  When it comes to regular doors he will refuse to keep walking until the door is shut.  Then when Luke is on the floor he will close any door he can.  In the past this has been limited in that Luke could only push a door closed.

Well the last few weeks Luke has been perfecting how to pull a door shut from his position on the floor.  It is no easy task and takes a few steps.  First, Luke will scoot himself several times all while holding the edge of the door so that it gets close to the closed position.  Second, Luke pulls the door using the edge and gets it as close to closed as possible…this part makes me nervous to watch since he could easily hurt his fingers.  Third, Luke will get up on his knees, stretch and grab the door handle to close the door all the way.

Sometimes it take a few tries to get the door closed because he’ll accidentally bump the door further open when he tries to grab the door handle.  But, Luke sticks with it until he gets that door closed!  I happened to catch the “action” the other day on video so you can see what I mean, of course Luke doesn't always preform on command!

The guessing game

When it comes to kids I’m sure all parents go through the “guessing game”, for the first year we have to interpret “cries”.  That cry means he’s hungry or this cry means he’s just tired.  I’m finding with our baby girl that as kids get older it gets easier, they start to point at what they want or pull you in a certain direction.  Then they start to say some words, with out baby girl she usues more sign language than actual words…but we still can figure out what she wants and she’ll be two pretty soon.   Getting so big.

I say all this because with Luke, we still play the guessing game.  He’ll be four in a couple months, but for him we still have to interpret his “cries”.  Most of the time I know what he wants because of routines.  A good example of this is after we eat and I put Luke on the floor he’ll often start to cry at me but I know that what he usually wants is his juice.  So once I hand Luke his juice he is quiet and happy.

Luke is slowly doing some sign language “more”, “go” and “please” are his famous three.  But, that is the limit…..once and a while he’ll throw out a word out of nowhere which is a moment of rejoicing.  I am very happy with the progress he is making, but this week I’ve found myself frustrated with the “guessing game”.

On Monday Luke started to cough when sleeping.  By Tuesday night I started up Luke’s humidifier to help him sleep, of course he decided to party for 2 hours.  I’m still not sure if it was because I let him take a decent nap or because he is now taking a vitamin cocktail that gives him extra energy.  Either way, the cough continued…so on Wednesday night I also ran the humidifier.  This night Luke was up playing again for a couple hours, even though I cut his nap short.  This night though Luke had a new adventure of sorts.  The noises I was trying to ignore during the night, the coughing and the thumping of Luke playing with his bed…all of a sudden turned into crying.  So I went to investigate and I found Luke sitting on the floor and stuck between the bed and the front slates that grandpa made to keep Luke contained!  He had played with the bed so hard that two pieces popped out which in turn let Luke slide down to the floor.  Crazy boy!  I popped the pieces back together and we are waiting for daddy to get time and fix them.  So far…this hasn’t happened again.

But, then last night (Thursday night) Luke still had a cough so I still ran the humidifier…only this time Luke woke crying and crying and crying some more.  I’m not sure he ever really go to sleep…until about 1:30am.  I playing the “guessing game”…holding him, giving him some pain medicine, trying to sleep with him in his bed…none of which worked.  That is until I tried sleeping in his bed with him and after about an hour he decided since he wasn’t sleeping to start clapping up a storm and shaking his head around and laughing at himself.  At this point…I was so tired and figured if he can have fun…I can leave him again and try to get sleep on my own.  Of course Luke started crying after I left…but after about 10 minutes he fell asleep and I only heard some coughing the rest of the night.

I’m still not sure what the issue was last night and I pray that tonight isn’t a repeat of the “guessing game”.

Go Luke!

I’ve mentioned before how Luke has continued to get stronger and how he has been climbing up on the couch.  He’s also been climbing up on the recliner…which rocks.  I think the combination of trying to stay up right, put up his leg and the rocking motion of the chair, make this quite  hard for Luke.

