New Developments

We've all been keeping busy and adjusting to the colder, rainy weather (bad).  But that also means Christmas is coming (good!).

Anthony's been gradually progressing with his walking.  His preferred method of getting around now is walking while holding a grownup's hands.  He's getting better at holding on by just one hand but it's still hard for him.  He's not shy about asking us to lead him where he needs to go.  And crawling still works fine if there's no one nearby to serve as his co-pilot.

The big news is that the Sunday after Thanksgiving he took his first independent steps!  Just a few in between Mommy and Daddy, but he's definitely on his way!

We're taking a break from speech therapy until after the new year. It's been nice to have our mornings free to do fun things instead of therapy, like going to the Children's Museum. We had a big communication breakthrough recently- Anthony started doing the hand signs to a whole lot of his songs!  His favorites are "She'll be Coming 'Round the Mountain"  (toot, toot!), "Open and Shut Them" and of course "The Itsy Bitsy Spider."  This is a good indication that he may be ready to start doing some signs.  No words yet, but the important thing is that he keeps progressing with his communication.  We have talked to a lot of parents of older kids with Down syndrome recently, and they say that their kids didn't start talking until after age 3.  Anthony's recent advances, like doing more focused playing and signing along with his songs, all are good indicators that he's on his way to speech.  We just have to be patient and the words (and walking) will come!

Another new development is the emergence of a few more teeth!  On top, he still only has the 2 very front ones and his molars- those ones in the middle have been slow in coming.  But the other day we saw one of the incisors/eye teeth poking through.  That might explain his lack of sleeping and refusal to eat anything except yogurt for what seemed like forever.  Maybe he can ask Santa for his 4 side teeth for Christmas!

He now stands a towering 34.5 inches tall.  Up 2 inches from the last time we measured him, in September.  Sometimes he seems tiny to me, but other times he seems so big.  We think he's just the right size.

His favorite toys are still blocks, balls, and books.  He's been playing with the trains and cars at school more lately.  We're told he's also been cracking himself up by playing tag with the other kids- running up to them and then laughing and running away!

That's the scoop for now!