Jason Lately

Okay so I know I’ve posted lots of “tidbits” about my kids lately, but over the past week I’ve written down several Jason moments that I want to remember and so I thought I’d might as well post them too. Besides that there’s an adorable video clip – so if you all the journaling is a bit much for you – just check out the video cause it really will make you smile.

Budding Artist? - Jason has had very little interest in anything artistic. We’ve been able to leave out crayons, markers, and scissors without any worry about Jason picking them up. I’m not exaggerating at all when I say his interests still lie heavily with cars and trains. The other night Abigail brought in her piano book and showed me that Jason had just scribbled on a page with a pencil he’d found lying around in the living room. Then he came in the kitchen showing Justin and I the pencil and saying “draw.” I proceeded to explain that we only draw on the kitchen table. The next thing I knew Jason was doing just that – drawing ON THE kitchen table. Justin and I couldn’t help but laugh, Jason on the other hand was shocked that I was stopping him from doing just what I had explained he could.

Next American Idol? - I wrote a while back of Jason’s love of Curious George. He definitely still adores that speech impaired monkey, but we’ve recently added Elmo to Jason’s favorite TV characters. Last week I was sitting in the office doing my thing while Jason was watching the last of Elmo’s World and during the closing song I heard Jason singing along. For most parents that’s probably not a big deal, but with Jason’s limited vocabulary that was HUGE for me. So I grabbed the video camera, rewound the show and caught it on tape:

Isn’t that just the cutest? I can hardly believe that Jason’s been doing speech therapy for almost a year. I still think that much of what he says can only be understood by me, but at this point being able to understand my boy is HUGE. We’re starting to get three word phrases and one of our newest phrases is “what’s that?” which he uses when we’re looking at picture books. I love being about to have little conversations with him. His voice is just adorable and the way he fluctuates his voice (imitating me I’m sure) cracks me up. He’s definitely making improvements and he seems to surprise me daily with some of the things that come out of his mouth. He’s a super smart kid – just a man of few words.

Working Hard – When kids are learning how to talk they need lots of reinforcement. As parents we give them praise when they say something new and we often repeat what they say – for example: kid says “wa-wa”, parent says “oh, you want some water?” Jason still struggles with a few consonants like “C” and “G”. So saying “Carly” is super difficult for him. So instead he calls her “Esa” Not sure how that sounds anything remotely like Carly, but he’s consistent with it and we’re grateful he at least has something he refers to her as. It cracked me up last week when I heard Justin mimicking Jason and called Carly “Alyssa”. I’ve found myself doing the same thing several times.

To help him with these difficult sounds, his speech therapist will use an infant spoon to hold down the tip of his tongue and then he’s can do it. She tells me that he just needs to catch on to what it feels like to say “C” and “G” and what his tongue needs to do. Right when she got here on Friday he ran into the kitchen and started rummaging through the utensil drawer for the spoon. She said that was the cutest thing that’s happened to her all week. Most 2 year-olds wouldn’t tolerate someone sticking something in their mouth and then expecting them to try and talk - while my two-year-old is completely cooperative. He works very hard during therapy and is definitely improving.

Early to bed, REALLY early to rise – Over the past week or so Jason has started waking up before 7am! In my house anything before 7am is still considered the dead of night and is unacceptable. The first time he woke up he went into the girl’s room and hopped up on their bed and woke them up. The second day he went into the girl’s room and started playing with a musical bus, we all woke up to “stop and go, stop and go on the school bus…” So he and I had a little talk after which he understood he can’t go into the girl’s room anymore in the morning. He’s done fantastic with that, but now he comes into my room instead. Sunday morning it was 5:53am! Thankfully, I was able to convince him it was still night-night-time and he went back to bed for an hour. So it’s looking like 12 hours at night and a 4 hour nap during the day is becoming too much. He still needs a nap though and I can’t imagine putting a time limit on how long he can nap, but the alternative of early mornings doesn’t sound so appealing either. Maybe he’s just trying to get me adjusted to the sleep deprivation I’ll be experiencing once this baby comes.

Mr. Sensitive – No kid likes to be corrected or told they can’t do something, but lately Jason has been VERY sensitive to correction. If he does something he shouldn’t and we (even in the nicest possible way) tell him he did something wrong, he breaks down in tears. Not tantrum, spoiled-little-brat tears, but you’ve broken my little heart tears. It really makes us feel bad for him… maybe we’re just totally getting played.

Pearly Whites - Last week we all visited the dentist for our semi-annual cleaning. And drum roll please….everyone came out cavity-free. This was Jason’s first visit to the dentist and I wasn’t sure how it would go. The girls were three when they started going to the dentist and did awesome. They let them take all the x-rays they wanted and sat perfectly still, mouth wide open while they got their teeth thoroughly cleaned. Jason is much more of a wild card, but thankfully he did awesome. They put Nemo on TV he was in the zone. The hygienist said she could have tap danced on his head and he wouldn’t have noticed. And he didn’t have any problem getting the x-rays either. Hooray for Jason!