Weekly Update -- 1 - 7 September 2008

Yay, I'm 87 weeks old today!

We were so intent on posting a video of Masinja walking so y'all could see it, that we forgot to mention a few things in last week's post!

Masinja will be undergoing another evaluation in the middle of this month. A week ago this Friday we met with a woman who is the coordinator for the Early Childhood Intervention program. It is a program that is run through the local school district. Basically, they will evaluate Masinja to determine whether or not he has any developmental delays. Depending on the outcome of the evaluation, he may qualify for a number of services. Based on what we talked about with the coordinator, Masinja may indeed have some delays as far as speech and communication are concered. We won't get the results of the evalution until the first of October, but we will keep y'all posted.

Also, Masinja got to go to a picnic last week. T.M. had a picnic for work and we all went. At the picnic, we had a welcome/send off for people who were new and people who were leaving. After each person was recognized, everyone clapped. Well Masinja decided he was on the 'delayed' clapping program. He would wait for everyone to clap. Look around to make sure everyone stopped, and then he clapped. It was like he couldn't clap when everyone else was clapping. So, he basically did the delayed clapping for about a dozen or so people. It was pretty amusing to say the least. Masinja also got to meet another NICU graduate that was at the picnic. One of the folks from T.M.'s division had a premature baby. He only spent 3 weeks in the NICU, though, and is doing very well. Overall, everyone seemed to have a good time.

Now, on to this week. It started off pretty slow for Masinja, but he has had a pretty eventful weekend.

He went to PT on Friday and proceeded to be his usual self, doing things for his physical therapist that he doesn't do for us at home. This has been the norm with him since she started working with him and she gets the biggest kick out of it :O)

Anyway, our goal when we left the last time was to get him to stand without having to use a piece of furniture to pull himself up. His therapist showed us a few tricks to get him to do so. Needless to say, T.M. and I didn't have much luck at all. Well, shortly after we got to PT on Friday, Masinja was pretty much standing up on his own. His therapist tried a technique that involves just giving him a cue by pushing on his hips with your index fingers. It worked like a charm and after about 2 or 3 times he didn't need the cue anymore. He has even done it a few times at home yesterday and today. At the rate he is going, he will be a PT graduate before we know it. He doesn't go back for 3 weeks since he is doing so well.

Masinja also went to the park for the first time today. We finally found a park close to the house and we decided that since it was such a beautiful day we would take him. He got to swing in a swing, (which he really wasn't all that impressed with), walk across a bridge (which he loved), slide down the slide, (which he thoroughly enjoyed) and "ride" a motorcycle (which was by far his favorite)! He also got to play in the sand a bit after which he promptly put his hand in his mouth. Oh well, eating a little dirt won't hurt him that much!! All in all I think his first trip to the park was a success.

Here are some pics from his time in the park:

swing
motorcycle
slide
bridge

That's all for now.

Peace,
T.M.M.