trip to the northwest and more...

We went to Oregon, Washington, and Canada (BC) on Jan 22. It was great, and I think Isaac enjoyed it as well. He seems to love water; it does something for him and he's always seeking it. Needless to say, being by the ocean/sound was great for him.

One activity, in particular, that was good for Isaac was walking up some stairs at the Children's museum in Seattle. For his development milestones between 12-24 months, he is suppose to be walking up stairs one foot - one stair, alternating. Up to this point, I've never seen him accomplish this; he always felt the need to put both feet on each stair. Well, this time, he was able to alternate, and he did it out of the blue. Since returning home, he's been able to do that foot-alternating walking on our stores, which is very exciting. So, he's behind, but he seems to be consistently about 1 year behind. He can accomplish these milestone, just a year behind the target.

Also, lately, he's been able to urinate in the toilet. In fact, the last 4 days, at some point during the day he's been able to go potty. He even asked to go potty a couple of days just before bed time, and was successful doing so!

We've been trying to teach him the importance of going pooh-pooh in the toilet (and not in the diaper) to avoid bad sores. Last night, for the first time ever, he did a small pooh-pooh. We're going to start rewarding him with cookies.

Something we're working on: reducing his violence when he can't cope. Today we learned about how to hold him after a violent incident, not as a restraint but as a way of compression. The OT simply held him tight and reiterated that he wasn't allowed to hit and that he needed to say "sorry".