Chase - 2 years, 7 months

I figure I will go back to doing formal monthly updates on Chase.  I believe it is warranted again because he's been developing so much lately.  I don't know if it's just his age, or the speech therapy, or both, but he's just been blossoming lately!

Here's my biggest boy!

 

He's doing great in speech therapy.  Our focus right now is to encourage 2 word phrases during play activities.  You have to pry these phrases out of him, but he is doing it which is fantastic.  I think he's getting much more confidence so I hope this just continues to develop.  He absolutely loves speech therapy though and Ms. Jesslyn, his therapist.  When we are in the waiting room, he runs to any therapist in a white jacket and just stands there at their waist until they take him back with them!  There is no hesitation in leaving me behind in the waiting room.  He literally jumps to Ms. Jesslyn when he sees her!  We have had some interesting experiences though.  The way the hospital is set up, pediatric rehab is right at the end of the hospital and in the waiting room they have the handicap button that opens the door automatically.  When Ms. Jesslyn brings Chase back to the waiting room she usually gives me an update of how it went and what we can work on the following week.  There have been two times that Chase hits that handicap button and bolts out of the waiting room.  This normally wouldn't be that awful, but since the doctor's office is at the end of the hospital, there are automatic double doors immediately outside the waiting room so as soon as Chase leaves the waiting room, the doors automatically open to the parking lot of the hospital!  Let me say that I always catch Chase before he gets to the parking lot, but that little boy is quick and we are all lucky I wear running shoes to the therapists office...and that Cooper is in a car seat carrier at the time so I can just safely leave him as I'm running after Chase.  I also loved the time that Chase put on his brakes and sat in the middle of the parking lot as we were leaving (all because of a toy truck in the waiting room that he couldn't take with him).  I was just a smidge embarrassed when I saw that only like 5 cars were waiting to for us to get our act together and get out of their way!  Oh boy!

This month brought the end of Chase saying "Bye Bye" in a high pitch, sweet voice.  Now he uses his big boy voice and in a low tone says Bye.  It melts my heart!

Because Cooper almost always wants to eat around 7 which is Chase's bedtime, I never get to participate in Chase's bedtime routine.  However our video monitor has allowed me to virtually be there, which I love!  Chase was a little bit of a late bloomer with books (he liked looking at them, but couldn't tolerate us reading to him).  Now though, he loves for daddy to read to him before nap and bedtime.  I think he's also using it as a stall tactic!  He loves his Wall-E books, Little Gorilla, his Elmo Potty book, and any random Dolly Parton book.  His most favorite though is Five Little Monkeys.  I think he's almost got it memorized and Drew and he have a great time reading it together!  Again, I'm so glad the video monitor lets me be involved a little!

Daycare brought up potty training to us last week.  Ugh!!  They were actually talking to the mom of a little girl about potty training, but I butted in.  So Chase has to be potty trained before moving up to be a "Butterfly" at 3.  That gives us 5 months to work on this!  We are planning on starting out slow and then really work on training him the month of June.  I think I'm dreading it.  We let Chase run around outside in the backyard this weekend with no diaper on.  It was hilarious, but he didn't end up going to the bathroom like I had hoped!  Also related to bathroom activities, you should see these diapers we put on Chase at night now!  They are basically overnight pull-ups.  While most kids get these diapers because they are already potty trained but have nighttime accidents, we have to get these for Chase because he was constantly taking his diaper off at night and making us wash the sheets each night!  Ever since we've bought him his HUGE nighttime pull-ups, we haven't had any more accidents since he can't easily take them off...Yay!

Right now in Chase's world he is obsessed with iPhones, Puss N Boots, his shoes and socks (we've had tantrums because he doesn't want them taken off at night!), taking a snack to eat into daycare each morning (just so he can get a chair, sit at the table, and put up his chair on his own), running around outside in the backyard, opening the backdoor for Weezie to come in and out (and for him to go in and out), and jumping.  He loves jumping around the house, outside, upstairs, downstairs, wherever!