We headed to the doctor on Tuesday and had Owen's one year check-up. Everything seemed in order.......though he's still a bit behind with his gross motor skills. We avoided shots this time and will catch up eventually.
I'm blogging remotely from Spencer's today (thanks to our wonderful babysitter, Kellie). It's nice to have some time to myself for a couple hours. I've been sitting here thinking about how much progress Lewis is making verbally. He's been 'talking' incessantly for the last couple of weeks. He just woke up saying 'uh oh' one day and has been consistently trying to say more and more words. We're pretty amazed and humbled. Here's the current list:
--go --uh oh --kuh kuh for Krista (our developmental interventionist) --ba woo (balloon) --book --buh buh (bubble) --ba (ball) --me --bow --cow --buh ee (bunny) --be-ee (belly) --bye bye --oh (labels the letter 'o' and calls Owen 'baby O') --baah (sheep) --moo (what a cow says) --neigh (what a horse says) --ow
We spent some time reading "Barnyard Dance" the last couple of days and Lewis loves filling in the words and sounds that he knows.
There are other good things to report, including Owen's one year stats, but I'll have to save that for another post. I will mention that we had a meeting with the directors of the Big Red School this week. Lewis starts in a couple weeks and goes for the summer session. They seemed really on top of things. It seems like the perfect transition from all of our home based therapy to regular preschool. For those of you who are not familiar with Big Red School is part of WKU's Clinical Education Complex. The classes are generally about 12 students, half typically developing and half with delays or other special needs. They know a lot about autism and seem to have a good plan for working with Lewis. He loved the small amount of time we were there. He'll just be going one day a week for a couple hours, but it will certainly help him adjust to being around other children and listening to other adults (in an extremely fun environment).
Today is Justin's last day at the newspaper. We are all ready for a change in schedule and it should be a good fit for him. Thanks for your prayers for us.......we're thrilled with all the positive changes in the Shepherd household.
Yesterday was Owen's birthday. It's hard to believe he's already a year old! We had a low-key party with the Reitmeyer side of the family.....and really it was a shared event since Lewis turns three in a week. Owen woke up early and was ready to play so he spent some time throwing balls into his elephant toy. He got it for Christmas but has just recently learned how to get the balls in there!
We had a balloon theme because both boys love balloons. We had gluten and casein free balloon cupcakes. They were actually pretty yummy!
Here's the birthday boy getting ready for some cake.
He liked it! He made a big mess out of it, but I guess we missed that photo op. It was mostly a pile of crumbs on his tray.
Then we opened presents. This card looks a lot like Owen!
After opening a few gifts, the boys switched toys (trying to share?).
The balloons still remained super fun. Here's Lewis trying to hold all of them.
It was a bit exhausting so he had to lay down, but couldn't let go of the balloons. In a further effort to speak, Lewis is even trying to say 'balloon.' His version sounds more like 'ba woo', but we'll take it!
The birthday boy exercises his legs. Here's the boys with the grandparents.
And with mom.
No party is complete without a pic of Lewis and aunt Ellen.
On the night before Owen's birthday, I thought I should post a quick note about the week. We are wrapping up Lewis' First Steps services. We had our last session with Leita, our OT, this week. She was so helpful in so many ways, but Lewis really loved the fun activities they got to do, and singing "My Little Horsie" while bouncing on her therapy ball.
Lewis has continued to make a lot of sounds this week. He is saying "me" now, and attempting words like "bye bye" and "apple" but many of them still need work. We are just so thrilled that he is understanding that HE can use his mouth to talk. He is especially likely to fill in words in songs if we stop singing at a word he knows......or reciting a part of a familiar book. It's fun to see what he will do. See for yourself.
Aunt Beth came to visit this weekend. We've been taking lots of walks downtown.
Beth has been helping the boys learn to share. Owen LOVES to share and play with people. This video is a good example of how he loves to give things to people, but also how he loves to put things in containers. He seems to be a magnet for his big brother too, and he has a knack for driving him nuts.
Today has been interesting! Lewis has been making some better attempts to talk. He woke up and quickly imitated "uh oh." So we asked him to say "uh oh, baby" and he said it for about a half hour straight. He's been saying 'baby' for the last few days. So off and on all day he paired 'baby' with his other words, and then tonight tried to say 'milk.' We are hoping this is the beginning of more verbal imitation. Here's a video.
This afternoon we got to hang out for a little bit with our friend, Mandy Guss. She's one of our volunteer therapists, and Lewis loves her and her iPod. She has several apps just for kids and he has greatly enjoyed learning to use them. She'll be leaving for the next month and a half to go to staff training with Campus Crusade, and let's just say we'll be missing her!
One other random thing. I bought Lewis a new reinforcer for therapy at Kiddos (a local consignment store). It's a Leapfrog Phonics Bus and it's kind of old school. But for less than $4 it has been an effective tool! When you turn it on, it says, "Let's ride the phonics bus." Lewis has been taking that literally and actually trying to ride on it. Funny boy.
