* Tristan is actually expressing opinions and preferences. He wanted milk to drink but not water. He wanted to be outside and not inside.

* I think he chipped one of his teeth on the bottom. It looks distinctly chipped. It doesn’t seem to be loose. I think he may have done it while sneaking into the bathtub today. I heard him playing in his room with some electronic toys and I believe he knows that while they are going, we will not come bother him. So he walked into the bathroom next to his room carrying a singing microphone toy. I heard the scream of a baby who thunked himself and ninja-ran toward his bedroom.. finding it empty. I stepped into the bathroom and he was sitting on his ass in the bathtub and howling his head off with no other evidence of injury. I picked him up and he calmed down shortly after, and I tried to examine him for major injury or obvious source of pain. The only thing I noticed was that tooth.

* Today was a shitty tantrum day. At playgroup, I actually stepped in with some of the sharing issues to try to compromise with the parents of the kids involved, because none of us really require the same things of similar aged kids with regard to sharing and we all want to be fair to our kids in our own ways. I do insist that he not steal shit from babies who don’t yet walk, because they are not on fair ground. (I need to teach him the concept of not picking on the weak if you are a good person.. any advice on how to teach that at 18 months if it’s possible?) I also insist that he not steal shit from kids whose parents intervene and take the toy away from them whenever the kid is involved in a toy dispute – again, that kid is at a disadvantage. In any event, whenever possible I try to encourage two kids to play together on the same toy. But I digress.. the point is that he picked on the weak a lot today and although it’s best to skillfully ignore that to let it extinguish itself, it needs intervention for some sort of social propriety. He got frustrated and was already in the mood to be outside (communicates this by going to the door and putting arms up on as if to open it, and looking over at me). Somewhere in there, he just began the OMGWTF bloody murder scream. By somewhere in there, I mean after I calmed him down a few times from pre-tantrum. This time I don’t even see the obvious mistake that I always catch after such an episode, unless it was just “forgot the Tylenol in teething baby, dumbass.” This meant I had to leave epic-screaming baby in the back of the playgroup room, hoping that he’d get the hint like at home and get up within a minute to come find me and try again. Unfortunately, he had an audience… I do not blame people, because it is a heart-wrenching scream. But sometimes he needs to scream it out, and that is incompatible with being in public, especially in a closed room with other parents and children. For the record, if he stops screaming when I pick him up or if he is screaming because he is hurt, he is snuggled into happiness. It’s when the screaming persists when I hold him or he is blatantly uncooperative in a daily activity (sometimes comes up with diaper changes) that he gets shuffled off somewhere to scream it out for a minute (or ten, in case of mid-nap screaming). I came back to him to ask if he was ready to be picked up (“you want up up up?” and he indicates yes by reaching his arms up) about three times before making a successful pickup. Success is defined by him downgrading the scream to crying, whimpering, whining, babbling, etc. The message I am trying to send is that such a scream is an emergency scream only and that he is welcome to communicate his feelings in any other (non-violent, which is not a problem with him anyway other than that scream) way he can manage. But the good news is that I am discussing this without too much of my own emotion. I feel that I reacted properly with some sort of balance between my child and the other people present, so I don’t have that icky feeling that I get when I know I do it wrong. In other words, I felt in control and not like my soul was getting sucked out. I am a little upset, though, because it’s a little upsetting when there’s strong negative emotion.

“The” and “that” are two words I can understand Tristan practicing for sure. He had sort of an “uhh” and an “aah” for a while that I couldn’t really make sense of. These were far more deliberate and pretty freaking neat to hear!

I use this guide for determining how to change any behavior I am present of mind enough to try to change properly. It’s from Karen Pryor’s book called Don’t Shoot the Dog. This book pretty much goes back and forth between examples of animal training and human training, but you should read it if you have problems with people or other animals in your life. These are methods for untraining unwanted behaviors.

1) “Shoot the animal” – eliminate presence of subject
In the case of a marriage, that would mean divorce in polite society, not killing. 🙂
In the case of discipline, it means anything to physically remove the child from the situation. Sending a child to his or her room is a common way to do this.

This method is very effective at keeping someone from behaving in a manner in your presence. It is not effective at teaching jack shit other than general compliance when done gently, so it’s best used in emergencies or when you can’t really train a person (like a TODDLER) to know to leave something like glass alone. You go and grab your toddler who runs into the street, grabs for the stove, charges toward the stairs – and you do this way before you can teach some kids hot and cold, safe and unsafe.

