The Weekend Explosion

Where do I begin? We had such a great weekend that I fully expect it to take all week to describe everything. Here we are at the Buddy Walk yesterday, sweaty but happy...



Today is Nico's actual birthday, though we did all the celebrating stuff this weekend. Happy #3 little man!

The party and the Buddy Walk were great, but what I really want to talk about first is Lincoln's developmental explosion that is going on right now. First of all, we all agree that he is officially crawling. He still lapses into a crab walk or modified, leg-out crawl quite often, but he is moving away from the scooting/dragging thing he was doing for months.

Also, he learned to clap yesterday, and frankly I am kind of frustrated with the little brat about it. After months of working with him on clapping, spending hours clapping my hands, then showing him how to do it and waiting expectantly to see if he would repeat it, he decided to clap for his grandmother instead of his mother for the first time. Although I am very offended that he snubbed me in that way, I have to say it is so darn cute to see him clap. He more hits his wrists together than actually smacks his palms, and he gets so excited when he does it.

We have braced ourselves for more delayed development, so we don't know what to do with ourselves when he has this kind of explosion. On top of everything else, Linc started pulling himself to standing this weekend. He did it first on the easel Nico got for his birthday as we were putting it together. He was circling around it like a little carpet shark, and before we knew it, he had pulled himself up and was just standing there. He repeated the performance using several different objects, including us.

Then, to top off the great weekend, he had a real, full meal of solids last night! Just to see if he would like it, I gave him a bite of tortilla at dinner, and he loved it. It was the first time he has eaten so many bites that I just stopped counting. He ate refried beans off of my fingertip because we didn't have a spoon, and he drank ice water from a cup, sucking at it like a little vampire and reaching for the cup excitedly. Grandpa started him eating ice this weekend, and lets not forget that although he shunned the cake on his birthday, he loved it at the party this weekend when Sonal, his speech therapist, let him try it.

I am so proud of him, I can hardly stand it. Last night, since the boys were sharing a room, we let Linc sleep with us after he woke up to have his bottle. All through the night, he would curl up against me, throwing his arm out to grab me and rubbing his face on my shoulder. What bliss. When I got up to get in the shower, there he was smiling at me, his round cheeks a little red from the sun yesterday, surrounded by pillows and tucked into the blanket so that only his face was visible. He was proud of himself, I could tell. And boy, do we agree.