I survived a week with my computer gone. HP fixed it for free due to some sort of recall. The wireless gadget inside was not working so they replaced some things and I'm so happy to be mobile and online once again. Since our last post, we took a few pictures in black and white. We continue to take our walks around the block, and it's a great day when the train comes when we're near the tracks.
Ellen came to visit last weekend. Lewis loves it when she comes, and they wear each other out. :) One major miracle was that we got Lewis to eat meatloaf on Friday night. I replaced a couple ingredients to keep it gluten and casein free, and it tasted great! Lewis was not excited about it, but he is using a fork pretty well these days and seemed to get into it once he had the first bite.
Ellen and I went to a wedding of a college friend (Amy Sweeney) on Saturday, and that evening we got to take the boys to a nearby playground. I accidentally left the settings on black & white for this video of Lewis climbing on some equipment.
Here's Ellen with Owen.
Speaking of climbing, Lewis is doing much more of that lately. He's always been behind in gross motor skills, but I don't think about it often. However, when it comes to his crib, we've not been in any hurry to move him into a bed because we know he's safe in there and he's never tried to get out of it. The other day I was looking for him after getting Owen dressed and couldn't find him anywhere! I finally noticed he was sitting in his crib drinking his milk. So later that day I asked him to get in his bed and he climbed up and sort of fell over the side. It wasn't pretty, but it got the job done. Since then he's been able to get out when the crib latch thing has been down. It's just a matter of time before he's climbing out in the morning. Most of our friends went through this well before their kids turned 2, so we're kind of happy about it! At the same time, we'll have to figure something out about a big boy bed.
Doc update: We went to our new pediatrician yesterday and it went very well. I have been concerned about the diet Lewis is on and feel like he's not really growing at this point because his eating is so limited......so we talked about it and they did an allergy panel and a celiac panel to check food allergies and ran a second thyroid test (a repeat of one we did in January that was elevated). This doctor spent a lot of time with us and looked through Lewis' medical record asking very appropriate questions. It was wonderful to not be rushed in and out and to have tests done in their office. We are trying some goat's milk again (the doc recommended easing into it since he hasn't had milk for several months), and can go from there.
Lewis seems to be on the verge of something. He started saying "baby" this week and is quick to fill in the "oh" in some songs....particularly "Old MacDonald."
We went by today to drop off his pre-school enrollment stuff. We took a pic of the school.
We headed to Kroger after that. Here are the boys, for posterity's sake. They seem to like shopping more than me!
The Shepherd fam has had a big of a tough year, and so we have been somewhat shocked this week that several things have gone our way. God has answered several prayers at once, and we are just kind of amazed.
First, the biggest news is that Justin got a new job this week. He'll still be working steps from Spencer's, just off the square downtown. It's somewhat of a dream position, especially with the situation we are in now--with Justin working at the coffee shop a chunk of the time. It's definitely the perfect solution for the moment. For more on this check out Justin's blog.
We also got a new pediatrician this week! We have been trying to switch to a doctor who knows a bit more about autism, and had heard that one in particular has a heart for special needs children. Unfortunately, when I called originally he was not taking new patients. We had a friend put in a good word for us, and apparently this doctor recognized Lewis' name from going into Spencer's during April. It was Autism Awareness Month, and we had a special drink available called 'The Lewis Latte' with a bit of marshmallow syrup (because Lewis loves marshmallows!). There was a little description of Lewis and the drink with a picture of our boy, and apparently this doctor had been in and noticed it. All of this to say, I started calling and this week we got the good news that he's taking both boys as patients. He works with our DAN! doctor (in Franklin, TN) on a number of patients already so it should be a good situation. This development is a huge relief for me!! Having a doctor who is knowledgeable about autism and special needs' situations makes such a difference.
The last, but not least, news is that Owen is "crawling." Okay, he's not up on his knees, but he's dragging himself around our home, and I can say that he is all over the place. I was doing dishes the other night and he made a path all the way around our dining table! This is another big relief, because crawling is connected to speech and develops the muscles necessary for walking and all the physical things that come later. Even if Owen sticks with the army crawl, he would still be working out the muscles that he needs to continue developing normally. It is something that has been a constant prayer request and I'm thrilled to see him taking this 'step.' Here's a video from last night...we're so excited!
We went out to celebrate Justin's dad's (Grandpa Billy) and Uncle Henry's birthdays over the weekend. Jeanne and Henry have a home in the country about an hour away. It was really quite nice to get out of the city and into some fresh air. When we arrived, we had to wait a few minutes for a ride because the driveway's a bit rough--4 wheel drives only! So we took a couple pictures.
We took a couple rides on the 4 wheelers. Lewis especially loved riding around (very slowly, of course!). He even fell asleep on a trip out with me and Justin.
He posed with Grandpa too.
Meanwhile, Owen was playing with Aunt Monica.
After some homemade ice cream, he somehow ended up with a ribbon on his head.
We got the boys a tent set/tunnel to play in. They both love it, but we won't be setting up the tents often because they take up quite a lot of space!
