All Things Samuel

Back before the pregnancy went awry, I promised a more detailed update on Samuel.

Six months later...

The Numbers:
Age:  36 months
Adjusted Age:  33 months
Weight:  28.5 pounds
Height:  36 inches
Shirts:  2T and 3T
Pants:  24mo and 2T
Shoes:  7.5W
Naps:  1-3 hours
Sleeps:  7:30pm to 6:30am (11 hours)


A Few of His Favorite Things:
It's still common to find Samuel sitting in the corner of his room, perusing through a large stack of books.  He will read just about anything, but his favorites are: Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food?, The Biggest Cookie in the World, The Little Blue Truck, Millie Waits for the Mail, and You Can Name 100 Trucks.

He has thirty minutes a day to watch television and he always requests Mighty Machines...a series for kids that teaches them about vehicles and heavy machinery.  Personally, I'd rather not watch it every. single. time. but I can appreciate that he's learning something instead of watching mindless cartoons.

The boy loves his trucks.

Breaking Bad (Habits):

If you know much about Samuel's story, you'll know that eating has been his biggest struggle.  Oral aversion.  A threatened 'failure to thrive' diagnosis.  Oral motor issues.  Slow GI motility.  Sensory issues.  Learned behavioral patterns.  It's been enough to make a momma scream...or cry.

While I was away on bed rest, Samuel continued to make progress accepting and chewing different textures of table food.  His daddy, Nana, and occupational therapists did a great job.  But he still did very little self-feeding and required a lot of distraction (ie. television or youtube.)

We've known for quite a while that some of Samuel's resistance to eating was probably behavioral.  If you've fought eating your whole life, why would you suddenly stop?  So, with his 15th percentile standing on the growth chart in our minds, we decided to tackle The Feeding Issue.  No more television during meals.  We'll eat together at the table.  He'll have to feed himself.  You're gonna have to TRY, kid.  If he doesn't eat, fine.  No punishment, no nagging, no begging.

I'll be honest, the first week I was sure we were failing miserably.  He ate next to nothing and every time I changed his clothes for bed, his already skinny torso was noticeably thinner.  Ugh.

But here's the part where I pat us on the back, thank God, and marvel at what has been accomplished.  He began to eat.  He tried new things.  He stopped whining, complaining, crying, pouting, etc and began to join in on our dinner conversations. 

I won't say that we are THERE yet.  That marvelous place where he eats like a kid his age.  We might as well forget trying to feed him anywhere but home.  Tantrum with a side of refusal anyone?  And he pretty much has a meltdown anytime he gets his hands messy.  "Wipe it!!!!"  Sensory issues to blame?  But on the whole, he has amazed us.

And so now we're ready to deal with the bottle.  You know...the bottles of Pediasure he's been getting before bed and during the night to boost his calorie intake?  The bottles that we were just about to ween him from right before the pregnancy drama began?  Yup.  Those bottles.  I'm glad we have had them to fall back on while we confronted The Feeding Issue, but now they have got to go!

Whew.  And if breaking those bad habits wasn't enough, we have the normal sort of bad habits to abolish as well.  The paci.  No paci=no sleep.  His blankie.  I'm sure they'll let him have that in kindergarten (ha!)  Potty training.  He'll show signs of readiness eventually.  Right?

Therapies:
Birthdays mean reevaluation time around here.  He was reevaluated for speech, physical, and occupational therapies based on three year old skills.  He didn't qualify for speech.  No surprise there...the kid can hold quite the conversation these days.  From what I understand, he qualified for occupational therapy because he lacks quite a few self-help skills (such as dressing, brushing his own teeth, etc.) and is a little behind with fine motor skills.  He also qualified for physical therapy - not because he is terribly delayed with gross motor skills, but because his 'quality of movement' is not up to par.  We are talking through some strategies that may help him improve in this area (more on that another time.)


The Daily Thing:
Like most kids his age, he is developing quite a lot of independence.  He wants to do things for himself.  And watch out if you try to do it for him.  He's quite the perfectionist.  If he doesn't do things just right or if he hurts himself, he gets very frustrated.  Oy vey!

Most of the time, he's a pretty happy kid.  His behavior at home is great, but get him out in a crowd of people and it deteriorates quickly.  After all, we have AVOIDED crowded, germ-filled areas over the last few years.  I'm sure that is another thing we are just going to have to practice.

He knows all of his colors except yellow and pink (which he correctly names about 50% of the time) and we have just begun letter identification.  So far, every letter is either A or S...but hey, it's a start!

He's taken a sudden liking to coloring and I couldn't be happier about it.  Look at the beautiful hold he has on that crayon!

My little teacher heart could not be more happy!  :)