Baby diary: 2 years! *party popper*
Dec. 30th, 2020 10:21 pm I was looking at Alan's 2019 photos earlier today, and what can I say? He used to be fatter and shorter. XDD Now his pants sometimes fall down ("uh-oh"), or ride up and show a gap between ankle and sock (also an "uh-oh" - fastidious about his menswear fit). I've been burnt out on "extra tasks" like, er, this baby diary, or measuring Alan's height, but my mom claims he's over 90cm.
Speech therapy has been frankly desultory: my work schedule, plus C changed jobs, plus the lockdown. Alan will start with someone new after January 11, since he's still lagging on milestones like putting two words or even (mostly) two syllables together. He says "mi" for milk, or mix (verb), or cement mixer, or - I think - missing (piece). But he loves numbers and letters, almost as much as vehicles, can count 1 through 10 and recite the alphabet. From memory! He lies in bed and counts, not sheep, just says the numbers. XD; Actually, what is more impressive to me is that he's able to recognize broken-up letter pieces in the big alphabet floor puzzle his grandparents bought him, well enough to put the puzzle back together with gentle guidance. I got him a box of smaller, vehicle-shaped puzzles for Christmas, which were a big hit, as well as a wooden toolbox. There is no conceptual breakthrough yet with regard to nuts and bolts, which is just as well because I rely on him not being able to screw/unscrew caps ahahahah, but he learnt to hammer in the wooden nails and use the peen part of the hammer to pull them out, and that is very entertaining.
The third most entertaining gift was the child-sized snow shovel S's parents gave him. XDD Now that he's steady on his feet and has proper snow pants, it really brightens his day to go outside for sanctioned rough-and-tumble, i.e. throw snowballs at me for an hour. Like a good little Canadian, I am teaching him the varying qualities of snow - what is good for snowballs and snowmen and what is easy to shovel, versus not. The renovated playground down the street reopened earlier in the month, right on schedule, and it's been a hugely popular hangout since; the city did a baller job. It's nice to just be able to encounter A and her parents outside, or other families I have a nodding acquaintance with.
At this point, there is information on the Web that describes Alan to a tee, as well as myself. Eg. shows no sign of toilet training (FML), likes to line and stack toys, but cheerful and adaptable and socially normal apart from slight aloofness with other kids. But it is one thing to have diagnostic labels available; it is not the same as ways of being. I'd be in the "hyperlexia I" aka "normal" bucket but my subjective sense of self is non-neurotypical. I'm rather a big pile of autistic-"like" traits, dialled down enough to be mild hindrances to me and mildly perceptible to others: a finely tuned, high-performing engine with knowable, even loveable quirks, like a motorsports car from pre-platform days. Since the point of an autism diagnosis for the most part is to set the stage for support or intervention and/or insurance payouts, if you don't need any you won't - shouldn't, really - meet the cutoff, per design. But I suspect that what makes Alan tilt to "hyperlexia III" versus me is merely ("merely") biological sex, and that I and III differ from II mostly on on the point of maladaptiveness. To which point, if Alan didn't have a mild speech delay none of this would even be notable. I didn't have a kid with the expectation that he would hew to the mean. XD;;;
The terrible-twos "no," by the way, is not in the least delayed. Alan used to shake his head, which worked, but over the course of a few weeks in December he picked up, serially, three separate usages of "no": the discerning "no" of intentionally matching puzzle pieces to the wrong holes ("no! nno! nnno! yeeees!"), the dramatic-regrets "no" ("ohhh, noooo!"), and finally, the do-not-want "no" ("noooooooooooooooooo" *lies flat on ground*). My first week off after Christmas he threw two real tantrums, on stereotypical toddler points of contention that it was hard not to simply laugh at, such as wanting to eat ice cream after his teeth were brushed, following the model (but not moral) of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It physically distressed him to be so angry, though, and ultimately he needed me to calm him down more than he needed to pursue the argument. Since then I've mostly been able to redirect him, or work something out.
Speech therapy has been frankly desultory: my work schedule, plus C changed jobs, plus the lockdown. Alan will start with someone new after January 11, since he's still lagging on milestones like putting two words or even (mostly) two syllables together. He says "mi" for milk, or mix (verb), or cement mixer, or - I think - missing (piece). But he loves numbers and letters, almost as much as vehicles, can count 1 through 10 and recite the alphabet. From memory! He lies in bed and counts, not sheep, just says the numbers. XD; Actually, what is more impressive to me is that he's able to recognize broken-up letter pieces in the big alphabet floor puzzle his grandparents bought him, well enough to put the puzzle back together with gentle guidance. I got him a box of smaller, vehicle-shaped puzzles for Christmas, which were a big hit, as well as a wooden toolbox. There is no conceptual breakthrough yet with regard to nuts and bolts, which is just as well because I rely on him not being able to screw/unscrew caps ahahahah, but he learnt to hammer in the wooden nails and use the peen part of the hammer to pull them out, and that is very entertaining.
The third most entertaining gift was the child-sized snow shovel S's parents gave him. XDD Now that he's steady on his feet and has proper snow pants, it really brightens his day to go outside for sanctioned rough-and-tumble, i.e. throw snowballs at me for an hour. Like a good little Canadian, I am teaching him the varying qualities of snow - what is good for snowballs and snowmen and what is easy to shovel, versus not. The renovated playground down the street reopened earlier in the month, right on schedule, and it's been a hugely popular hangout since; the city did a baller job. It's nice to just be able to encounter A and her parents outside, or other families I have a nodding acquaintance with.
At this point, there is information on the Web that describes Alan to a tee, as well as myself. Eg. shows no sign of toilet training (FML), likes to line and stack toys, but cheerful and adaptable and socially normal apart from slight aloofness with other kids. But it is one thing to have diagnostic labels available; it is not the same as ways of being. I'd be in the "hyperlexia I" aka "normal" bucket but my subjective sense of self is non-neurotypical. I'm rather a big pile of autistic-"like" traits, dialled down enough to be mild hindrances to me and mildly perceptible to others: a finely tuned, high-performing engine with knowable, even loveable quirks, like a motorsports car from pre-platform days. Since the point of an autism diagnosis for the most part is to set the stage for support or intervention and/or insurance payouts, if you don't need any you won't - shouldn't, really - meet the cutoff, per design. But I suspect that what makes Alan tilt to "hyperlexia III" versus me is merely ("merely") biological sex, and that I and III differ from II mostly on on the point of maladaptiveness. To which point, if Alan didn't have a mild speech delay none of this would even be notable. I didn't have a kid with the expectation that he would hew to the mean. XD;;;
The terrible-twos "no," by the way, is not in the least delayed. Alan used to shake his head, which worked, but over the course of a few weeks in December he picked up, serially, three separate usages of "no": the discerning "no" of intentionally matching puzzle pieces to the wrong holes ("no! nno! nnno! yeeees!"), the dramatic-regrets "no" ("ohhh, noooo!"), and finally, the do-not-want "no" ("noooooooooooooooooo" *lies flat on ground*). My first week off after Christmas he threw two real tantrums, on stereotypical toddler points of contention that it was hard not to simply laugh at, such as wanting to eat ice cream after his teeth were brushed, following the model (but not moral) of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It physically distressed him to be so angry, though, and ultimately he needed me to calm him down more than he needed to pursue the argument. Since then I've mostly been able to redirect him, or work something out.