Count Down to Gotcha Day: Random Updates

Ok, so now that I have the Christmas update finally posted I can fill everyone in on all the randomness that has occurred in the 2 months. On December 24 Konnor started daycare. I know people thought it was crazy to start him on Christmas eve, but it actually worked out really well. I had to work a half day that day and Mark was off so I dropped Konnor off around 720. This was a good day to start, b/c there was only one other child in his room which means he received alot of attention and just got to play hard for a couple hours. Mark picked him up after about 3 hours and truthfully everything has been going well since then. I cried like a hormonal teenage girl that first morning dropping him off, but now that I see how much fun he has I have gotten better. He no longer cries when I leave, but still gives me a really pathetic sad face. Mark said he is always happy to be going home so that made me feel better. I do really like the teacher's in his room. They have really gone above and beyond to learn about him and they don't mind that I am a little over protective still.

January 14 he had his first daycare injury. Apparently he tripped and fell face first on a toy. Of course I don't want my son to be injured in any way, but seriously!!!!! You can't hurt a different part of your body besides the one it took them 5 1/2 hours of surgery to put together!!!! I swear between his face planting on day 4 after his lip repair and face planting again at daycare he is just trying to undo all that wonderful work. (yes I know he is allllll boy and I am just going to have to come to terms with bumps, bruises and scars, but I am still adjusting so just let me fuss : ) It looks like his bottom teeth just came up and took the whole top layer of skin off his scar. Booooo!!!! Nothing can really be done about it so we just put some Neosporin and Aquaphor on the area and restarted scar massage once it healed. Here is the comment from the daycare teacher, "He is really a little dare devil. Everytime I turn around he is climbing on the table or chair and I am racing across the room to try to catch him. Then he will just jump into your arms and assume you are going to catch him." Welcome to my world young lady! Konnor is definitely going to give me gray hair at a much earlier age than I would like. He truly has no fear. He climbs on EVERYTHING and he is always in such a hurry to get where he is going that he spends half the day tripping over his own feet. On a good note, he is really good at catching himself when he falls : )

About 7-8 weeks ago Konnor got his first molar (let me tell you how NOT fun that was). In the weeks since he has also gotten 1 more molar, two lower incisors and an upper incisor. At one point he had 4 teeth coming in at one time. This is actually great news, b/c sometimes cleft children are missing their upper incisors and canines. So right now we have 9 teeth and I think maybe a lower molar is starting to come thru as well. Unfortunately, it takes anywhere from 2-4 weeks for teeth to fully come in for him. We are working on getting him into a dentist soon. Children with cleft palate are sometimes missing teeth (as discussed above) or their teeth can grow in unusual places, so we just want to stay on top of his oral health.

Konnor started speech therapy at the beginning of December. We are finding that our Son is somewhat stubborn. He started out making alot of progress with just general vocalizations, but then he started getting stubborn and refused to use his signs. We only taught him some basic signs (eat, milk, all done, please, up and more), but we found that he was just starting to point and use the "more" sign for everything. We have added in the sign for "help" this week and that has gone over really well. He is at an age where he wants to communicate, but is getting easily frustrated when he can't make us understand what he wants. Unfortunately when he gets frustrated he starts throwing things or trying to hit Baxter. "Help" has gone a long way to alleviating some of his frustration. Konnor loves visiting with Miss Brittany (our speech therapist). I talked to her to see how she thought he was doing and she said that he is really doing pretty good. She said that boys tend to talk later than girls and it is pretty common for them to not start talking alot until age 2. She said that if Konnor hadn't had a cleft she probably would not have started seeing him until age 2, but due to his cleft she wanted to start teaching him how to use those muscles early. He has started making more vocalizations. He says "Mama," "Yay,""Uhh" for up, "Ba" and he makes the "Mmmm" sound alot. We are working on teaching him to pair a vowel with the "M" sound. He babbles ALOT, but they are not really specific sounds at this point. We will just keep plugging away. The good news is that in the last few weeks his comprehension of what we are saying has gone thru the roof.

We have also started trying to foster some independence in Konnor so that he is not permanently attached to Mama's hip all the time. Don't get me wrong I LOVE snuggling with my little man, but I think that since he is not talking we sometimes still treat him a little to much like a baby instead of the almost 2 yr old that he is. He is getting very good at "helping" Mama with chores. He will throw things away for me (although he gets a little over eager with this and sometimes we lose a toy to the trash can : ), he will hand me some of the dishes in the dishwasher to put away and he is getting very good at helping to pick up his own toys. He also likes to mimic alot and has his own miniature set of vacuum, swifter, broom and mop that he will follow behind me with and mimic whatever I am doing with the appropriate miniature version. Part of me wants him to stay a baby MUCH longer, but I am also so proud to see how far he has come in such a short time.

Ok so for the final update let's do some stats.....Konnor is now up 9 lbs and 4 inches since coming home!!!!! Bad news is that the entire month of January he had an ear infection that he just couldn't kick. It is clear now, but one of his ear tubes was pushed out by drainage and the other is barely hanging on. Sooooo, on Tuesday we are getting new ear tubes placed. I hate that he has yet another procedure scheduled, but our little man truly cannot go without ear tubes.

February 9th we celebrated our first Chinese New Year as a family. We attended a dinner and they had all sorts of demonstrations and activities. Konnor was not so excited about it (as you will see in the picture), but hopefully over the next few years he will start to enjoy it more.

Ok so sorry if your eyes are crossed from reading my mile long post : ) We had to get a new computer and it has taken me forever to learn how to use the blasted thing (me+technology=not good). Thank you for your patience and for continuing to check in with us. I promise to get more in tune with this contraption and get posts up more often.

Ashley