2) Punishment
In the case of discipline, this would be the screamy lectures, the spanking, the slaps, taking away privileges or possessions – stuff that you do as compensation for the crime that doesn’t happen as a logical circumstance of the crime. In reality, when we do these things, we’re usually emotionally charged about our children’s behavior and very out of control of it. We feel overwhelmed and like we have no fucking clue why our child is being a little shit. So we yell or we speak angrily if we’re in pretty good control of ourselves through all of this feeling of being out of control.

Sometimes it works but it’s usually because you manage to plant some fear of disobedience into the heart of the child. Sometimes it annoys the child enough that he or she figures out that it’s just easier to do what you say. It’s not a good way to train behaviors, though – it may stop a behavior but not give the kid incentive other than not pissing you off. It really makes parents and kids feel lousy to have that sort of fighting and anger between them. Relying too much on punishment teaches kids to be sneaky and lie to you.

3) Negative reinforcement
It’s a little bit like punishment, but it’s under the control of the person receiving it. When you are in the process of being negatively reinforced, you are in some sort of discomfort that you can stop immediately upon changing a behavior. When you want a horse to turn, you usually pull the reins in a direction and the horse turns because it knows it can stop the fucking PAIN by turning. It’s how we learn to take care of our young babies – the baby howls and you try everything you can possibly do to get him or her to stop. In essence, young babies get their needs met by pulling on a rein. It is wise to train other ways to communicate needs as soon as possible so that you don’t have an older child who is impatient and screams to get needs met. Or like mine, who is just learning how to express that he’s hungry and thirsty because he was one of those loud criers and he trained me well through negative reinforcement. I can see why I am tired now – it makes people miserable to be on the constant lookout for something aversive!

Now, when you use this on your kids, it can be far more civilized. I’m teaching Tristan not to scream for his food and drink by giving it to him only when he quits screaming. It’s the first step in getting him to actually ask for food and drink. This is painful, as it involves him crying out a tantrum instead of me trying to soothe him in some way, but it’s been necessary for him to learn to approach me calmly when hungry and indicate that he would like food or drink. It’s a technique I’ve used a lot lately in dealing with the “really, WHY are you screaming over this?” sorts of tantrums and he is really doing a shit ton better with both not melting down and expressing his needs.

4) Extinction – letting the behavior go away on its own
The best way to do this regarding any behavior in any person is just to fail to respond. This is the real way to stop being cruelly teased by other people. This is the way to get your toddler to stop doing most sort of irritating but not actually shitty behaviors. This is the way to get your spouse to quit nitpicking.

Just. Don’t. Pay. Attention. It’s a really easy way to discipline, because it’s the free-spirit method – just let them be. Respond to weird social behavior like sticking out tongues inappropriately, hitting occasionally, defiant behaviors.. by ignoring it. A lot of kids are little devils because their parents are quick to converse with them when they are misbehaving to get this behavior corrected, but these parents aren’t very quick to respond when their kids are doing things they’d like their kids to continue doing.

Bad publicity is better than no publicity. Kids will start to misbehave because they earn attention that way. It’s sad, but your kid would rather have you pissed off all of the time than not there. If you are in essence “not there” when annoying shit happens and “there” when neat shit happens, you will have a happier kid who’s more cooperative. I’ve believed this since before Tristan was born and Tristan is a very cooperative kid who delights in play.

Anyway, what goes on is that good behaviors will extinguish (stop; go away) with a lack of attention. But the good news is that a lot of annoying ones do as well!

When someone is being an asshole to you, treat them as though they were doing something you do not understand, like speaking in a language you do not understand, and then do your best to treat them as if no such thing happened.

5) Train an incompatible behavior
Some things can’t be done while doing some other things. Use this to your benefit when you are considering how to get your child to quit doing something. When your kid’s upset, sometimes a good tickle does the trick because you can’t really giggle and sob. Singing and dancing are incompatible with fighting and self-pity. Actually, exercise in general is usually incompatible with self-pity! But a dog lying down across the room cannot beg for food at the table. Identify the behavior you want to change and try to find something fun that can’t be done at the same time, and work on training that as a replacement.

