A Great Visit and a BIG Milestone!

Once again I am long overdue for a blog post. I have so much to share I don't know where to start!

Grandmother and Granddaddy drove over for a visit last week, and what a visit it was! They got to see Nathan at his best, at his worst, and (as an extra special treat) they were here for a big milestone!

But let me back up... The teeth that I reported as being a birthday surprise actually didn't all come in on Nathan's birthday. The bottom tooth had cut through, but we only were seeing the top two teeth through the gums.  Finally, during G & G's visit last week, the other two teeth finally decided erupt. Two new teeth = very unhappy Nathan. Thursday night we all went out to eat at a new restaurant in town and we had the BEST food. Granddaddy and I both got thai green curry which was fantastic, Brian got sushi which was also very good, and Grandmother got pad thai which was ok.  Unfortunately, Brian and I had to take turns walking Nathan around the restaurant because he didn't want to eat or sit still, but we still had a nice evening.  Then later that night, Nathan gave us a reminder about how happy we should be when he doesn't decide to be up for 1.5 hours in the wee hours of the morning.  How happy should we be?  VERY HAPPY!

Friday morning Grandmother and I made bread together, and it turned out AMAZING! I'm baking again today (first time by myself!!) because we decimated those two loaves in 4 days. Nathan wasn't eager to try the bread at first, but once we convinced him to take a bite, he became a #1 fan. For the rest of Friday, we just hung around the house, doing some cooking, playing with Nathan, Granddaddy worked on some whittling, Grandmother got some reading time in, and Nathan decided it wasn't a napping day :(. Friday night, after we finished feasting on homemade bread, pork tenderloin, broccoli, acorn squash and carrot cake, I had a flash of brilliance. We were all still sitting around the dining table when I said to Brian, "See if Nathan will walk to me." I'm not sure why I thought of it, we hadn't tried it before with Nathan, but I guess it was meant to be because Nathan did it!!  He took two or three steps and WALKED to me!!  Then he turned around and did it again back to Brian!  And back and forth we went, quite a few times.  We were all so excited and impressed with Nathan, and we could tell he was pretty proud of himself as well!  Since then he has taken up to six or seven steps by himself, so we're getting closer to having a toddler!

Another cool thing that Nathan did during the visit was follow some pretty complex commands for the first time.  He already will follow directions in certain instances, like when I hold him next to a light switch and ask him to turn it on or off for me, or if I tell him to go get the kittens, he'll scoot over to them, or I'll set him down at the book case and ask him to pick out a book for us to read.  But on Friday I asked him to go get the (stuffed) cat that sings "Jesus Loves Me" and bring it back to me so that we could sing together.  So he looked to where I was pointing, sat down, scooted over to the cat, grabbed it, scooted back and handed it back to me.  I was amazed that he understood and followed my directions so well!  He did it again later when I asked him to bring "Pat the Bunny" to me for us to read.  So impressed!

And if all that wasn't enough, Nathan finally has a second sign that he will use (sometimes).  I've been pushing pretty hard during the last two weeks for Nathan to say "eat" with his hands before I feed him a meal or a snack.  I'll show him the sign with my hands while I say "eat" and then I'll take his hand and do the sign.  Well FINALLY he did the sign on his own when I asked him "Can Nathan say eat, eat?"  Slowly but surely he's starting to communicate back to us.

Well, I think that brings everyone up to date.  Until next time...