Painting

As crazy as it might seem.... I let Grayson use his artistic side and paint for the first time the other day. He was a little confused as to what to do with the paint at first. He kept trying to pick it up like food so of course all the paint just ended up on his hands and the paper had little paint on it. After I showed him by spreading his hands all around on the paper, he got in the groove of things and had a blast! The picture to the right is when he first started. He made quite a few "masterpieces" if I say so myself so Grandparents should be expecting a one of a kind art piece in the mail soon! Sorry we don't have enough to send everyone!! Maybe next time! Or if any of you come visit, we promise to send you home with one! You know you want to come visit now!!! :)

Follow up appt

Grayson and I drove up to Phoenix yesterday for his follow up appointments with the surgeon and Ear, Nose, Throat (ENT) Dr.  Grayson did well on the drive up and slept half the way.  We got to the surgeon first and spent maybe a total of 10 min in the entire office building.  He came in right away, checked his mouth, and said everything healed very well.  It's completely closed.  Stitches are dissolved and everything looks wonderful!  Guess giving him food from a spoon and stuff wasn't a problem afterall! :)  He said that nothing else has to be done until he's 2.  At age 2 they'll do a full speech screening.  He should be saying about 15 words at age 2 clearly that anyone can understand (not just mommy and daddy).  Since we'll most likely be moved again by that point he said once we know where we are going he'll help us get connected with a craniofacial team in that area for the speech screening.  If needed at that time, he may start speech therapy.  The dr seemed hopeful though by the way the palate healed that Grayson won't have much problem at all with speech.  We then had an appointment with the ENT dr a few hours later so Grayson and I went to the mall nearby to do a little shopping.  At least there was an Old Navy there!  I have determined shopping here in Sierra Vista stinks!  We then headed to the ENT and once again when the dr came in he did a quick check of his ears and again they look great!  Tubes are in place where they should be and the fluid has drained and things look good!  We'll need to go back to the ENT in 6 months, or before we move, to just make sure the tubes are still in place where they should be.  The tubes should come out on their own around 9-12 months.  Grayson and I made the trip home with some screaming on and off during the 3 hr drive.  It was a LONG day, but we should have to be making that trip alone again for a long time!  Thank you for everyone's thoughts and prayers during this time for Grayson and his healing.  He is doing great and is his normal happy self.... most of the time! :)  He's even finally getting back to his normal 1 hr naps (instead of 30 min) and is usually sleeping through the night or at least falling back to sleep on his own if he wakes in the night.  (*knock on wood*)  More pictures will be posted soon!

Grayson reading

Like I mentioned before in an earlier post... Grayson loves his books!  Here is a video clip of him being content looking at his books on his own.  You'll notice his "humming" as he flips through his books.  He does that same little hum every time he reads a book on his own.  That's how we always know he's looking at a book when we hear him :)

First birthday coming up!

Sweet! Train Birthday Cake Design - Parenting.com

Soooo Grayson's birthday is just around the corner. Can my little man already be one?! :( I'm starting to think about what kind of cake I'm going to make him for his birthday and I really want to do this train cake, but when I look at the ingredients it seems a little daunting. Should I stick to making cute ducky cupcakes or something out of my new cupcake recipe book, or should I go for the train?? If I do the train, any suggestions on how to make it a little less daunting? There's a lot of little things to put on it which means buying whole packages of things and only using a handful of it. Any ideas???

Love of reading!

Grayson LOVES books these days!  Many times a day we will find him crawling over to his bookshelf by the computer just to look a books.  His favorites right now are ones that have touch and feel or life the flap books.

Here he saw me ready to take the picture.  Of course as he was looking at his zoo book, he was playing with his tongue which he has been doing a lot of lately since surgery.  If you look close you can see his little tongue peeking out.  

His favorite book of all right now is his Brown Bear, Brown Bear book that has a little sliding door to show what the animal sees.  Just within the last day or two he's finally figured out how to slide the door open himself!  It gets a little sticky to close again, but he tries!  He also likes his pop up Little Monster books, but also tries to tear the monsters out of it, so mommy keeps those out of reach and we read those together :)  There are times now we find him in this corner looking at his books "reading" them to himself.  He always makes the same little "humming" sounds as he looks at the books so if we don't see him go back there and we start to hear him we always know he's looking at books.  I got a short video of it that I'll post once I get it downloading onto our computer!

It's amazing how many sounds he's started figuring out since surgery!  He "talked" a lot before surgery, but always the same sounds and would say the /mmm/ sound a lot.  Now he's figuring out the /b/ and /d/ sound and starting to say "dada" at times.  He hasn't quite started calling us by name, but we're working on it!

A boy and his blanket!

Grayson has always loved his blankets!  He doesn't discriminate between any blankets, but when he finds a blanket he loves to snuggle it, roll around on it, or even chew on it!  

He loves to "wrestle" with Daddy too when he takes his blanket.  

There's no messing with a boy and his blanket!!

Dancing

Grayson likes to "dance" these days.  He dances in his high chair when music is playing while he eats.  He'll dance in the car as best he can while strapped down.  He'll dance just about anytime he hears music with a beat he likes. :)  Of course "dancing" for him is just bouncing up and down on his bottom.  Here's a short video Christmas morning of him dancing to the Christmas music.