6) Put the behavior on cue
This is a shiny and fabulous way to deal with the toddler who wants to get into things and do things himself. Tristan started closing doors on us pretty soon after he was a year old. Any sort of door he found that was opened, he closed. This is pretty annoying when you are doing household chores or trying to get him a drink of milk. Anyway, we started having him open and close doors on command once he was able to understand the words, and now he does it proudly on cue to show off and not so much for the fuck of it. This means I can even do laundry and load the dishwasher around him these days. Anyway, if you have something that you really don’t want done often or at all, you teach the child to do it on command and then stop giving the command unless the behavior is appropriate or at least not too annoying. 🙂 And with Tristan, I think he’s going to be kind of cooperative about doing stuff right around the house since he gets to do the important things like open and close doors now.

7) Shape the absence of the behavior
Call attention to/positively reinforce any behavior that is not in the category of what you want your child to stop doing. It will become a lot more fun for your child to do what you’d like. If your child is doing something you’d prefer he not do, a way to get him to stop doing that is to praise him for stopping the moment he does and withdraw attention if he starts again. This is a process, though – it will most definitely TEACH the child not to do whatever it is, but it will not stop most dangerous behaviors on an immediate basis. I’ve used this to get Tristan to stop throwing and spilling his sippy cup (in front of me at least :)) by praising the hell out of him for handing it to me or standing it up somewhere instead. And look – now he has two very useful commands!

8 ) Change the motivation
A child who is behaving like a little shit usually has an unmet need or want of some sort, or is in pain or discomfort. A young child does not have the mind to understand why he or she should not grab for mommy’s shiny breakable things. Take care of any needs (food/drink/sleep/elimination especially), comfort any pain, babyproof your home so that the scary stuff isn’t all tempting. When dealing with people in general, consider what unmet needs they have that are making them behave like that, and then it’s a lot easier not to be mad or overly caught up in the drama.

Added new pictures (17 – 18, 18 – 19) and new videos (17 – 18, 18 – 19)

Tristan used to love playing with toys in the car. Now (within this past month or so) he pretty much rejects anything in his car seat aside from himself. He won’t even eat from a snack trap in his car seat most of the time. But he does seem to enjoy the hell out of being in the car lately. He watches all of the scenery rather wondrously every time I catch him. And for some reason, he’s developed interest in the overhead light in James’s car (so he doesn’t want to sit down until he’s had chance to fiddle with it) and some odd seatbelts in my car (a bit more compliant on that one :)).

That being said, we’re evolving FINALLY on that path from baby to child. Tristan gets a lot of chances to walk now since he’s somewhat aware of directions (read that as he chooses to follow them, I think). We don’t always have him down out of the sling, but little things like walking from the car to the stairs and then up them are becoming routine. He presses the garage door button with glee to watch the door go up or down, now that he understands how to jam his thumb to press an “adult” button. EVEN better is that he has good discipline about it and presses only once! I need to train that with a couple of other devices. 🙂

Tristan’s been pretty delightful to be around this past week. Perhaps every time I see what looks like my baby learning and behaving developmentally appropriate it brings me pride instead of just taking things for granted or looking so forward to his naps that I overencourage him to be independent.

A few things have improved for us. First of all, he has started being a bit more demonstrative about stuff he wants. Now he usually reaches up toward the counter when thirsty instead of just breaking down into tears, although there are still bugs to work out there. He is developing signals to express that he’s hungry instead of tripping out. I have also learned to detach my emotions from his screaming most of the time and quickly decide how I think it should be dealt with instead of getting upset by it.

He responds very well to positive reinforcement, and this has shaped how discipline works. When I say discipline, I don’t mean only the correcting of poor behavior, but mostly the shaping of good behavior. This means that Tristan’s pretty easygoing and is accepting of shaping (gets attention for good so repeats good), but it also means that behaviors not offered (shit he don’t do) are hard to train (make him do).

Digression: I think his obsession with opening and closing cabinets is likely a game of peekaboo with the contents of the cabinets. I could totally see that, considering he usually doesn’t empty cabinets or even disturb the contents.

Anyway, we had a playdate with Elizabeth and Eileen. That went very well – we were there for over two hours without anyone getting exceptionally fussy (adults and children :D) and I think we can learn a lot from each other. Elizabeth is about 19 months old and she can echo back perfectly audible two syllable words. I’m completely amazed by this, as she’s way ahead of her peers (or at least the kid I brought over today). Anyway, this was a first playdate with the two of them. Elizabeth’s been kind of stubborn lately – I encountered her yesterday and she was not happy to be in her stroller at ALL. Tristan’s been a pleasant kid but I’m all worried about him. The two kids were very similar in physical ability and size and really interacted marvelously, I think. Tristan spent most of his time playing with cabinets, refrigerator magnet toys, and sometimes coming in to join us all in the living room. Elizabeth spent most of her time trying to impress me.

