I've been slacking off...

Ok, not intentionally. I was carrying Gavin downstairs one night, missed the last step and fell hard on the bottom stair twisting my ankle really hard. Went to the ER, thought it was just a torn tendon. A few days later had it checked again, and I actually broke a bone in my ankle. SO. I'm on crutches for 6 weeks, can't walk on that foot, etc. So my Mother-in-law stayed for a bit longer to help out with watching Gavin.
Early Intervention came yesterday to check-up on Gavin. A Speech Pathologist was with them this time. Of course, Gavin didn't speak one word, or even so much as make a sound for the whole hour they were here. But the Speech lady asked me if he was talking to himself, and I said "As a matter of fact, he is. He seems like he's talking more to himself than he is trying to communicate with us." She actually said that was good, that was what we wanted him to be doing. Really? You'd rather have him talking to himself than anyone else? No idea why, but I'm assuming that means it's a good developmental milestone or something. So I was thrilled that they actually said that he was doing something they wanted him to be doing!
He has been trying to see how much time he can spend outside recently. Kind of hard, since I can't really take him out. But Grandma is usually willing to go out with him. If, however, she dares step foot outside without him, even to let Jasmine out, he whines, and starts crying. He REALLY wants to be outside recently!
We saw the pediatrician a couple of weeks ago. All she focused on the whole visit, was his size. Therefore, she wanted him to get a G-tube to feed him. I refused. She's been bringing this up to me for the last 15-18 months, and I'm sick of hearing it, and it stresses me out, which stresses Gavin out, all of which affect his desire to eat. I told her that I thought he had finally outgrown his reflux and she said that was nice, but we still needed to worry about his eating. I thought it was great that he wasn't really having reflux recently, as I KNOW that affected how much he ate sometimes, but she didn't want to hear that I guess. She told me we could go see a surgeon to discuss a g-tube, or a gastro doctor to see if he had any suggestions, so I told her we could go see the gastro doctor. I actually don't mind seeing one, I just refused to go back to the one we saw for him last year. He was one of those doctors that think he's always right, and we had nothing valuable to contribute apparently.
When the OT from Early Intervention was here yesterday, she asked who was monitoring Gavin's food intake, besides us. I said "nobody is. Just us." She was surprised, which, after I started thinking about it, so was I. The pediatrician monitors his height and weight, but she knows we're not seeing a gastro doc, so why isn't she interested in HOW MUCH he takes in. It just seems like she should have been asking us occasionally how many ounces of Pediasure/formula he was taking in, or how much solid food, or something. OR, made sure we went back to a Gastro doc to discuss it. Like I said, she's been bringing up a G-tube to me for the last 15+ months, (except that 2 weeks ago she said "If Gavin wasn't doing so well with his development and his milestones, we would have had this conversation a long time ago.") WHAT??? We DID have this conversation a long time ago. She started mentioning it at least last January. The ONLY time she didn't bring up a g-tube to me, was the month we started feeding therapy for Gavin. And we haven't been in for monthly check-ups since October (I think) because of all the germs during the winter. But every visit, she mentions it, and she seems to have forgotten that. How many months did I worry, every single day, about her bringing up a g-tube again? I started dreading to go to the appointments because I didn't want to hear it AGAIN. IF I could see that he was falling behind on his development, that would be different. But in any case, I just got way to stressed out about her bringing it up EVERY visit. So then I pressured Gavin into eating even if he didn't want to, and that was because his doctor was stressing me out. Bad cycle. Ok, enough of that.
Gavin recently learned to jump. He LOVES it!!! Also, Terry did a magic show for Gavin one night, where he had a big smiley face made out of that pop-up material (like pop-up tents), where you fold it up, and then with a flick of your hand, it opens. Gavin thought it was great. 2 or 3 nights after that, Gavin performed the same routine (tried to anyway) for Grandma and me. I thought it was outstanding! He even tried to repeat the abra-cadabra type words that Terry said a few days before, and said "Bam!" a couple of times, which is what Terry said when the face would open up. Coupled with that, Gavin was counting down. Granted, he starts with "two" instead of "one", and unless you know that's what he's doing, you wouldn't understand the words, but he definitely is doing his version of counting. It was adorable!
Ok. That's a long enough post for now.

no more crib?

