Progress

John Paul is doing great. I haven't been able to get him doing his new things on video. He stops when he sees the camera and then all of his interest goes into trying to take the camera from me. lol!

So I'll just tell what he is doing and I'll keep trying for the video. He has learned how to sign mama, daddy, and eat. He doesn't necessarily use them in context, but he has learned how to do them and that in itself is great! I'm sure that he will understand the meaning soon. Right now he does them to imitate me, but when I say the word he looks confused. I think he is trying to put it all together. I am trying to teach him the sign for ball now. He understands the word ball. Like earlier we were tossing a ball back and forth and it rolled past him. He looked around behind him at the ball and then decided it was too far away and picked up a truck and rolled it back instead. I put the truck aside and asked him to get the ball. Then he turned around and got the ball. It's not that I didn't want him playing with the truck, I just wanted him to follow through with getting the ball back to me.

He is also starting to do a lot better with feeding himself. He was dropping the spoon if I didn't have my hand snug on top of his. But today we had some progress! I held his wrist, rather than his hand, and he held the spoon himself. He was doing so well with it that I slid back and held his forearm to help him scoop. He was doing the scooping motions by himself for the most part. It's like he just needs to know that he is being helped. Otherwise, he'll either drop the spoon and won't do anything or he'll try to scoop and feed himself with both hands on the spoon. He isn't able to do it that way and actually get food on the spoon, but he will try now. :) I'm not sure if he is going to be left or right-handed. I alternate and use both hands and he actually does pretty well with both. Sometimes he uses his left hand and sometimes he uses his right. It depends on what he is doing. I think he is trying to figure out which one he's going to use. Maybe he'll be ambidextrous.

I will be able to pick his pictures up tomorrow or Friday. I have to call tomorrow to see if they came in early. They didn't offer me a picture CD and then I found out on their web-site that they do have them. By then they had already been sent off for development. I may try to order one when I pick the pictures up, if it isn't too expensive. If not then I will just try to scan them and put them on this blog. I'll probably do that anyway so everyone can see them. Hopefully they will scan clearly. I can't wait to see them and get them hung on the walls.

He's also doing really well on the stairs. He has been for a while. He can go up and down them on his own by sliding up and down slowly on his bottom. If one of us is holding his hand then he will walk slowly up and down them, but otherwise he can do it all himself on his bottom. I don't have to worry about him on the stairs now, but it will be a different story when Dasha gets here. She seems like Chloe was...FEARLESS! Which can be great for motivation, but not so great for safety. We'll have to kick the safety up a few notches when she gets here. There are things that I don't have to worry about with John Paul that I will with a smaller child. One thing I noticed is that she puts EVERYTHING in her mouth. Chloe was the same way, so I am used to it. lol! But John Paul doesn't do stuff like that. It will be hard to let him play with age appropriate toys when there is a little mouth following him around waiting to gobble his toys up. lol! I can't wait to get her home and see John Paul playing with her. We watched video of her the other day and John Paul looked at her and kept smiling really big. Then he would look at me and smile and then look back at her and smile. Then he started pointing at the computer screen that we were watching her on. He's going to be a great big brother, I think! I think he will be happy to have another little person here. He LOVES other children.