Just back from a great long weekend. We drove down to the family house in Plymouth for the weekend and also made a day trip to see friends in Chatham on Sunday. Weather was perfect and we got some much needed relaxation...I would say "rest" and relaxation, but that would be a lie as Noah was up by 6 every morning at the latest. Thank you to my parents and brother for putting up with his squeals of joy at that hour. While he was up by 6, he slept well in the pack-in-play all weekend, which is always a little iffy, sleeping through the night each night.
Plymouth was great - we had a clambake, enjoyed fireworks, had babysitters so we could go to a belated birthday dinner for Susan and played some golf - my Mom volunteered to babysit one day so we even got to play together one day! Down in Chatham, we had what has turned into an annual get together at one of our friend's house. This year it ended up being dubbed, "Babyfest" as Noah was accompanied by a 1 1/2 year old girl and a 7 month old boy (he is now 9 months!!! where does the time go?). It was great to see the interaction between the kids as well as having all of the adults to help watch the kids! While most of us enjoyed time by the pool on a beautiful day, Noah did not - he wanted nothing to do with the water...very upsetting to his swimmer mother.
We set up Noah's play/exercise mat in the living room in Plymouth with a bunch of his toys from home and it worked out great...he is doing so well - we'll get a video up shortly of him doing his exercises so you can see first hand. He is really getting active when in the constraint - really going after his toys which he loves to knock around. We need to start working on some more dexterity skills as he doesn't have much fine motor control with the right hand yet, but his gross motor skills are really coming along. Even when not constrained, he will go after toys, reach for things voluntarily and even doing some two-handed play. While we are cautious to get too excited, I think we are both really happy with the progress Noah is making with the use of his right arm. It was just 6 weeks ago when we started the constraint therapy and his usage and range of motion are night and day. We do exercises twice a day ourselves - usually 25 minutes in the morning when we wake up (he is at his best in the morning) and then another 15 or so in the early evening when we get home. He also has a physical therapist twice per week (once at our house and once at daycare) and then an occupational therapist every 3 or 4 weeks at Children's Hospital. Needless to say, the schedule is hectic, but it is worth it to us, and it's amazing how we have all adapted...it's just our lives now.
He continues to increase the spectrum of noises he makes which has us hopeful that his speech may not be impacted drastically (though likely it will be affected). We are currently working to get him to crawl...you can tell he wants to, but he just doesn't have the strength in his right arm/shoulder to be able to do it. Cognitively, he seems to be progressing pretty well. While it's obviously tough to tell how a 9 month old is doing in this area (speech as well), he seems to be doing the things that babies his age should be doing. Additionally, his personality remains electric. He lights up everyone with his smile, he brightens every room he enters and he adores other kids (especially the little girls!). I've said it before and I'll say it again - he truly is a special little boy...our job now is to make sure he can do everything he wants to do as he gets older. I think we're heading in the right direction.
