Checking Off Milestones

In all of his recent evaluations, Nicholas has been determined to be about eight months behind in his physical development. He's maintained a steady eight months behind in development level, which is great because it means, while he's behind his "peers", he is staying on his own track and isn't falling behind.

He is a few months behind in cognitive development, and is actually age appropriate, or even advanced, in social skills (which anyone who knows him will tell you - our giant flirt).

So, even though he's currently eighteen months old, he's technically considered seventeen months old developmentally since he was born a month early, and he's measuring at nine to ten months in his motor skills development level.

As I've mentioned before, Nicholas isn't crawling or walking yet, and we honestly don't know when that will happen. We're fairly confident that it will - he's proven himself to be a singularly determined individual, but it will be late. Many people with hydrocephalus, especially at the severity that Nicholas had, will never walk, so we're grateful that he likely will, even if late.

He's been sitting up on his own for some time now, as long as someone helps him into a seated position. His core strength has grown that he now sits for the entirety of a taekwondo class (while playing with the other babies), and it doesn't exhaust him. Early Saturday morning, I was up with all three kids. Zachary was watching cartoons, Emily was playing, and Nicholas was practicing getting into his crawl position. Suddenly Zachary says, "Mom! Look at Nicholas!" I looked over and Nicholas was sitting up next to the entertainment center, trying to get the DVD player. I said, "Oh wow, that was nice of you to sit him up, Zach!" Zachary said, "Mom, I didn't!" I asked him if he was being honest, did he really not help Nicholas at all? Zachary swore that he hadn't helped Nicholas up. Which left the conclusion that Nicholas had gotten himself into a sitting position for the first time ever. We watched him throughout the morning and it never happened again.

Until nap. We went to get him after his nap and he was sitting up in the crib. We knew at that point that he had to have done it himself. That night when we went in to feed him his 9 p.m. feed, we found him sitting up in the crib instead of sleeping, laughing and incredibly proud of himself. Since then, we've found him in a sitting position several times, though we've never actually seen him put himself there.

This little guy continues to amaze us, and we are so proud to be able to watch this journey of his!