It’s funny how Luke struggles to do things like this, but once he gets it down he makes it look so easy.  I’m so proud of him!

Family multitasking

As a mom I am constantly multitasking.  I think generally women do this more than men and so when I see my husband multitask with the kids, I find it quite entertaining since it usually involves trying to distract the kids.

I definitely saw this last night.  My husband asked me to cut his hair.  In order to do this without the kids being in the way, we set up the gate at the edge of the kitchen so that the kids can watch if they want, but they can’t get to us.  While I was getting everything ready he started playing with the kids by throwing a ball over the gate.  Luke laughed and went to the get the ball and then came back to the gate and threw the ball at his daddy.  This cycle continued until our baby girl wanted in on the action, and the kids were fighting over who got to throw the ball at daddy.  So before starting to cut my husband’s hair I went and got another ball.  So now both kids were throwing balls at daddy.

This all worked great until I started cutting daddy’s hair.  I have to say my husband did a good job for the first 5 minutes or so, he held his head “just so” and still got the balls and threw them at the kids.  But after a while he couldn’t reach the balls every time they came over the gate.  Which meant I began multitasking as well, when they were out of reach I had to reach over and pick up the balls and throw them at the kids myself.  Before I knew it we were all playing this game while I was trying to cut daddy’s hair.  Quite the family fun activity!  

That's Entertainment!

Even though I know Luke gets entertained easily, he continues to make me smile when he does this in various environments.  He does this so easily in the car or at home and even in new places.  The latest example of this happened a couple weekends ago. 

We took Luke in for an endoscopy, and then the following day he started getting sick to his stomach and didn’t stop.  We were admitted to the hospital and wound up staying three longs days to make sure Luke was done getting sick and could eat and drink on his own ok.  While there they decided to get him a “crib” instead of a bed since he has so many delays.  I was never so grateful for something.

You see the last time we had to admit Luke overnight they gave him a regular bed…which meant I had to stay with him constantly for fear of him falling out or something.  That also meant that he and I didn’t get a lot of sleep since he never sleeps next to me.

Anyway, so the “crib” was a huge relief for me and allowed Luke to have the freedom he loves.  The first couple days Luke felt so “puny” that he didn’t want to do anything but lay in the bed.  But, by the third day when he was feeling better Luke really got a kick out of his new surroundings. 

The “crib” had the bars on all sides that could be raised or lowered, but this crib also had a plastic canopy for protection purposes.  So when Luke started getting all excited and wanted to start throwing everything out of this new “crib” I “battened down the hatches” and put the bars up as far as possible and pulled the plastic down from the tops.  Wouldn’t you know it?  Luke thought this was the best ever.  Why?  Well he decided to take his monkey and the balls the nurse brought him and throw them at the plastic and then laugh as they fell or bounced back at him.  Luke thought this was the best thing ever!  Silly little man.  You have to love his sense of humor!

I tried to get this on video…but of course he didn’t perform on command, but you can at least see what I am talking about. 

Stinky!

Luke has an ability to do the strangest things.  I’m sure he isn’t the only kid out there to put things in strange places or hide things from his/her parents.  It just seems like once I figure out where he usually puts things, he decides to hide his stuff somewhere else.

This morning I went to get Luke’s shoes and SMOs (braces), I looked in the usual place underneath a small table in his room….I found two SMOs and one shoe.   The other shoe was MIA.  I looked in all the usual places that he stashes things in his room, under his bed, in his laundry basket, behind the door, in the drawers where I keep diapers, burp clothes and other misc items.  The shoe was nowhere to be found.

Then I had a thought…and it was one of those thoughts that you think “surely not, he wouldn’t do that”.  Then you think about it for a while, and wonder if he would really do that.  Well in this case, I was thinking “I wonder if he put it in the diaper champ, like he did with his juice cup that one time”.  I figured I looked everywhere else, so I decided to go ahead and look…and sure enough….I open up the diaper champ and find the missing shoe with one of the shoe strings attached to part of the champ that flips over….leaving the shoe kind of hanging above all the dirty diapers. 