Short little post, because I haven't put anything on here for a while. Gavin learned how to climb out of his crib. He got up Sunday morning, climbed right out before Terry could get in there. He looked at Terry, like "Don't worry, Dad...I got this!" What a big boy he thinks he is!
And, I have to love that the other day before Gavin's bath, even though he didn't apparently have to pee on his toilet, when he got in the bath and had to pee, he grabbed a cup to (try to) pee into!
He's growing up right before my eyes, I guess!

Gavin's trying to be a typical toddler

This morning I was trying to get Gavin dressed to go outside, and we had gotten his snow pants and boots on. All of a sudden, he took off and ran down the hall to his room. I was curious but didn't say anything. He ran back out with his hat in his hand--he had been playing with it earlier and apparently left it in his room. I hadn't said anything about where his hat was, because I assumed it was with his coat in the dining room. Good thing he remembered leaving it in his room! I was just pleased that he remembered to go get it without me saying anything to him!

In feeding news, Gavin is starting to just act like a typical kid. We've been working on getting him to eat more carbs, like pasta, and Terry bought some wagon wheels pasta thinking Gavin MIGHT like those. Turns out, he does. He likes the shape, and doesn't mind the texture as long as he gets to play with it first. So he plays with it, and sometimes even decides to eat a couple pieces. He still doesn't eat much of it though, but we keep trying.
Yesterday, he indicated that he was done with his lunch, so I took a pretzel stick and put it through the center of a piece of wagon wheel pasta that he had on his plate. He decided he wasn't REALLY done then, because he grabbed the pretzel stick, and used it to put the pasta in his mouth, then stabbed another piece of pasta to eat. He did the same with raspberries this morning. He said he was done, until I put a raspberry on the end of a potato stick. So I guess we're going to be putting food on sticks (pretzels or potato sticks.) It convinces him to eat just a little more. Just like a typical kid, he doesn't want to eat unless it's fun!
YAY for Gavin acting like a normal kid! I'm so proud of him for trying non-preferred textures (like pasta) all on his own!

Who's on the phone?

We've seen Gavin picking up random objects (calculator, Ipod, remote, computer hard drive) to use as a phone to "talk" for a while now (as well as using the real phone.) However, he will not talk to someone when there is actually someone on the line with him. I figure that will come with more experience. Here's the funniest part--he never actually says "Hello" or "Hi" or anything resembling that when he picks up a "phone" to use. However, after listening to him a few times recently, we figured out what he DOES say to start the conversation--he says "Terry." That's right, he says Terry, as in, his Daddy's name. To confirm this, we asked him tonight where Daddy was, and he pointed to Terry and gave him a hug. I asked him where Terry was, and he pointed to Terry. So even though he won't actually call Terry "Dada" (even though he's able to say the word, since he has said it before), he's apparently talking to Terry on the phone when he has his conversations with no one!
I just think it's really funny that he has whole conversations with Terry, whether Terry is actually a part of them or not!

fears?

Gavin has been having trouble going to sleep recently, no matter if we start in his room or downstairs. So even though he was sleeping better with the light off in his room, I wondered if he was becoming scared of the dark, so we've left his light on again some nights. I still don't know if he's scared of the dark, but he does seem to like the light being on.
He has a sound machine in his room that you can set different sounds, and Terry started it on the sound of ocean waves, which Gavin has gone to sleep really well to in the past, but tonight, as soon as we put him in his crib, he burst out crying. I thought it was just because he wanted to continue being held. But, since Gavin has been falling asleep to a different sound recently, I mentioned to Terry that he could change the sound machine to the "rainforest mode" which is the sound of birds of the rainforest, since Gavin has been sleeping well with that on recently. He settled right down, so I'm thinking for some reason maybe the ocean sound was scaring him. That's what it seemed like. I hear from other moms of 2 year olds that they develop fears around this age, and maybe that's part of the problems we have with him sometimes. I guess we won't know until he gets to talking better so he can tell us.