Pardon me. Tristan woke up screaming and I went to comfort him and then set him back down. I should really remember by now that he tends to wake up screaming sometimes and get over it himself but it’s hard when I see him standing in the crib howling to just let him be. So whether I go to him depends on how annoyed I am at the intrusion or the thought of losing the free time. Today I didn’t give a shit about losing that time so I went to him, but I probably prolonged his agony because he does need to scream it out for a few minutes sometimes. I need to teach him how to express that he is tired other than the spontaneous rubbing of eyes and/or crying. With time.

Anyway, so Tristan and Elizabeth playing. Neither of them needed much hovering but they both needed spot discipline. Kind of like at home, actually.

I give up. Ninja began meowing. I heard it through the monitor. He was locked in Tristan’s room. Either way, Tristan was going to wake up – meowing of doom or me opening the door. He woke in a pretty good mood but obviously still sleepy. I just put him back down but who knows if he’s going to go BACK to sleep?

Maybe I will talk later.

It’s not that I mean not to write here, but I’ve been spending far more of my free time actually communicating individually with people. That being said, I’m still way behind on that contacting people thing.

So, I’ve been bouncing this whole “possible autism” off of just about everyone I can think to bounce it off of. I’m coming to terms with the possibilities, the probabilities, and just daily life. I mean, what can you think? Your kid’s 18 months old and fairly normal but a bit of a weirdo.. and to be confronted with more than a slight possibility of him growing up needing constant care.. suddenly.. whoa. There’s grieving to be done. There’s begging and pleading and anger and sadness and it comes and goes. I am glad that there seem to be no threats on his existence at this time and hope that it remains that way – after all, autism is just a -difference-, right? Not like being given a death sentence..

I have always known that there is something “different” about Tristan. He is not quite like other kids. But I suppose what comes to my mind when I watch and interact with Tristan is that he is like US. He’s a geek kid. He likely does have some oddities but he’s a bright, curious, interactive child. He just doesn’t care about people like other kids do, or if he does, he shows it oddly. He IS AWARE of other people, and of walls that he comes about an inch from crashing into.. but his gaze does not show it. He sort of looks oblivious to a lot of what is going on around him and focused on something he’s interested in. He doesn’t stare at another kid playing with him (or even seem to LOOK or be aware) but he will suddenly negotiate for toys with other kids that he didn’t seem aware of and he’s usually fair about it.

This has actually helped James and I considerably. We get along very well, but there are times when either of us (read: usually me :)) will act snappily or seem frustrated by something inappropriately. We’re finding out that I can’t handle certain distractions well when I am already frustrated – specifically things moving in my peripheral vision and people needing my attention. A week ago, I would’ve tossed this blog entry aside while James randomly spoke to me and he’d be bewildered by my seeming anger at him. And I never was angry at HIM, but him speaking to me then drove me crazy. After our recent research into autism and sensory integration disorders, his reaction to such is to not be hurt but to understand completely.

I am at a point where I’m observing behaviors and hoping they are positive ones. I am scared every time I see a stereotypical atypical behavior – he got on his tiptoes tonight and it sort of spooked me, even though he was actually reaching up to get something higher than him. I am encouraged when he learns new things and he has been learning commands and words like crazy this past week! We’ve been making a lot of headway on the cooperative walking, even though he still LOVES to run and play hide-and-peekaboo.

Our evaluation is on March 22nd. I just want to KNOW what sort of life to expect. I know that we can’t really.. but we can have some reasonable approximation of our expectations, right? I need to know if this funny, bright, energetic child playing peekaboo with daddy right now is going to be suffering and miserable by his nature without anything I can do about it..

drinking milk and standing up in my chair

We have made it to that coveted moment, the 18 month mark!

And with our joys, there are some fears. We were given a routine screening exam called the M-CHAT. It helps detect autism in toddlers. He failed enough of the questions to be referred for a specialist interview. It’s on March 22nd.

Without further ado, the M-CHAT and my pondering through it..

The M-CHAT is validated for screening toddlers between 16 and 30 months of age, to assess risk for
autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The M-CHAT can be administered and scored as part of a well-child
check-up, and also can be used by specialists or other professionals to assess risk for ASD. The primary
goal of the M-CHAT was to maximize sensitivity, meaning to detect as many cases of ASD as possible.
Therefore, there is a high false positive rate, meaning that not all children who score at risk for ASD will
be diagnosed with ASD.

