The State of Nathan, Part 1

Its been a while since I've written about what's going on with Nathan these days.  Its easier to upload some pictures or a movie then to sit down and actually write a post about the details.  And especially since Sarah's still changing so much week to week, its easy to focus on that and overlook how Nathan is maturing and changing by leaps and bounds as well.  Since these are things that I really want to remember, and after thinking about this post for weeks, here we finally go!

Nathan's round with the "terrible twos" has improved over the past few weeks and months.  At the beginning of February, EVERYTHING in our daily life was a battle with Nathan.  Getting dressed, eating breakfast, potty breaks, nap time, brushing teeth, bath/showers, always screaming, multiple time outs, etc, etc, etc.  That was when I made a desperate call to Nana to PLEASE COME RESCUE ME FROM MY SON!!  And she was here about 48 hours later, an answer to prayers!  We had a great visit with her and then about a week after she left, it was like a switch flipped and Nathan became much more cooperative.  I didn't dread the daily routine and Nathan wasn't in time out about ten thousand times a day.  Since then, we still have good days and bad days, good hours and bad hours, but overall I think (pray!) that the worst of the terrible twos is behind us. 

While Aunt Karen, Gran, and PawPaw were here for a visit about a month ago, we got to talking about Nathan's speech.  I guess I didn't realize how difficult (impossible?) it was for other people to understand him.  Since I know his mispronunciations and the short-speak he used, I could understand about 95% of what he said.  But time after time, even without realizing it, I was having to translate for the family.  So after that discussion, Brian and I have tried to make a point of helping him correctly pronounce words by over-enunciating them and getting him to repeat back.  Thankfully Nathan enjoys this fun "game" and we've made great strides.  Just to name a few: "poo" is now "computer", "showl" is now "shoulders", we're working on "video" and "granola bars" (one day it took me about 15 minutes to figure out that "nowl bard" was "granola bars"!).  And, most excitingly, "Na-Na" turned to "Nafan" and within the past week or two he has starting using "I" instead of always referring to himself in the third person!

More to come next time, including singing,  table manners and additional responsibilities, and potty achievements!