The worst part was that the shoe smelled like the diaper pail, this also meant the shoe had to have been in there since yesterday some time. Yuck!   Since these are the only pair of shoes we have that Luke can wear with his SMOs I couldn’t just put another pair of shoes on Luke.  Since I was down to just 10 minutes till time to leave for preschool, I took the shoe and put it in the bathroom and sprayed it with air freshener.  When I went back to get the shoe 5 minutes later, it still smelled. 

Oh well, if Luke’s aide says something about smelling something on Luke…I’ll tell her all about it.  When he gets home from school I’ll scrub and scrub those shoes maybe even try to put them in the wash.  

"Love/Hate relationship"

The other day Luke was crawling around the kitchen floor while I was cleaning up the kitchen.  I was going through our papers on the dining room table, wondering how we could accumulate so much stuff in only a couple days, when I hear Luke laugh really hard.  Of course, I had to look and see what was so funny…and I started cracking up myself.  Luke was putting his head all the way down to the ground, stomach almost flat to the floor and trying to kiss the floor!!  I was so glad that I just mopped the night before!

Then when I get the camera to catch Luke in “action”, he starts hitting the floor…and then “kissing” it again!  It was a “love/hate” relationship.  I’m not sure if Luke could decide if he really liked the floor or if he considered the floor his “enemy”.

Balance

You know, for most of us balance is not an issue…but when it comes to Luke it has been one of his biggest struggles.  I’m so proud, Luke has continued to get stronger and stronger each day.  Along with that his balance has seemed to really improve the last few months as well.  The result?  He can now maneuver his walker with much more control and he has increased confidence which I believe has helped him to want to try to do new things, like crawling up on the couch.

Well the other day was the perfect example of how good Luke’s strength and balance have been lately.  Luke was down the hallway playing with the lights and he tried turning around to come back towards the kitchen.  The hallway is pretty narrow, but he had enough room to turn around if he did it right.  Not only did he turn around like it wasn’t a big deal, he started to fall over and caught himself.  Go Luke!

The mommy drum?

So today I am sitting on the floor with my back shoulder blades against the couch, minding my own business when Luke decides to climb up on top of the couch to be with his sister.  Before I know it he crawls up behind me and starts hitting me on the back and laughs…of course.  Then wouldn’t you know it, our baby girl crawls over and does the same thing.  Followed by a laugh.  This continued for a while, then our baby girl leans over and pokes my nose.  Then they started hitting my back shoulders again.  Only this time harder…so I had to put a stop to it. 

Silly kids.  They love to throw and hit things that make noise.  I guess they were checking out whether or not mommy would make a good drum or not.  I hope that my “sound” wasn’t exactly what they wanted, maybe they try out the “daddy drum” next time.

Come on big brother!

A couple weeks ago my mother-in-law and I took the kids to a local zoo, since Luke didn’t have school.  It isn’t a big zoo, but they have some of the basic fun animals…like the monkeys and they even have some Wallaby’s.   Luke liked seeing the animals, and so did our baby girl. 

The best way to take both kids anywhere is to use the Step 2 wagon we got for Christmas.  The double stroller is too small for Luke, so with the wagon it is much easier to take the kids places. 

So there we were going through the zoo, when our baby girl wants to get out and walk.  So I let her, and when we stopped to watch the monkeys move all over their cage she decided to be a big helper.   When she was done watching the monkeys she went over to the wagon tongue which was on the ground and picked it up and tried pulling the wagon with Luke in it! 

She was able to move it a foot or so, and when I tried to take it from her she got mad.  So then I tried to just “help” her and she still got mad.  It was like she was telling me she could do it herself…she didn’t need anyone’s help.  So once I got her aimed the right direction I let her take the lead and pull Luke.  It was so cute!