14 months and lots of catching up to do....

photo was taken this morning at breakfast - taken with my iphone. Love how he is looking at me. he is a few seconds away from his first nap.
Max's hand - again - another iphone photo

This was taken a few weeks ago in the morning. We love this time. When he wakes up the first thing he does before he even opens his eyes is Smile like he is having the best experience of his life. And I think he is in that moment. He basically puts his face right up close to you when you are asleep and waits for you to open your eyes and see him smiling at you. Oh I just LOVE mornings! I'm so glad we do the family bed and he is there with us every morning.
The eye doctor wants us to Patch Max's eye for 2 hours a day to help strengthen the other eye before the surgery. After meeting with 3 different eye doctor's we finally found the guy we like best. Dr. Wright! Yep that's his name. We really think he is RIGHT for Max. He just told us to patch for ONE hour instead of TWO. Max does really well with it. No complaints. Each patch has a different design on them. I had no idea they would look like this. This one has little fish on them. His surgery is July 28th. We'll keep you all updated on the details as we move along.
I took Max to the Arboretum one hot afternoon. We'd never been there before. Peacocks EVERYWHERE. I think he actually saw this one - the others were running past and he was too busy staring at his hand or at me to see them. He is so dang cute. Unless they made noise he didn't notice.

Here he is with his Speech Therapist Amy Johnson. We were told when he was just 7 weeks old to put our name on her wait list. it took until NOW to get up the list so we can finally get in to see her as a regular patient. Before this time we were seeing her every few months to check in - get some tips - and do a consultation type meeting.

This appointment was last week - she gave a very detailed written eval on his current development and gave us a lot of exercises to do with him to help support him in his speech.

Right now he is at 6-8 months development level - based on what we told her and what she observed. I think this is the very first time we really can see his delay since all of his PT and OT are on track with "typically developing children". All of his friends are starting to talk and he is saying Ba ba ba, Ga, la, Hhhh, and forming some babbling sounds together. I love listening to him babble and nothing that comes out of his mouth sounds anything like the word "NO" and I am grateful for that!

Last week we were able to see the Physical Therapist at Dynamic Therapies - instead of at our house. It's the first time Max got to work with Joe and all of that equipment they have there. here he is on the treadmill. He was all strapped in. He actually did better when Joe took the straps off and had him hold on to the handles. He worked on climbing up and down stairs, walking, trunk control, and I'm sure a lot of other things that I don't realize because I'm not a PT! We are going to talk with the Regional Center to change his PT from in our home - to at the Facility because we have much more opportunities for him to grow and learn there at this point - than in our house. For the past year it's been just fine - but Max is ready to walk and needs the extra help to gain his strength.

Right now he is standing up all the time. From a sit - to a stand - and then he takes one or two steps. If we take his hand he will walk about 4-6 steps. I videotaped it today. But it's a long video and takes so long to download that instead - for your viewing pleasure - I'm posting a video of him laughing and standing and then diving onto his mama - over and over again.

This is a daily activity at Camp Seiner! Enjoy!