Benjamin first because he is the youngest: Benny is now six months old and is officially crawling! He is not super great at it yet, especially if he is wearing long pants that get tangled up around his feet; he tires out quickly, so it is not uncommon to see him just lay down wherever he is and fall asleep. But he is definitely moving in some rudimentary hands-and-knees crawling.
I can't remember exactly when Emerald and Gabriel started crawling. I want to say they were older--Gabe started Bright Horizons when he was seven months old and he was not crawling at that point; Emerald started daycare when she was nine months old, and she had an imperfect, funny crawl. The reason I remember the latter is that one of the first days that Michael went to pick her up from BH, it was free play time and she was at the far end of the foyer. As soon as she saw him, she started giggling and doing her leg-dragging army crawl to Daddy as quickly as she could,happy as a clam. It was quite adorable.
Anyways, so Ben is definitely the earliest crawler and he all ready has good form--Emerald did the army crawl until right before she started walking, while Gabriel preferred the hands-and-toes bear crawl.
In other news of Ben, he is eating baby food pretty steadily now. He is adventurous--everything he wants to try, and everything he likes. Well, almost everything. Thus far, he has been unimpressed (and even a little annoyed) with carrots. Eventually, if you are patient enough, he will grudgingly eat it though he makes no attempt to hide his distaste. The exception to the rule is steamed carrots that we eat he prefers over the baby food or carrot souffle; in that form, he will at least tolerate them. Everything else he is enthusiastic about, particularly ice cream, chocolate pudding, mac-and-cheese, bananas, and sweet potatoes.
Gabriel next: the first week of school, it seemed perfect. He was excited to go, we were starting to get consistently positive reports back from his teachers, and he sleeping better.
I don't know what changed. Maybe the hard work started to outweigh the fun, maybe the novelty wore off, or maybe he is realizing this is more of a long-term arrangement than he had originally anticipated. Whatever it is, things started going downhill. He is having difficulty eating, is waking up at 2 and 3 in the morning, screaming and yelling and not going back to sleep at all (even with a second dose of medicine). Reports from school started including more frown-y faces, accompanied with comments such as "very emotional day, cried all morning" or "didn't have a good day", "won't lay down at nap time".
Perhaps most bothersome of all is the unprecedented aggression. Gabriel has never been one to take out his frustration in a physical manner; it's just not his way. Now we are hearing that he is pulling hair, scratching people, and throwing his milk. It bothers me to hear these things, and worse that I honestly don't know how to fix it because that communication barrier is still there, now more pronounced than ever as we have to work on coaxing him back out of his shell every day when he gets home.
His teachers still adore him; they are completely understanding and are not acting like he is a problem at all. They deal with these kinds of things with every new student they get and often with students they have had for a while. It is to be expected in a class of special needs students. That doesn't really make me feel better about it though, or make me worry any less about them wanting us to pull him out of the program. While I miss him like crazy cakes while he is gone and hurt every time I read about what a rough day he had, I have read and been told time and time again....Gabe's best chance is early intervention. Less than 50% of children with ASD will be diagnosed before they get into kindergarten and a formal education setting, and at that point it is too late. Having Gaby diagnosed at 3 years has given him the best advantage and we can't pass that up.
So, that has been stressing us all out, but we are working with the teachers trying to come up with solutions to improve Gabe's school experience and until then we are up all night with him and trying to shower him with as much affection and attention as possible.
Emerald's only real news is that she got her hair cut! I wish I had a picture on my computer of it, but you can look on Facebook where I posted one. It is a chin-length layered bob with straight bangs, and it makes her look like such a grown up!
Yesterday when Michael had his half day, we took her out to lunch at Furr's (which is her favorite--all you can eat? Of course she is a fan!) and then I took her to get her first serious haircut while Michael took Benjamin to Staples to look at computers.
I was nervous that she was going to hate it. Girl can barely tolerate having her hair brushed, how was she going to behave for this?
There was no reason to be apprehensive because she was so good! Luckily, there was no wait and the girl that did her hair had purple highlights and was super friendly. Emerald was so excited--everyone there loved her and she kept giggling and talking about whatever. It was kind of hard because I saw all that hair on the floor and I remembered when Emerald was bald, bald, bald for two years and we were so happy when all that wispy red fuzz started getting length. It felt so callous to just chop all of it off in less than a half an hour when we waited for so long for it to come in.
Not thinking, I told the hairstylist that I wanted it to be about shoulder-length, not considering that Emerald scrunches up her shoulders every time you touch her hair. In the end, it is closer to chin length, but everyone agrees that it works for her. She looks like such a big girl now :)
Saturday night, Michael's cousin Jordan and her husband Corey came into town, so we got to meet them for the first time. I believe she is from Georgia but lives in California, so we didn't get a chance to meet her before this--Michael's family lives all over the place.
That is all that is new this week for us! I'll write when we are interesting again!
--Andie--
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