Oh, let's see. It's been a week since I posted, so let's see what to update today.
The other night, Gavin ran around with a kleenex in his hand blowing his nose. He really was blowing it, but no mucous came out, so he wasn't doing it hard enough. However, I'm really impressed that he figured out how to blow from just his nose.
Daddy has been playing "got your nose" with Gavin, so the other night when Gavin was sitting with me, he grabbed MY nose to play. Guess he really did get the hang of what the game is about.
Yesterday, he put his pants on mostly by himself. I just needed to help him pull them up. Funny, considering he started pulling his pants down a good 6 months ago, but now since we've been doing it for him, he doesn't seem to remember to pull them up or down by himself. (We started pulling his pants up instead of waiting for him to do it, when he decided he didn't want to wear pants and would have happily gone all day without them. While I don't object to that idea, it's the middle of winter, and it's far too cold to go without pants. For that matter, now he doesn't mind wearing pants, but he really objects on a daily basis, to putting a shirt on. Again, it's too cold to go without a shirt! Especially considering the tough time we've been having with getting him to gain weight. Gavin can now put both socks on himself, although it is MUCH easier for him to put the left one on, and he has to spend a lot of effort and time to get the right one on. But he CAN do it if he doesn't mind sitting there and working on it. Sometimes it's just too much to sit there that long though, apparently, so he'll run around the house with one sock on (which is actually better since he doesn't slip as much on the wood floor with just that one sock.)
Gavin has discovered a problem when it comes to his clothing. It's in drawers that are a little bit too high for him to reach on his own. He can't even reach his sock drawer, which is the one he wanted to play with yesterday (although, since those darn little socks get lost so easily, I guess I don't mind that he can't just get into the sock drawer and play with them whenever he wants!) However, when I asked him if he wanted me to move the socks to the drawer under the bed that he could reach, he shook his head no. He wants them to remain where they are, just the problem is that he can't reach them. What to do, what to do? If he was a bit taller, he could probably reach them better, but he's not, so I guess he'll just either have to let me move them for him, or go without playing with them on his own!
We had Mahi-Mahi (fish) for dinner last night, and after watching me eat some (he has tried it before, but it was months ago and I was sure he didn't remember), he did take several big pieces off my plate to eat. Both Terry and I are really impressed when he does that.
Terry gave me flowers for Valentine's Day, and Gavin really liked them. He sme
lled the roses when I showed him how to, but he really likes the small lillies, and the little purple (filler) flowers, so I gave them one of each that he rubbed against his mouth and face for some amount of time that first day. Then at lunch yesterday, he asked for another flower. He seems to really like them!
I think there was something else to update, but I can't remember it right now, so maybe I can come up with it and post it later.

Everyone snacks when they shop!

We went to Walmart the other night to get groceries. I always give Gavin a cup of water to have with him through the store, and I had a bowl of snacks for him (Cheerios, Kix, potato sticks, whatever.) Apparently, it wasn't good enough. As soon as we got a cucumber for our salad, he turned around in the seat of the shopping cart, grabbed the cucumber, and started to try to take a bite out of it. We took it from him and continued shopping. Next was fruit for him, so we found raspberries. Sure enough, he turned around and grabbed the box of raspberries, got them open and started eating them. Normally I would wash them before giving them to him, but they just looked too good to pass up apparently.
Terry and I never snack while we're shopping, but Terry said it's because I always give Gavin a snack bowl while we shop that he thought he should start eating the foods before we buy them!
At least he was going for the healthy foods!

In other news, we had eggs and toast this morning. Normally getting Gavin to eat toast is hit or miss, but I put raspberry jam on toast the other day and got him to try just a bit of the jam. He recognized it when I put the jam on our toast this morning, and he took his fork and swiped it across my piece of toast, taking most of the jam from MY toast! He then put his fork in his mouth and ate the jam off of it. At least he was getting a good taste of it!
He decided he could manage to have some toast, since it had jam on it. He wouldn't touch it with his hands, but did spear it with his fork to eat several pieces of toast this morning. YAY! If all it takes is raspberry jam to get him to eat bread/toast, I'll put it on for him every day!