Just passing time

Our Parents As Teachers chick, Elizabeth, came again last night. Collin just loves her. She worked with Lily first since Lily needed a nap. She was very impressed that she was sitting up finally, and that she was bearing weight on her legs and standing while I held her top half. She noted that she was very steady sitting for someone who just started sitting up, and that she loves to stand! She brought out a blanket to play peekaboo with and Lily loved it - it was white with different animals on it and Lily was fascinated by the animal pictures. I started naming the animals for her and Elizabeth said that was a great thing for me to do, it teaches her association skills. Lily took the blanket from me and held it up in front of her face and Elizabeth was amazed... she said it almost looked like she was trying to play peekaboo with it herself. Her intelligence is obviously there, she only seems to be delayed a bit in motor skills. Elizabeth encouraged us to bring out the highchair and scatter some cheerios or fruit puffs on it and see if she tries to feed herself. She said that Lily seems to be at about a 6 month old's developmental level in motor skills and handed us some sheets about how to work with 5.5 - 8 month old babies to encourage them with their motor skill development, since that's about where Lily is. Otherwise she seemed to be right at her age level for the way she babbles/vocalizes, and interacts with her toys and other people. We will definitely continue to encourage her fine motor skill development - grasping small objects, bringing things to her face, etc. If you put a toy in a box or tub, she will reach in the tub and look for it, and she kept trying to chase after a bottle with macaroni in it that Elizabeth had brought. She was rolling it away from herself and then stretching and reaching for it. I just know that if she could crawl she'd have been chasing that bottle all over the room! Elizabeth said she could definitely see progress from last time and was pleased!

Collin is so smart! He made me proud last night. While Elizabeht was working with Lily she gave him a bag of little plastic cars, trucks, and trains that are different colors to occupy himself with. He took them to the couch and promptly sorted them out by type, not color. He piled all the cars together, all the trains together, etc. She said she'd expected him to sort them by color and what he did was a step ahead of that! She also brought a white shower curtain that she'd written different letters on with a Sharpie, both capital and lowercase, and laid it out on the floor like a mat. She had two beanbags and would ask Collin where a certain letter was and he got a huge kick out of throwing the beanbags to the letter she asked for. She was hugely impressed that he knows all of his letter sounds and if she would ask him to find the "muh" he'd be able to locate the M. He had troubles with the lowercase and she said most kids do, that all toys and DVD's and such seem to only teach the capital letters. But she said she doesn't think she's ever seen a 3 year old be able to consistently identify all letter sounds. And she's been doing this a while, so we took that as a huge compliment. He knows his full name now, first middle and last, and we've been teaching him his address. She worked with him on recognizing his written name and on writing the letters in his name, but he still mostly scribbles. But he can draw simple shapes, like a circle and a square, and made his pointer fingers and thumbs into a triangle last night. She brought out some three letter word flashcards, like "hat" and "cat" and "sun" and had him sound out the letter sounds for each letter to see if he could put them together, and he didn't quite get the sounds to flow but she said that was very advanced and would have absolutely flipped if he could have done that correctly - that's very basic reading! Collin's major area where he lacks is social skills, and that comes from never having been in formal daycare. Our goal is to budget enough room for pre-school next year, it's a huge financial shock to us since we are getting such a good deal from our babysitter, but he would really benefit from it and needs it before he goes to kindergarten.

Well, that's all. I have some smart kids I suppose, and Lily will catch up and I'm sure she'll be crawling and walking before I know it, and I'll wish she was my little baby again! She still has no teeth, she was quite miserable last night, kept chomping on her fingers and had a hard time staying asleep and I fully expected a shiny new tooth this morning, but nope. We are going to Pickering today for a hayride at my sister-in-law's husband's parent's farm (follow that?) so that should be a good time.

3 more days till cardiology!