Phew. False positives. That’ll be us, right? Ah, but I see evidence of BOTH possibilities. So I can’t put aside the fear.

Pretty much, “yes” is the answer you want. Except for 11, 18, 20, and 22.

1. Does your child enjoy being swung, bounced on your knee, etc.? Yes (DEAR GOD yes, we are going to get a rocking chair because he loves it so much)

2. Does your child take an interest in other children? Unsure. He seems to interact with people well, but he does not seek to get to know them very often. He plays cooperatively with other children more often than not. He is rude to other children and has grace when other children are rude to him. He does not actively offer toys to others. He is often the one off apart from the group with his own agenda. He is physically kind to children, other than almost tripping over them a lot and removing their hands from toys. He touches others gently when he does – he’s been observed petting people VERY softly (ooh, pretend play too! maybe?). He sort of reflects inward with his rage when he does get pissed about conflicts – throws a tantrum instead of biting/hitting/pulling. He’s a pusher, but more in the “get out of my way” sense.

3. Does your child like climbing on things, such as up stairs? Yes (DEAR GOD yes. To a very cute fault)

4. Does your child enjoy playing peek-a-boo/hide-and-seek? Yes (DEAR GOD yes. To a very cute but very incompatible with civilized walking fault)

5. Does your child ever pretend, for example, to talk on the phone or take care of a doll or pretend other things? Unsure. The trash thing aforementioned is likely pretend. He puts his toys into the refrigerator at times when we have the door open. He has a weird way of doing it, but he hugs and kisses his stuffed animals and dolls. He does not pretend to talk on the phone (we rarely do talk on the phone), he does not pretend to take care of a doll or eat or feed a doll or anything like that but he will feed people upon request. So.. yeah. I need more input as to whether these things he does do qualify, or whether we’re shitty parents who don’t display very good social behavior (we did quit spoon-feeding him at 12 months when he refused spoon feedings; he eats finger foods and has since then.. perhaps he feeds his finger foods to dolls/etc. He does feed them to the real dog!).

6. Does your child ever use his/her index finger to point, to ask for something? No. This is a big concern. This is one of those cases where I wonder if our good (or at least in my book) parenting is at fault. See, he’s always been a screamer demanding instant gratification and falling to pieces when it was insufficient, so we are always a step ahead of him with food and drink. We feed him freely; we pick foods for him and let him eat as much of them as he likes. He reaches out to grab what he likes from the carrier. He rarely sees the world from a stroller. I know he tries to ask for things when we are slow, which we try to do deliberately this past month or so to train him to ask. But this asking/failing causes a lot of his tantrums, too. He really has no words or gestures to ask for food or drink that we understand, with the exception of him going up to where the containers for food and drink are kept and either trying to get one or melting down. ALSO, I am sure he understands what “point” is to an extent. It is a word he has heard daily for most of his life.

7. Does your child ever use his/her index finger to point, to indicate interest in something? No. This is a big concern. This is also one of those where we wonder if his other ways of indication “count.” He taps with his feet to indicate little sprinkler boxes outside of our complex. He grabs at things he wants and is usually successful at getting them. He respects locks and inaccessibility – either he’s satisfied he can’t have something or he’s able to get it himself.

8. Can your child play properly with small toys (e.g. cars or blocks) without just mouthing, fiddling, or dropping them? Unsure but I think yes. I think most of what he does with toys is considered fiddling because it’s improper usage, but he uses his toys to conduct experiments and he can build/stack blocks. He was always a bit slow to learn to use toys “correctly” even when the correct use was modeled, or we tried to physically guide him through motions. But he uses his toys innovatively. He has this musical gear thingie that he puts all kinds of shit on to see what happens – the central piece spins like a little platform. But for the first few months, he instantly removed the gears from the toy any time he found them on and he was instantly obsessed with the damn thing. Now sometimes he puts gears on it, but more often he tests other things. He won’t roll cars, even though we demonstrate it often with the many wheeled things he has. He does stack large blocks but usually just futzes with them or knocks them over/takes them apart.

9. Does your child ever bring objects over to you (parent) to show you something? Yes, but a bit later than other kids did

10. Does your child look you in the eye for more than a second or two? Yes but like what seems like a normal toddler, he is distracted a lot and not interested

11. Does your child ever seem oversensitive to noise? (e.g., plugging ears) No, in fact he is totally fascinated and motivated by noisy things.. shit, is this “oversensitive” expressed positively? This is driving me nuts damnit!

