overdue updates

It’s been a while since I last posted.  Somehow I don’t get around to mentioning all those little things that the boys are doing because it just seems like they are consolidating their learning rather than doing something new.

Christopher has more words now.  He does some parroting of words if you say something he thinks is interesting to say. His more frequent words are Hot, Car, Cat, Stuck, All gone.  I think he probably says quite a few other things too, and makes himself known with his body language – so sometimes it is hard to tell if he actually said something or whether I’m attributing it to him because he said "*something* whilst acting appropriately.  He quite clearly copied me saying Frog the other day, and that was nice to hear that beautiful G sounded out.

Bevans speech is giving his speech therapist no worries.  He went through the 3 1/2 year old test booklet the other week and he did fine.  His F’s are said like B’s quite often but not always eg bish for fish.  She asked him to describe what was happening in some pictures and his use of pronouns wasn’t fantastic, and neither were his verbs, for example he said “its” instead of “his” and that sort of thing, although not every time.  He also said “doing” a lot instead of being a bit more descriptive like “the cat is doing the mouse”, rather than “the cat is chasing the mouse”.  I expect he knows the right things to say, but that on that day he wasn’t really minding about getting it right.

We’ve been sorting out Bevans poo problem lately. We’ve been so stressed over Bevans failure to poo toilet train. I went to a different doctor and he arranged to have an x-ray done, and it turns out that Bevan has a constipated, impacted poo.  The symptoms he had of mushy poo are actually the new poos oozing out around the blockage. This could have been a long-term problem – maybe even some of the “toddler diarreah” could have been this same problem.  I guess I’ll never know.  I’m relieved to have a diagnosis, but a bit cross that it took to now to figure it out.  Had we known earlier then we wouldn’t have nagged and cajoled Bevan to try and toilet – we had so many arguments where we were begging him to try to push out a tiny poo, and then disappointments when the poo came shortly later in his pants.  The poo problem will mean that he has no control over when poo escapes and also gets no signals from his body about needing to go.  Probably didn’t need to go through that 3 weeks no-dairy trial the doctor recommended either!

Anyway… so we are using medication to try and get the blockage cleared up. Hopefully that’ll work soon.  Then we have a while of medication to keep the system moving quickly so that the muscles can re-tighten and control can come back.

The boys have been busy learning new skills.  Bevan and I have been using Lego’s and he is so clever with following the building instructions methodically and matching the positioning of pieces correctly.  He’s learning size, shape and colour discrimination, fine motor skills, counting to get the right positions, and then he is using his imagination to play with the finished toys.  He is also pretty good at creating his own models and telling me that it is a plane or a boat or whatever.

Christopher can go up and down steps upright when I hold his hand, so no more wet knees from crawling on stairs.  He still likes trains, duplo, teddies, dolls prams.  (Both boys like teddies now actually – pretending to feed them, giving them shoulder rides etc..)  He is quite keen on small babies too – he is a bit rough though, so I have to watch him to prevent poked eyes.  His fine motor skills are coming along really well. We have a toy with a set of toy keys and he can do the unlocking and locking.  Both boys like to do play cooking and also be involved in real cooking.

I often find now that Bevan goes and raids the pantry and then shares the spoils with Christopher.  At least when he is naughty he is being considerate!

There is plenty more I could say, but I’ll leave that for next time.

1 August 2010.