Puppies, eating, and more!

Every time I am feeling a little down about challenges that Ronan is facing, I think he picks up on it. I think Ronan somehow realizes it, and then tries to cheer me up.

This week I was feeling a little overwhelmed that Ronan's eating issues may be a bit deeper than I realized. It has become apparent that some sensory issues are at play here. We came up with our game plan... We solidified what speech therapy exercises we want to be doing each day, what our goals should be, and I contacted a few resources for some additional information. In true engineering fashion, I created some check lists and


excel docs :).

And, of course, Ronan decided to take things up a notch. After signing with Ronan since practically birth, he hardly signed at all for the first year. It was so frustrating to see all these other children picking up signs nearly every week. Even more frustrating to me, was that these children didn't have the challenges that Ronan does. He needed to sign!



Anyway, after a year, Ronan's only consistent sign was "dog". While cute, it didn't help us meet his needs. His second sign was "sign". He uses it when he wants to watch the video series, "Baby Signing Times."

This week, and in fact in one day, Ronan started using "more" and "eat"! I could not be more excited. Then today, Ronan used "hurt" to tell me his stomach hurt. It is as if a signing light switch went off! I think that one reason he is signing more, besides the fact that he is older, is that we are more consistent with our signing.



Ronan's other big milestone this week was one that I barely caught. He was on his play mat in the family room when I stepped into the kitchen to make his dinner. I kind of heard a muffled noise, so I peaked in at him. I caught him in quadruped, trying to lift his head up! I have never seen him get that far up into quadruped on his own before. I've been thinking that maybe he would walk before he crawled, but now I'm not so sure!

Although we started off the week with some rough news with eating, I'd say we are on our way to a great finish!