I’ve been unable to provide an update for awhile as I’ve been too busy keeping up with my little guy as the milestones keep building up all of a sudden. Cisco is doing great. He is now 1.5 years old.
He’s started wearing his glasses all day and it has helped keep his eyes straight as we were starting to see the eyes wonder again this summer. Not much luck with eye therapy though, he’s so busy, he can’t stop much to do the therapy.
Cisco started the commando crawl (where you scoot your belly along the ground). He’s become quite the expert and can make his way from one end of the house to the other. In fact, he spends most his waking day at home on his belly exploring. It has opened up a whole new world for him. He was getting really shy with strangers but that is fading. He’s adventurous and happy.
While he is not talking much at all, he’s a clever little boy. He understands just about everything I say. If He is chewing on a book and I say, “Not for eating,” he’ll put it down and cry as if I’ve internally wounded him beyond repair. If I ask if he want to do something like eat I better be ready to do it right away or he’ll get upset. No idle discussion allowed around here.
We recently visited Cisco’s pediatrician. She was happy with is weight gain. He is following curve but at his own rate like everything else. He’s very small for his size, in like the 1 percentile. She was concerned with is height though. On her chart it looked like he had flat lined the last 6 months but I knew he had grown as things were outgrown and/or fitting differently. So, i did something I had meant to do for months, compare his stats to the newest CDC chart (our doctors office has been using the old ones because they had so many old copies and didn’t think there was much of a difference) which was adopted from the World Health Organization collected from breastfed babies (which makes more since since breastfeeding is the natural form of baby nutrition). While he was still below the curve, he followed it and it looked just fine. It made me feel so much better as I’m a very small woman and so are many of my family members. I’m not allarmed if he is small but I was alarmed if he wasn’t growing at all. What a relief. I convinced our doctor to do the same and she agreed, no need to go to the endocrenologist to investigate a growth hormone issue as she had originally suggested.
I wish I could figure out how to get videos on this blog because I have
one on this next milestone: walking with his gait trainer. While Cisco is not walking unassisted, he is now trying out a walker with good success. The first day I put him in it, I said, “I’m going to put you in here so you can learn to walk like mommy and Big Brother.”. I strapped him into the trunk support pads and he started taking steps immediately. It was beautiful. He is now starting to explore the house upright thanks to the gait trainer. I realized last night that it is now time to put padding on the corners of the dining room table and plug protectors in the outlets. My boy is on the go.
Lastly, we visited his physiatrist today. She was happy with his progress with motor skills and we both agreed a great improvement from when we last saw her 6 months ago. She also gave us a DMV form for a 6 month temporary disability tag for the car since Cisco isn’t walking yet. I was starting to feel like we need accommodations in some places and she agreed. She also advised us against using the high top shoes anymore. She said he strenghth in his ankles and legs looked great and the shoes were just adding bulk. I had been noticing he walks in his gait trainer much better barefoot and really was having trouble if we used the high tops. She suggested just a low profile shoe to protect his feet outside as I would like to start taking him out with the gait trainer. We tried it for the first time on the porch yesterday and it went really well.