Sunday, November 18, 2012

Taking A Break

During this real life field study of mine, I've noticed some pretty neat things over the past [almost] 10 months. In school, I learned about all of the different areas of development (cognitive, gross motor, fine motor, social-emotional, language/speech, etc.) and how young children typically focus on one area at a time, usually based on interest. From the get go, Ayden has always seemed most focused on gross motor. Then right after he took his first few steps he kind of took a break from walking practice for a few weeks. During that time we witnessed an explosion of cognitive connections (turning to go down stairs backwards, fish imitation, clapping, saying the /b/ sound over and over while "requesting" to read books, waving hi and bye consistently, saying, "Mmmm!" while eating, learning to anticipate barriers and turning his push cart to avoid them and then some. It is as if he put his walking progress on pause while he focused on all of this other stuff and today he hit play again. He still isn't taking more than 4 steps at a time but he is back to practicing and is doing great! It's has been such a joy to step back and witness his progress while he leads the way.

Ayden took a stellar morning nap during which I worked on the gift for our nephew:

More guesses?  Not cloth wipes :)
Our only big event of the day was taking Maverick to the dog park. Since Ayden loves dogs so much we thought he'd enjoy it too. He watched all of the dogs but wasn't as into it as I thought he'd be. I was also wearing him in the Ergo which always puts him in a baby wearing "zone" so that could have been part of it as well. Before we left the park we took a loop around the walking path while we discussed options for our next living arrangements and then we came back home.

There's Mav, on his way to cause a ruckus...
In addition to lots of walking practice, Ayden also mastered going down the stairs backwards.


Every time we let him climb the stairs he stops at the little landing between flights to practice. He does it over and over and thinks it is hilarious. So cute!

We leave Wednesday for our Thanksgiving trip so this week will be busy with lots of preparations and packing!

~Sarah

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