1. Joe can totally get around commando crawling now. This is also known as "belly crawling". He goes everywhere. Constantly. All the time. I use to not watch him too carefully (that makes me sound like an irresponsible Mom I know, but honestly is a virtue) because he just stayed in the living room in his "area" with his toys. He played away not really going out on any adventures. Now he is in the bathroom, my bedroom, his bedroom, the kitchen, closets, you name it he goes there. He loves to open and close doors. Not by turning the knob of course he cannot reach it, but he swings the corner of the door shut and opens it if he doesn't accidentally shut it all the way. Sometimes he goes into a room and then accidentally shuts the door completely and I can't find him for a moment. Eeeeeekkkkk!!!! Scares me to death.
2. Joe can get up on all fours. He gets up on all fours and "rocks it"........literally he rocks himself ...back and fourth - back and fourth - back and fourth. It is so cute to watch him do this. Concentrating and trying to rock faster and faster until he is too tired and needs a break. He looks like he is training for his event in the Olympics or something. Some mornings when I hear he is awake - I go to his room to get him up for the day and there he is in his footy jammies rocking his little heart out :)
3. Joe likes to stand! He can stand up against something, so we like to use the ottoman. We put some toys up there and he stands to play with them. Then we work on some side walking all with the lovely Kim, his physical therapist. He does well with it - really well - like it shocked me to be honest with you. It really made me feel like Joe will walk someday, which was always a fear of mine. No one wants to think about their child not being able to walk, but it's a realistic thought in my life sadly. Regardless, Joe is awesome - walking or not. He will be the most popular kid in school probably. Everyone wants to be Joe's friend :)
4. Joe is getting better at sitting. He can't sit the best on his own, but it's 100x's better than it was early summer. He can sit for about 5 minutes at a time. It looks awkward too. He never puts himself into a sitting position either, if I do it - or one of his lovely therapy ladies - he will sit well. He actually tries to get himself into a standing against furniture position more often than trying to sit up on his own. He must be an overachiever - sitting? what?.....heck lets stand up instead!
5. Joe started a new medication. It is called baclaphen. This is a muscle relaxer. He is super tight on his right side (especially that right hand), trunk muscles, and his feet. This will help loosen him up so he can start doing the physical things he wants to do. I noticed a difference almost immediately. That was when he started to crawl everywhere and he actually uses his right arm now. He uses it to hold himself up when he is sitting and "rocking it". He also moves it forward when he crawls. His right arm use to get stuck behind him and that is why he wouldn't crawl. It was like a light bulb went off in his head when he started the baclaphen - like suddenly he could feel his body better and make it move. It's a magic potion :)
6. Joe has a lot of his teeth now. He only has like 5 more to go I think and that includes his 2 year old molars. He has the best smile ever :)
7. Joe loves loves and I mean he really loves sweets. He has such a sweet tooth. Ice cream, bars, cookies, donuts, fudge, you name it! He doesn't have any texture issues if it's covered in sugar or frosting. Joe doesn't really like "dry" foods like crackers and bread. I think the texture bugs him and he is afraid of choking, but....if it's a dessert of some kind he will eat it in 1.25 seconds flat! He also loves potatoes, rice, hamburger, and noodles. He is doing a fantastic job feeding himself. He doesn't use an eating utensil, but can eat almost anything with his left hand. He is also drinking out of a sippy all by himself. He uses the sippy cups with handles because he has to do it with his left hand which isn't big enough to wrap around a cup. Very independent little fella - does not want mom to feed him (unless it's ice-cream or pudding).
8. Joe isn't doing much talking. He knows I am his Mumma and he can say Dada. I think he recently realized Raymond is "Dada". Sometimes I hear a "yeah" out of him or a "deedee" "beebee".....I have no idea about those 2 but it's cute because he smiles when he says it. He likes to smack his lips, click his tongue, and give kisses too. When I speak to Joe he mimics my lip movements but sound does not come out of his mouth. Raymond and I were concerned about this, knowing he should be talking by now. Joe recently had an appointment with the pediatric neurologist - Dr. Sanchez - who is such a lovely man I really really like him. I think he is so wonderful with kids and a great Dr! At the appointment, Dr. Sanchez explained to me that the larger bleed Joe had, the grade IV, actually damaged the speech area of the brain. Not solely the speech area, but the majority of the bleed occurred in there. So that would explain his aphasia or lack of communicating or speaking. There are 2 common areas of the speech part of the brain (I hope I am going to explain right - I have been out of the medical terminology loop for awhile now). There is the Broca Area and Wernicke's Area. From what I understood from his speech therapist is that Broca is a receptor, understanding the communication and processing it. So... we ask you to something and you interpret the language and respond appropriately to it. The Wernicke's is actually executing what you want to say and do after you have interpreted it. Does that make sense? I hope I am not giving false info and I should google maybe.....haha! Again any medical friends feel free to correct me so I don't look like an idiot! I could of got them backwards! It seems Joe can interpret what we are saying and not execute his response. So basically, he can't say what he wants to say because that part of his brain was damaged which hindered the learning process of speech and speaking for him. He has to learn speech by training different areas in the brain to learn communication and speaking. A child's brain isn't wired yet - he can rewire his brain using a different route to learn to speech instead of the typical route already given to us at birth. I must be honest this bothered me.......it made me sad.......I thought about it a lot. What if my son can never tell me what he is thinking? What if I can never hear his voice.....? What if I never know what he is thinking because he can't tell me and gives up on it? I want to talk to my son - I want to be able to hear what he has to say. The lovely Amanda (Joe's speech therapist) told me that she doesn't feel like Joe will not talk, in fact she is confident he will. He will just have to work harder at it then everyone else, so that helped get me off my pity train :) Plus I shouldn't feel sorry for myself about that kind of stuff - I should be grateful he is here, but I think I deserve too sometimes :)
Wikipedia is the smartest!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernicke's_area
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broca's_area
****Sorry about the long post****
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