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nineteen months!
See what happens when you get caught up in Stuff - two weeks ago tomorrow, the prince was 19 months old.
He's moved up to a proper toddler room at day care. This happened over a period of a few weeks. First one of the six kids in his previous room moved up and was replaced with a kid from his original room, someone he knew already, so that wasn't totally disruptive - although every day when I picked him up he pointed to the class picture and said the departed kid's name a few times, almost as if he were asking, "How come I never see that guy anymore?" And then about three weeks ago all four of the other non-replacement kids moved up at once and were replaced with much younger kids, because it is still technically an infant room. So it was my toddling prince, toddling M whom he knew already, and four wee ones who can sit up but that's about it. So he got a little clingy at dropoff time, because that's a big change and he missed his friends and now the room was full of babies he couldn't play with, and bedtime suffered a bit too. But after a week of that and a week of half-and-half in his own move-up room, this week he's been full time in the new toddler room - and is extra clingy, because there are more kids now (nine instead of six, I think) and a couple of them are kids he knows pretty well (including his best friend, who has bitten him four times, but that's another story), but the grown-ups are new and he doesn't feel totally secure. Poor bug. But the other day I got there just as his main teacher in the new room was leaving, and she said he was crying for her when she had to go - which, it's not that I want him to cry and suffer, but it's a nice bit of evidence that he's forming the sort of attachment to her that the program is designed to foster. (When I got into the room he was sitting in another teacher's lap and not crying, and when he saw me he hopped up and ran over to me, so his primary attachments are still as they should be. [g])
He's just, like in the past week, become attached to the teddy bear we've been putting in his crib for the past several months. I'm so pleased. Partly in a completely nonscientific confirmation-bias way where I've read that kids with autism often don't show attachment to soft toys, so hey, if he gets attached to a soft toy that means he's less likely to be on the spectrum and won't that make his life easier. /o\ But mainly because I do want him to have a comfort object that he can rely on when his dad and I are not available, and if he wakes up in the night and thinks "Oh, I can hug my bear and go back to sleep and I don't need Mom or Dad to come pat me for twenty minutes," great, you know what I'm saying? (We're getting there.)
He has resumed eating meat occasionally. A lot of the time he is not interested in eating with his hands - he can do it, but he doesn't especially like when his hands are dirty, and he really wants to master eating with a fork. Often he picks up a bite of food with his fingers and places it on the fork. Sometimes he shovels with the fork. In both of those cases there's even odds the food will fall off the fork before he gets it to his mouth, of course. Yesterday he was making real progress stabbing the food with his fork. I am full of optimism.
He has a lot to say (and a few animal noises that are not words - baaa, roar, neigh, moo, meow, and a kind of fish sound that's pretty funny). Mommy, Daddy, Grandma (sounds like "mamaw"), Grandpa (sounds like "poppy"), bear, bib, apple (which can mean "applesauce" or "pineapple"), yeah, no, uh-oh, oh no, OH (this is what he says when someone sneezes or coughs), hair, chair, home, teeth, milk, bottle, hot dog, down please, uppa (which can mean "pick me up" or "ceiling fan"), laloo (which means "I love you").
♥
He's moved up to a proper toddler room at day care. This happened over a period of a few weeks. First one of the six kids in his previous room moved up and was replaced with a kid from his original room, someone he knew already, so that wasn't totally disruptive - although every day when I picked him up he pointed to the class picture and said the departed kid's name a few times, almost as if he were asking, "How come I never see that guy anymore?" And then about three weeks ago all four of the other non-replacement kids moved up at once and were replaced with much younger kids, because it is still technically an infant room. So it was my toddling prince, toddling M whom he knew already, and four wee ones who can sit up but that's about it. So he got a little clingy at dropoff time, because that's a big change and he missed his friends and now the room was full of babies he couldn't play with, and bedtime suffered a bit too. But after a week of that and a week of half-and-half in his own move-up room, this week he's been full time in the new toddler room - and is extra clingy, because there are more kids now (nine instead of six, I think) and a couple of them are kids he knows pretty well (including his best friend, who has bitten him four times, but that's another story), but the grown-ups are new and he doesn't feel totally secure. Poor bug. But the other day I got there just as his main teacher in the new room was leaving, and she said he was crying for her when she had to go - which, it's not that I want him to cry and suffer, but it's a nice bit of evidence that he's forming the sort of attachment to her that the program is designed to foster. (When I got into the room he was sitting in another teacher's lap and not crying, and when he saw me he hopped up and ran over to me, so his primary attachments are still as they should be. [g])
He's just, like in the past week, become attached to the teddy bear we've been putting in his crib for the past several months. I'm so pleased. Partly in a completely nonscientific confirmation-bias way where I've read that kids with autism often don't show attachment to soft toys, so hey, if he gets attached to a soft toy that means he's less likely to be on the spectrum and won't that make his life easier. /o\ But mainly because I do want him to have a comfort object that he can rely on when his dad and I are not available, and if he wakes up in the night and thinks "Oh, I can hug my bear and go back to sleep and I don't need Mom or Dad to come pat me for twenty minutes," great, you know what I'm saying? (We're getting there.)
He has resumed eating meat occasionally. A lot of the time he is not interested in eating with his hands - he can do it, but he doesn't especially like when his hands are dirty, and he really wants to master eating with a fork. Often he picks up a bite of food with his fingers and places it on the fork. Sometimes he shovels with the fork. In both of those cases there's even odds the food will fall off the fork before he gets it to his mouth, of course. Yesterday he was making real progress stabbing the food with his fork. I am full of optimism.
He has a lot to say (and a few animal noises that are not words - baaa, roar, neigh, moo, meow, and a kind of fish sound that's pretty funny). Mommy, Daddy, Grandma (sounds like "mamaw"), Grandpa (sounds like "poppy"), bear, bib, apple (which can mean "applesauce" or "pineapple"), yeah, no, uh-oh, oh no, OH (this is what he says when someone sneezes or coughs), hair, chair, home, teeth, milk, bottle, hot dog, down please, uppa (which can mean "pick me up" or "ceiling fan"), laloo (which means "I love you").
♥
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Z at eight and a half travels with an entire duffel bag full of loveys (soft stuffed toys) for sleeping and comfort purposes, and one of them is the twiga (giraffe) lovey we introduced to him as an infant, and I do not regret that choice one bit. :-) I love watching him cuddle them and comfort them and talk to them as though they were his little flock.