Mom Updates

What a wonderful big brother he will be!

As we approach the end of August, there's a lot of excitement and change on the horizon. Where I work, college classes are about to begin. Our new library building is opening. It also happens to be my birthday week with the big 3-5 arriving in six days. Despite officially becoming "Advanced Maternal Age" as OBGYN doctors like to call it, I'm actually looking forward to the coming week. We have an at-home family brunch planned for Sunday, a quiet dinner out with Hubby after work on the evening of my birthday, and even a couple of private party movies planned (one at my mom's house and one with a theater rental!). None of this has much to do with being a mom except for the fact that it feels like a nice little reward for working that #momlife so hard--I mean, I am growing an entire human at the expense of my body and sleep while feeding, chasing, and ensuring the survival of another human at the expense of my free time (and sleep). I wouldn't have it any other way.

Recent change that's not so good is the new continuation of Covid-19 thanks to the Delta variant. So we continue to keep Baby 1 home as much as possible. I would love to enroll him in a dance class, gymnastics class, swimming, or regular story times at the library. I know he would thrive, enjoy it, and get some toddler socialization that he doesn't currently have at home (yet). But with him too young to get the vaccine (yet), none of our family is ready to take that chance. So we try arts and crafts at home, let him play on trampolines and with toy cars outside when it's not too hot, and take him to the library to look at books while distanced from other kids. For a while he did have one outing every week to a 30-minute speech therapy session where he got to interact with a very nice woman who let him play with a variety of toys. She encouraged sounds and speaking with him one-on-one while they were both masked.

Yes, Baby 1 is officially diagnosed with a speech delay, but he is making wonderful progress every day. When speech therapy started at the end of June the only words he knew at 2 years old were "Mama" and "Dada." He now can say "ball," "Papa" (my dad), "Mimi" (my mom), "Me," and "Baby" super clearly and knows exactly what they mean. He's occasionally said "more" and "up" out loud, as well as "nya" for "no" and "Titi" for "O-tita" (his great aunt). We're working on getting him to 50 words to help express his wants and needs. Our in-person speech therapy has now ended due to the fact that Baby qualifies for free early intervention services that will be virtual for the time being--so safer, more affordable, and probably more beneficial in the long run as Baby's evaluation led us to come up with a specialized plan tailored to his needs with goals and outcomes set. Our in-person therapy never got quite that detailed, and was $67 for 30 minutes every week.

The evaluation for early intervention services went beyond looking at Baby's expressive speech, which was at a 10-month level, and also tested his receptive speech or understanding (measuring right at his age of 26 months), his gross motor skills (29 months), his cognitive problem solving skills (33 months) and his self-help skills, which measured at a whopping 37 months! That's right, his ability to do such tasks on his own such as recognize his home, brush his teeth, turn on faucets, pour milk, and probably get his own snacks out of the pantry is almost at the level of a three year old! We're super proud (and would be regardless), seeing all of Baby's skills continue to grow every day. He can count on his fingers even if he can't count out loud, he recognizes hundreds of objects, and has a memory better than any baby my dad has ever encountered (he tells us). The early intervention evaluator did recommend we work on fine motor skills (Baby is doing pretty well with them but we just hadn't introduced a lot of tools yet like scissors and glue), and also on pretend play. For fine motor skills, we started playing with Play-Doh (cookie cutters and very safe scissors) as well as toddler scissors for cutting paper. Baby also loves to draw and especially paint! He holds his brush easily and enjoys picking a variety of colors. As far as pretend play, we do have a variety of pretend food that Baby likes to feed us. I thought about buying him a doll house or even a baby doll so he could have toys that are similar to what he encounters at home or will encounter when our second son arrives. But it turns out I didn't have to.

Coincidentally enough, I was playing with Baby in our large walk-in closet where I keep all my old toys that were special to me. My son likes to be kissed by my stuffed cheetah toys, so I was making him giggle with the many plushies in my collection. Then suddenly he saw something in the back of my closet and pointed to himself. I didn't understand. I didn't have any toys that resembled him, did I? After guessing incorrectly several times, he toddled over to my low shelf of toys and pointed right at a little Hispanic baby doll that I got from the American Girl company when I was probably around nine years old.

"How cute!" I thought. "He recognizes that it's a baby and he's a baby!"

I handed him the doll and the biggest smile lit up his face. He held the doll out in his arms, looking her right in the eye, and then started to make her "dance" back and forth. I eagerly took them both downstairs where we found things to do with "Baby" together. He fed her toy macaroni. He read her a story. And he kept holding onto her. My son, who needed to work on pretend play, who I hoped would want to be a good big brother to his new little brother, who had never grown attached to one particular stuffed animal or "lovey" had now made a very special friend. Even more sweet was that this was a doll from my childhood that I had loved and played with. I'd never thought that he might want to share that bond with me, and knowing that I'm having only boys, I thought I might never get to share my love of the American Girl company with my kids either. So it was just wonderful to me to see my son interact with his Baby. And it makes him so happy. He smiles when he sees her after a break of playing with something else. He picks her up first thing when he wakes up in the morning. He calls her name if he can't find her or when he's in the bathtub and they have to be apart. She's getting a little beaten up in the process (I still cringe a little when my precious childhood toy is bumped against a wall for the third time or dropped on the floor), but I think it's worth it to see her played with again and loved so much. My son doesn't even want to change her outfit, as he likes to hold her by the Velcro on the back of her doll onesie pajamas.

So those are the biggest updates happening with being a mom right now. As far as the pregnancy, I've reached the second trimester, so I'm less tired mentally while more tired physically. I've started a little "nesting" by organizing Baby 1's old clothing to get it ready for Baby 2. We've also moved a mattress into the nursery for Baby 1 to have his own "big boy" bed for when Baby 2 arrives and needs to be the one sleeping in our room (he loves all the space, but rolls quite a bit when we test out letting him sleep there). I continue to feel Baby 2 move every day, and even occasionally kick as of today! I'm hoping Hubby will get to catch him in the act! My main complaints are just being a little sore and a little wide/round. There's no more nausea, no extreme fatigue, and not even any Charlie Horses yet (knock on wood). Now we just await our 20-week anatomy scan ultrasound, which is coming up in seven days--another thing to look forward to for my birthday week!