I’ve started thinking of Tristan as a 2-year-old rather than a 1-year-old. I figure it’s a lot closer, and he looks it anyway.

So, Tristan has been making leaps and bounds with his development. There’s been enough improvement in his communication and imitation skills that it’s been noticeable to people who last saw him about a month before. He’s learning how to ask for more complex things but is still easily amused – yesterday we were sending one of his stuffed bears down a slide, and it kept him entertained for a good half hour. He’s recognizing a lot of his letters by sight and sound. He’s a considerably better problem solver. It’s easy to set up for joint attention if I am labeling the environment, the alphabet, or anything in between since he’s making enough sense of language that he finds it interesting (and is therefore LEARNING IT!). He’s gone from very little ability or inclination to imitate something like clapping hands to full success in some activities. He tries very hard to vocalize the word “Go” and has a toy that says “GOAL!” that he likes to hear over and over.

We’ve been keeping the weekends fairly action-packed, as we no longer have things like regular park time in our schedule. Tristan enjoys swimming activities but he also tries very hard to drink the pool water, so we have had to be creative — tubes work best for keeping baby bodies but not heads in the water. We go to the water park about twice a month – the last time was not a good visit because Tristan was cranky, and a cranky Tristan doing stuff he usually wants to do but doesn’t that moment is never any fun. We had a weekend playdate over here just this past weekend and I hope we get to have some more.. it was a gently social but rather fun way to entertain ourselves and some kids.

Sleep has been irritating during the day and wonderful during the night. Tristan’s not napping very consistently — he may sleep from 1-4 hours now, depending on when he wakes up screaming. And he tends to wake up screaming even after having had a good, long nap. At this point, an inconsolable waking screaming fit after naptime is part of the day and not just something I hope won’t happen this day. And he also stalls as much as humanly possible to avoid going down for an earlier nap. So, the net effect is that I’ve had lots of time not stimulating him but get hit by the high emotions of the nap. But either way, he’s had a regular wake and sleep time for the longer portion of sleep and hasn’t woken up screaming (more than “a” scream, anyway) for a very long time, and he still wakes up cheerfully in the morning. I am sure that he probably needs a slightly earlier nap. There’s not a whole lot of earlier to go anymore, though.

Tristan has been in the Shining Stars program for about a month. He seems to be doing pretty well, and he’s bringing home knowledge rather often. They switched classrooms midmonth and Tristan doesn’t like the new classroom very well, but he’s managing. He’s no longer the “new kid” in his time slot — always the hallmark of getting used to things. I’ve been using Tristan’s preschool time to do crazy things like bike around and explore the area. Fun for both of us!

Tristan started at the center-based Shining Stars program on Wednesday. He’s in a class with four other children with varying levels of ability. He’s the only one in the class under age 2, and I think each of the kids is of a different general ethnicity.

Now, Tristan is kind of quick to adapt after a good day of confusion about the routine. We’ll see if this happens tomorrow! I hear that kids do have a hard time at first. After all, we’re not really a family that spends time away from our child. I expect that he’s getting used to strangers who are women (one or two men, but even the doctors were mostly women) and he’s used to strangers who are children. The point of hemming and hawing here is that Tristan was extremely fussy and could be heard crying for a good portion of our observation. But he woke up at about 7:45am yesterday, and that’s nastily early even for him. He was also fussy through his therapy session at home, and he’s usually fairly cheerful for them unless he forgot to eat. I don’t remember any extreme fuss after his nap, so I suppose he caught up on his sleep.

The “curriculum” includes free play, a circle (kids in little chairs, “friend” attending to each child – 1:1 ratio, how’s that for preschool? ) with singing, snuggle, greeting, and introductions for each child), some stuff in between that we did not see because we went out to lunch! Alone together! For the first time ever without having to beg someone to fly out here to watch out kid or arrange emergency care! *catches breath* When we got there at 20 minutes until the end of the hour, the .. OT supervisor? came out and asked us to please go away (she was more tactful ) so that Tristan did not see us and think it was time to go. I suppose I should interject that the classroom observation is possible through one-way glass, so we were standing in the hallway watching and listening; the kids were outside in the play area when we arrived and there’s no sneaking past them. We killed a few minutes in the heat, trapped in a downtown parking lot (walking past the play area again; it’s in the front yard), and then sneaked inside the building when we heard no more little giggles from the play area. We got there in time to see.. more sitting in chairs and singing to de-greet each child! Tristan had two tambourines or similar in his hands; none of the other kids had any. Curious. Tristan was also having a bit of trouble remaining sitting in his chair, by which I mean he kept needing to be planted back into it.

It will be a busy day today followed by another class. I will very slowly keep updating.

On Monday, we started Tristan’s evaluation/ABA sessions. On Thursday (right now), I finally managed to get around to writing. So far I’ve spent five minutes writing and erasing everything. Not a good start so far!

Anyway, they are going fine. We’ve met all five of the therapists.

I have to interrupt this to mention that I can’t look at the word “therapist” without giggling.

Five ladies, all seeming to be in the mid 20s-early 30s age range. All of them seem nice and all of them are positive and caring with Tristan. Of course, since ABA relies on positive reinforcement, I’m glad to see positivity! A big bin of toys and materials for observation, play, testing, teaching is present in Tristan’s room, which has been designated as the therapy area since it’s about the only place he can be corralled.

