January 21, 2008

Holy good golly it is COLD out!!

So I found some movies from Feb 2001 to July 2001 - when Morgan was 7-12 months. I watched it all and I gotta say, even now, even REALLY looking, he seems perfectly normal to me (besides being covered in eczema, poor kid). He responded to his name, he did the hand motions to the song ‘open shut them’, he was saying mama and baba, clapping, making eye contact, playing with balls and cars, army crawling, and generally grunting. There was only one little thing - this strange little hand motion he did - but it was sort of like the one that went with the song, so who knows. On the tape I said it was the thing he did when he wanted to be picked up.

I've got to find the next set of tapes tomorrow so I can see what happened next. I believe it was around 15 months when he started spinning plates, so whatever happened was after 12 months but before 15. One thing is that he had nothing but formula for the first year - no solids at all because of his gag reflex (which I guess would be another weird thing). So no gluten, no dairy prior to one ... but also the MMR was at 12 months and that's when the mercury was still in there ... I don't know. Not that it matters particularly, but it's still interesting.

The really interesting thing was Timothy. I always say that he was borderline ASD when he was little. Well there was no borderline about it - he was full on asperger's with no debate! He turned 3 in June 2001 so this was the surrounding months. The kid was WEIRD WEIRD WEIRD. He spoke generally in movie quotes. You could NOT have a conversation with him! He only had triggers as to what he would say or do. If I said "one" then he'd start counting and not be deterred until he was done. He ran through full cartoon sections. He couldn't answer questions, especially once he saw the camera was on as he was too distracted and OCD over the camera. It was so strange to watch! I even called him rainman on tape trying to get his attention away from the script he was doing! Seriously, he had no original thought or ideas at all, that were obvious to the camera anyway. If I saw that in a child today I'd call EI myself.

The other funny thing about Timothy is that he had Jocelyn's voice - or vice versa I guess! Same laugh, same voice - except Timothy had a lisp (I assume due to the gaping distance between his teeth where the binky usually sat).

Well I got Morgan's new gate installed. Hard-mounted, 42in high with child proof one handed open. My butt! Morgan had it open in no time!! The only advantage to this gate is that we can *hear* it when he opens it so then we can run in there and put him back. That worked around 5am. At 8am (ok, yes, we were still in bed at 8am) he came into our room with a big smile on his face. He crawled into bed between us. Jesse decided to love on him and started crawling on him and giving him kisses. Morgan kissed him back! He also touched his face - awww. So they had a little snuggle fest and it was just too adorable.

Jocelyn has a new passion for reading books and we have been going through a dozen a night probably. Of course, if Jesse tries to touch one that is in the queue while we are reading .... oy. Jesse has a new passion for poking Jocelyn's belly button and giggling. haha. So at least it works out for him that we can't seem to keep clothing on her! Actually she's been doing better now that it's cold out.

Jocelyn and I went to Target on Saturday to get Chase's birthday present and a new hair dryer for me. She was little miss chatty the whole time pointing out all the various toys she saw. Then we ran into someone I know from work and she clammed up like she didn't know how to speak. Isn't it always the way!! I picked up a few more things for her for her birthday and got everything wrapped.

I asked Jocelyn yesterday if she wanted to paint her nails and she did, so I said we had to cut them first and we did without her giving me any hard time. Then when I said she could go pick out paints and she asked for paper - she wanted to actually paint. So I found some water colors I've had sitting around for years and showed her how to dip the brush. She sat at the table for TWO HOURS and painted! Every once in a while she'd say "look mommy!" and I'd tell her how great it was, and then she'd keep going. Quite a concentrated look on her face too! It was super cute.

The application for preschool came this week and we got it filled out and it's ready to go into the mail tomorrow. The questions were really hard though like "My child has tantrums never rarely sometimes often always" and others like that. I think the hardest one was "My child's language is understood by others never rarely sometimes often always". I put often but that's because I can almost always understand her - but I'm not sure how often other random strangers can understand her? I guess we'll see when she has her assessment!