Mixed Blessings

Ever since Luke’s eye surgery, at the beginning of May, I’ve noticed subtle differences in Luke.  His balance and overall coordination seems better.  But, this last week he has done something that has “blown me away”.

Last Monday he was sitting on my lap and I handed him a Teddy Graham.  Usually I will work with Luke on trying to use only two fingers to pick it up, and in order for him to do that I have to hold down three of his fingers.  Well, this day he reached out with his left hand and grabbed the Teddy Graham with two fingers!!  There was no prompting at all and he just reached out and did it!  So exciting!  He did this three times in a row with his left hand.  I couldn’t get him to do it with his right hand or get him to do it again with his left….but he did do it!! 

I’ve also noticed this week that he is trying to push or point to things with just one finger.   For example, when I ask Luke to find something in a book…like the dog…Luke would not point at the dog but instead he will usually “knock” on it with his fist.  Well, this week he has pointed a few times to things in books and he has even tried using one finger to push the piano keys and push the buttons on a musical book!! 

This is all so exciting.  But it, like all other skills he has learned, is turning out to be a “mixed blessing”.  Just like when Luke finally pulled up and started cruising along the furniture last summer, it was great…but he was able to reach lots of things he couldn’t before.  This led to several things getting destroyed.

You might be thinking, what kind of trouble could “single finger isolation or two finger grabbing cause?”  Last Tuesday morning Luke picked up a fork with two fingers and I said, “yea….Luke”, and then he looked at me, smiled and threw it on the floor!!  This is nothing new, I guess I just thought once he was able to pick it up so well, he might decide to finally hold on to it.  I was wrong about that, obviously.

Probably the worse “mixed blessing” moment took place last Saturday morning.  I did a quick Library run in to town and while I was gone Luke tried a new trick.  When I walked in the house my husband was really upset with Luke.  It turned out that my husband was trying to do something on the laptop, and Luke came over and somehow got a key to pop off the keyboard.  This normally wouldn’t be a big deal, but my husband couldn’t get the key back on.  After doing some research we figured out that there was a small circular piece that goes inside the key to make it stick in place…and it was missing. 

The fact that Luke could do that, is so great!  But at the same time daddy wasn’t so happy.  We obviously can’t use the laptop while in his range anymore either.  Oh well, I’d rather have him be able to do things like this than be able to use my laptop wherever I wanted.  I’ve been very thankful that his fine motor skills are finally taking shape.  We’ll just have to work on what he can and can not touch.