I feel very bad for Tristan being stuck in this little bedroom of his for three hours a day of his awake time. He’s taking it well, though. I think. He’s been a bit tantrummy but also a bit sick – that level of having a cold that is just short of calling off work/school. Like many males (sexism!), Tristan likes his snuggles and not a whole lot of conflict when he’s not feeling well.

Tristan’s teachers/therapists come in very quickly, in rapid succession, one relieving the other in many cases. Food has to be sneaked in, because there’s actually no time for him to eat in many cases. He’s not supposed to be idly munching during the sessions – that’s a bit distracting. He hasn’t been taught to eat his meals quickly or with purpose and he might need to learn that out of necessity.

I sat in on the first two days of sessions and James sat in on the first session. The time went very quickly for me; I was watching someone else play in a directed manner with my baby. This is what I’ve wanted for so long – someone ELSE to focus on him, engage him. I’m one of those freaks who likes to see my baby bond with other people so long as he doesn’t decide to replace me or something, so I really enjoyed it when Tristan finally became comfortable enough with his new friends to let me leave the room without screaming. In general, we can sit in on/watch/even record with permission these sessions but it defeats the point if we participate more than requested to, so by Wednesday we were out of Tristan’s “work” area. Actually, we had a meeting with the supervisor of the program on Wednesday so the first day of our nonparticipation was required.

I had something rare happen yesterday during Tristan’s second session – I got housework done! Of course, he came bursting out of his room hungry while I was in the middle of said housework, making me go from idly cleaning stuff up to having to collect a few things frantically.

Tristan himself has been making progress. Since Monday, he has:
* shown that he can make the sign for the word “more” at least with regard to being tickled
* learned to roll toy cars back and forth
* been making more attempts to communicate his choices for desired foods
* been impressing everyone with how much eye contact he does make and how much of a cute little baby ninja he is
* not taking his damn naps! more on that later

(there’s one more thing I’m forgetting, but that is the liability of not writing immediately!)

We went out to Thamien Park yesterday afternoon at around 2:30pm – we’re getting to the point where I slip in park trips that technically cut into his nap time. The park was fairly dead since most normal babies are asleep at that time or something. One other family was there – two little boys, older one was 3 and younger one was 2. The 3 year old wandered around chasing Tristan and being chased by him – they both loved it! It was so sad when the grandma of the 3 year old called him off, but I went to make friends with them later. Turns out that the 2 year old, who spent some time next to Tristan in the swings, is also autistic. I learned this after I complimented the kids’ mom (pushing the 2 year old while 3 year old was off with grandma) because the 3 year old was so good with Tristan. Turns out he has had practice! The family had to leave around then, but I gave them contact information and hope to run into them again.

So.. naps. We’ve been having all of this nap trouble lately. We’ve been racking our brains to figure out What. The. Fuck,. Child? So far, we’ve come up with:
* he probably wakes up because his stomach hurts – when he farts he tends to calm down
* he may just be waking up from an excess of environmental noise
* he may also be waking up screaming because he needs less sleep, though he tends to wake up happy when he’s had enough sleep
* teething again? There are still a set of molars to go and we don’t even HAVE any Tylenol until they figure out that clusterfuck with the recalls

I should note that for the most part, he sleeps through the NIGHT with minimal interruptions. There are times when he wakes up screaming, but he can be calmed down quickly or will actually calm himself down quickly still. He does not calm himself down from the naptime screaming anymore. I don’t know if that’s because he’s in pain or because we taught him that screaming during your nap gets you comfort. He seems to be in true pain of some sort during the naptime awakenings until he lets out a huge fart and then relaxes enough to be held. He actually will push my hands off of him while he’s having the episode, and he wants to be touched any and every other time, ESPECIALLY when he’s just fussy.

We’ve been trying various things, such as:
* putting him down later/earlier for bedtime
* putting him down later for naptime – earlier is no longer an option as his schedule extends until 3
* making extra special sure he’s fed/beveraged enough to last through a nap
* attending to him quickly before he’s exceptionally worked up
* giving him time to settle back down before going to him
* giving appropriate medications to known situations: Tylenol (before recall), Mylicon, and now our new favorite, Benadryl —

WE ARE LUCKY! Our kid does NOT go all hyper and unable to sleep on Benadryl! We started giving it Monday night to help him with the symptoms of this cold. We figured that 20 months isn’t so far off from 24 and we know the proper dosages. Anyway, I believe we have Liquid Airplane Insurance on hand should that ever become an issue. We should discuss whether we should try a dosage prior to his nap today and see if he sleeps through it.

But he won’t go back to the nap after being soothed through these episodes anymore for me as of this week. He’s taking 1.5 hour naps instead of the solid 3 hours he used to take. I also think part of this is that he will need substitution for the exercise he’s missing while indoors for his sessions. I’m sure 20 months is also in the midst of a predictable sleep regression according to the toddler literature, so none of this should even be surprising to us.

Anyway, therapy is going well/fine/good/great etc. and his midday sleep could use some improvement.. in case you didn’t much get through all of that.