First Steps!

Miles has reached a plateau.  Or should I say had.  I'm afraid to say he had because maybe I'm just getting overly excited and in reality he's gonna be stuck in this plateau for another 2 months!  I don't know.  Okay, what am I talking about?  His first steps!!  He really seemed to be walking today.  More than 3 or 4 steps and without any prompting from us or his PT or his daycare teacher.  He wanted to practice his standing and walking today and so he did!!!  And he did lots of it.  And it was pretty good by the end of the day.  He wasn't just falling flat on his face after 3 steps, but walking up to 7 or 8 steps with graded control.  Holy crap!!!!!  Is he about to start walking?  Well, yes.  Obviously this is the beginning of it.  But how long until he's really honestly walking all the time?  That's where I'm getting ahead of myself and why I don't want to get too excited.  He's taking steps and I'm wondering when he's going to walk for real.

See, it's been about two months since he's been taking a few steps and standing by himself for 3-4 seconds.  So Two months ago, I thought he'd be walking.  Today he decided to stand up for longer periods of time, walk more steps and do it all because he wanted to!  So I'm getting excited all over again, thinking he'll be walking in two weeks...but it could be another two months.  And yes, that's okay, that's fine, I know he'll do it eventually.  But when you've been waiting for your child to pass a milestone for this long a time, trust me, you just want him to pass it!  I want to celebrate.  I want to catch it on video and post it up for the world to see just like all my other friends where doing a year ago when their typical children started walking.

And that's not the only milestone he seems to be reaching, he has also been a total chatterbox lately.  Not just using his sign language, but his words!!  Miles can say:  bird, ball, bubbles, dada, up, book, stop, go, hi and my two favorite words he can say: uh-oh and wow!  His understanding of language has also gone up dramatically.  I can tell him simple things like, "legs up" and he'll put his legs up.   I'll ask him,"Quieres leche o agua" ("Do you want milk or water?") and he'll sign the one he wants. He tells me when he sees a car or hears a dog bark.  He's constantly pointing at birds and signing while saying "bird".  We are communicating using sign language and words, both in Spanish and in English and it's just so exciting!  His babbling is getting more and more complex where he'll point at things and talk and ask questions in his babble and I know he's saying real things.  I just can't understand him yet.  How gratifying it will be when he can tell me what's on his mind and I can understand him.  I want to know what he's thinking and saying and boy those he have a lot to say!

Miles' PT told me a while back that most kids will usually walk first and then talk or vice versa because of where they choose to put their focus.  For some reason, Miles seems to put his focus on both things at once.  And so he has these huge breakthroughs both physically and cognitively, followed by long plateaus where nothing seems to happen.  But it is a pattern I've noticed and I just have to keep remembering that and having the patience to wait him out.  So maybe he is going to walk real soon, maybe he's not.  Either way, I know it's coming and it's close enough that I can taste it!

Here's a list of Miles' current sign language words:
book, read, bird, ball, bubbles, dad, monkey, dog, car, bicycle, more,
boy, all done, milk, water, train, music, bear, apple, stop, go, and fish.

There's a few others that are emerging and some which I'm forgetting, but it's over 20 words!!