Wow, time flies! The good thing about posting so infrequently is that I get to report on several milestones that Brady has achieved in the past few months. At my last post Brady was 20 months old and just learning to sit up on his own. A few months later and check this out...
Yes, this is Brady standing on his own during a physical therapy session. He started crawling on his second birthday and is now pulling himself up on furniture and cruising around as long as he has something to hold on to. We don't typically dress Brady in half of a monkey suit but this picture was taken on Halloween and it was just too hot here in Phoenix to wear the whole costume.
Brady seems to have had a huge burst in development after what seemed like an extremely long time with nothing new happening. Sometimes it is hard to see the progress when you spend so much time with your child each day. I am not a patient person and this is something Brady is helping me learn every single day. I remember when he had just turned one and was still barely holding his head up and trying to roll over. We were waiting for a diagnosis and I had this recurring fantasy that I would go in his room to pick him up from a nap and I would find him standing in his crib holding onto the rails. I even moved the mattress down so he wouldn't fall out of the crib when this big miracle happened. I realized the other day that Brady's miracle did happen, just not on my own time frame. I am still trying to get used to him just "appearing" in different places of the house. I love seeing him assert himself and just crawl over to play with whatever he decides he wants. Lately when the house gets too quiet I almost always find him doing this...
Brady is always sneaking off to his room and pulling every book off the shelf. He truly loves books and while he prefers that Troy and I read to him he will entertain himself like this for at least twenty minutes a few times each day. Brady is still nonverbal and struggles to learn things every day of his life. We noticed, though, that he alway "reads" his books with the right side up. He knows what the words and pictures are supposed to look like! This is good enough for me, for now. I'm still trying to work on this thing called patience.
This was the one and only present Brady assisted in unwrapping. He did manage one smile for the camera. Actually, he was "yelling" at me but every time the flash goes off he giggles for a split second. Next year we will open gifts later in the day because the poor guy is just not a morning person. Lately his ideal morning consists of snuggling with Mom or Dad on the couch, blanket in his left fist and his right thumb crammed into his mouth. He now points and grunts at the TV or will stare down the remote until we turn on his cartoons.
Well, we had a great pre-Christmas and we can't wait until round two which might actually involve real snow. We are counting down the days until we see our families and friends because it just wouldn't feel like the holidays without them.