12. Does your child smile in response to your face or your smile? Yes, unless he’s actively upset, he always does. He has the grinnypaws. He expresses his glee openly when he feels it.

13. Does your child imitate you? (e.g., you make a face-will your child imitate it?) Eh.. Poorly or slowly. He does with the smiling. But I think that’s emotion. He is starting to put toys in the fridge and trash. He very rarely tries to kiss me, and he always passively hugged me until about 16 months but now he sort of embraces me too. Sometimes seeing me eat a food will be the “ok” he needed to try that food himself, but shit – usually he shows no interest in what we’re eating at all and can take or leave offerings. He DOES cackle evilly and laugh at “appropriate” points in conversation.

14. Does your child respond to his/her name when you call? Yes but I do not feel it is reliable or that he’d stop his own quest to respond to me if he were on one (this is something I think is normal toddler behavior). In his defense, I didn’t start really referring to and calling him by name until way after good mommies did.

15. If you point at a toy across the room, does your child look at it? Yes but this is recent behavior and I may just feel retarded doing it and been an insufficient teacher

16. Does your child walk? Yes hahhaa he walks, runs, bounces, takes steps with a good handrail.. doesn’t jump well yet, though ;p He was interested in walking as soon as he figured out how to crawl and did not let me rest until he could do it alone!

17. Does your child look at things you are looking at? No. Unless I am talking and pointing at it, and this is fairly recent behavior as well. That being said, I blame me for that one. I wear him all of the time. However, I am on my own quest and he’s looking around at what he is interested in.. we don’t really “talk.” I was told early today that he WAS looking at what I was looking at, when I did not solicit the particular comment, so I have hope that I’m the one off in La La Land.

18. Does your child make unusual finger movements near his/her face? No – I’ve seen far more “normal” kids doing it more than I’ve seen him doing it

19. Does your child try to attract your attention to his/her own activity? Yes but not as often as other kids do, I think. I’m hoping that any deficiency here is because we’ve taught him to be independent both through security and plenty of solo playtime.

20. Have you ever wondered if your child is deaf? No, in fact he is extremely motivated by sound and by music. Incidentally, I am fairly sure he has some form of interesting pitch recognition already.

21. Does your child understand what people say? Yes, probably a lot more than I was about to give him credit for heh

22. Does your child sometimes stare at nothing or wander with no purpose? Unsure. Never caught him staring at nothing (I am alert for that because of seizures!) but he wanders a SHITTON. A metric shitton. But is he wandering with no purpose or exploring? He’s VERY explorative. He chases airplanes. He examines the ground and indicates imperfections by sitting down and examining them. He picks up rocks, wood, etc to examine them.

23. Does your child look at your face to check your reaction when faced with something unfamiliar? I think no? but he does look for me when I teach him he may only do something with help. He honestly seems kind of fearless or trusting that I will be there. He DOES look at me if he expects me to force assistance, like climbing down these days, before proceeding (YAY! This is a MAJOR good thing – he’s pitched down steps before out of excitement)

***

Ok, now that I have all of that out of my system, Tristan is growing very well. He is officially 26 lb 12.8oz – he lost weight from the beginning of February (when I brought him to the doctor for fever/lingering cold that went away by the time we got in) when he was 27 lb 9.6 oz. Either way, he’s about 27 lbs of very snuggly baby. He’s 33.5 inches tall – he must get that whole tallness thing from NOT ME! And not most of our family, either.

Even though he is teething and getting over yet another cold, he has been delightful for the past couple of days. Routine at-home tantrums are easy and predictable. He does get frustrated when I try to make him ask for things when before we were pretty much just on top of things with the food or drink or responded to the crying with such when we were not on top of things. I think he treats me pretty fairly most days, though.

I just wish I weren’t caught up in the shit he can and cannot do right now. Either that, or that I had a mentor in real life who can help me teach him things that we’re not good at. I’m not looking forward to such a mentor being in a medical setting. I just want a friend who’s different from me to help me teach him to point at stuff like they taught their kid.

But I digress yet again! In every respect other than any possible delays and my fears, he’s doing wonderfully. He seems to be learning language and understanding directions at a rapid rate. We can’t understand him well when he speaks – many words sound all toddlery – and I think he feels insecure about speaking, because we’re normally way more in tune with him. He’s a happy kid most of the time and that makes me happy.

Just woke up and saying “Hi!” over and over to summon mommy