He's gone from just learning to walk to running, climbing up on things, going up sets of stairs and he's just now getting the bend-your-leg-to-go-down part, too. Mealtimes have also improved. Gabriel will "help" by feeding himself yogurt or Gerber 2nd stage baby food. It's pretty messy, but his interest in holding the spoon and using it for its intended purpose instead of as a projectile is exciting. He will accept some water from a cup in his mouth, but only for a couple of sips, so we're still tubing in all his fluids. I'd like to say I could write a post every week with some small step he has taken to improve, but Gabriel doesn't really work that way.
In biology, there's a term in evolutionary theory called "punctuated equilibrium" meaning that things would stay the same for awhile and then a rapid burst of evolutionary changes would occur, and then things would say the same again until another burst of changes emerged. This seems to be how Gabriel develops. Two weeks ago his therapist had given me several things to work on with him, and these are actually things we've been working on for awhile. Between then and now, he had a cognitive shift and started doing some real turn-based play, pointing at objects, recognizing what you want when you point and something and ask him to go get it, understanding how to put together his shape/peg toy (no more trial and error), and even though he's still not talking in words, making it very clear he understands what you're saying and can make himself understood as well. He has definite conversations with his toys in baby babble, and has started babbling to us a lot, too.
His attention span has also improved, he will play with the peg/shape toy for awhile, or bring you books and actually be engaged in the book instead of just flipping pages. Given that his go-to activity has been spinning rings or bowls on the floor, it's nice to see him doing something else. Although, that means I need to upgrade some of his toys. Mostly, we're learning that Gabriel needs a lot of repetition and then he all of a sudden "gets it", just like what happened with spoon feeding back in December. So, we have to do our part and just keep showing him how to do things and talking to him and eventually he might start talking back. Until then, he's going to run run run run run run run ......and.....fall down..... and then run run run run again.
