Jump, swing, music, NO, walk, music, jump, NO...

Those are just a few commands coming from Gavin's mouth while he is still trying to wake up. We wake up to this every morning, and me and Troy just look at each other and laugh. It's funny, but at the same time, at 3 am it's exhausting! Hearing that little voice coming from his room is about the sweetest thing I hear everyday, we wake up to it every morning, and there is no way it can't not bring a smile to your face, regardless how early it is.

Gavin's strengths has always been his vocabulary and ability to repeat your words with comprehension. He's been really talking before he was one year old. Now at 18 months old, we have full on conversations, and he has entered the "NO" phase which can drive you bananas. It's a long drawn out, but yet stern "NO". Kind of like he is trying to be polite, but yet firm. It's entertaining, but I hear it non-stop, especially now when his teachers do their home visits. I know this is another phase of many.

The part where I am going with this, is Gavin does a lot of eye pressing when he is in his high chair eating. He can be perfectly content, happy and enjoying his food (especially if it's spaghetti), but almost like a soothing mechanism, one hand goes to do the eye pressing automatically. He does this also when he is playing, which he can be perfectly content, and one hand occupied and the other is in his eye. We have been discussing this with his OT/early intevention teacher, and we are going to try something. Give him lots of vestibular stimulation before dinner time. Normally, this is something we do anyways, but I am going to bring some more attention to it. When Troy gets home, if we aren't already outside playing, he takes the boys to ride bikes, and Gavin swings. Getting all 3 boys out while I make dinner is a big plus. This is already our everyday routine, but we are hoping this helps with the detouring of the eye pressing during dinner. We want to transition him to wanting to feed himself, but I think that is going to take some work. It's hard with one hand in the eye, and the other hand throwing everything off his plate. I am not worried about it, but this is yet another stage to get him through.

Days when it is cold, rainy and we can't do the swing, we will be throwing him in his jumper, which he still LOVES at his age! We have had to anchor that thing down by putting part of it under the couch, so he can't tip. He is so strong, and he doesn't just jump and down, he rocks back and forth, does his side-to-side song, he spins around, etc. All different ways to get different types of vestibular stimulation. I will keep you posted on how this works for us, and if our theory with more VS will help with the dinner time poking.

In the meantime, he will continue to use his commands to drive this momma nuts!