AJ Update

I can't believe AJ will be 20 mos old on Monday. That is soooo close to being 2!! I wanted to do an update on him because he's doing so great with his development. I often worried that he would be like Ryan and be a "late-bloomer", but alot of that concern is dissolving. He is getting speech therapy once a month until he turns 2 because at 18 mos he was a little behind in his speech skills. He qualified for 1x week, but summers are very hectic around here so I opted to take it slowly for now. I just like having the speech therapist to touch base with and get ideas on how to help his speech skills continue growing. Really, I'm not sure if he would have completely qualified for speech if not for Ryan's delays. I think AJ was borderline and so Child Find decided to go ahead and start speech now-just in case. At this age speech therapy is so much fun, anyway. Basically, he just gets a trained therapist to give him undivided attention and play with him for 45 minutes. The therapist comes to our house and it's completely free.

First of all, AJ finally said what I most definitely consider to be his first functional word. One day this past week he kept shoving his sippy cup at me and screaming. I just ignored him because I had no idea what he wanted. Finally, out of sheer frustration he shoved it at me one last time and said "ice". I'm guessing that he will now take off in speech considering how quickly I jumped up and got him a piece of ice for his cup. Other than ice I'm pretty sure he says "hi", "rock", and "eye". I haven't heard it yet, but mom-mom and Kristen heard him say "bubbles"....I can't wait to hear that one! He also has quite a signing vocabulary. The other day he came up to me, grabbed my arm to get my attention and signed "more" "milk". Talk about a proud moment!

His favorite thing to watch is Signing Time videos. He comes up to me and does the sign for "caterpillar" when he wants to watch it. There is a song called caterpillar dreams in one of the videos that he just loves.

He LOVES to imitate everything he sees....so we definitely have to watch out. He's quite a little daredevil, too. I don't think he knows any fear and all I can do is stand back and watch him (and stand near in case I have to help him). He crawls up the swingset ladder and slides down head first. The first time he did it, he ended up with a mouth full of mulch. We thought that would teach him a lesson--no chance! He continues going head first and just laughs. He's such a lovable little boy, too! He loves giving kisses and hugs and looks so darn cute when he blows kisses.

Here are a couple of pictures I took recently of him playng peek-a-boo. He's sitting in the laundry basket because he loves to be pushed around in it. Don't you love how those chubby little hands are turned backwards to hide his eyes?