The Tortoise and The Hare-Part 2

Asher, our little tortoise, decides to do things, well, anything, in his own time. We've been waiting and waiting for him to crawl on his hands and knees. When the weather cooled off, and with Sam walking so well, we've been playing outside every evening. Asher, to our surprise, has started crawling in the grass. On the hard woods, he drags himself, but apparently the resistance of the grass encourages him to crawl. Today, he translated his outdoor abilities on our rug in the living room. I set him down on one side, and he proceeded to crawl all the way across it. Whoohoo! Then, to really get Mommy and Daddy going, when I went to check on him during nap, I found him on his knees hanging from the top crib rail doing his best to pull up. Needless to say, we are super excited. He's not going to be running down the street in the next few months, but he's making huge progress.

Sam seems to be deciding that OT is not on his agenda. In the past few weeks he has pretty much met every OT goal he had...puzzles, shape sorters, hammering, putting pegs in a board, putting coins in a bank, coloring... you name it. Just to go the extra mile, he has decided he wants to feed himself with a spoon. He resorts to his hands a lot, but he can actually dip his spoon in his bowl and put it in his own mouth. The final straw occurred on Sunday after nap time. Jess went in to get the boys up since we heard them chattering. He started laughing as soon as he walked in the room. Lounging in the corner of his crib, Sam happily smiled at him wearing nothing but his jeans. He had shed both his socks and his LONG SLEEVED T-SHIRT during nap. Any 20 month old who can feed himself with a spoon and take off his own shirt unassisted probably doesn't need weekly OT visits. We think this is totally awesome, as we will soon have to add speech therapy. Both boys officially have 3 words each, but obviously, we need more than that based on their age. Ash doesn't understand as much as Sam, but Sam can follow almost any simple direction now. We are starting to have to watch what we say around him, especially since he can't tell us what he heard yet. :)

Fall crept up on me this year. We promised ourselves that we would go into a modified lock down this year to protect the boys' lungs from the dreaded RSV. Last year was tough, but this year might be tougher since we have gotten use to taking them out and about. The boys LOVE hustle and bustle; the more going on the better. When we took them to the mall, you would have thought we were at Disney. Hanging around the house will be a challenge, but we feel like we should try to scale back. The boys have weathered several colds pretty well, but after living in the hospital for four months, we don't want them to ever have to go back. We will be getting hard core with the hand washing, staying at home most of the time, and when we do go out, sticking to outdoor settings at off times of day. Hopefully no one, particularly mommy, will go too crazy.