Today marks twenty-three weeks home and twenty-five weeks out of the orphanage for Rex.
Rex has been quite motivated for fine motor activities these last two weeks, so we have been spending a lot of time with pegs and puzzles and blocks and play dough. I am most impressed that he can stack two to six pegs as long as an adult holds the bottom one. I am really excited to see him move forward in this area as there was great reluctance before. Rex can now stand on one leg without holding on and can move his step stool around to reach things he wants. He has learned to independently select toys from a toy basket or from around the room and brings them to us for play. And when I put his shoes on to go outside, he lifts up his feet to help me. Now that Rex has mastered the stairs in various ways, they have become his favorite place to play. Sometimes he just sits half way up with a toy and entertains himself for a good long while. I used to be afraid that he would fall, but it hasn’t happened yet. Instead I have seen him show off some impressive reflexes in catching himself if he loses his balance. So, I no longer worry much about a tumble down the stairs for Rex. Emilia, on the other hand, is a different story.
Our biggest concern as Rex’s parents continues to be his auto-aggression. For the most part I am not talking rages anymore, but even slaps to the face can eventually escalate that way if we don’t attend to him. It’s sad to say, but Rex had learned at the orphanage that this kind of behavior got him attention and even negative attention is better than none at all. It must have been very effective for him there because he still feels that it’s best or at least easiest to communicate some of his needs this way. We continue to work on this issue to decrease SIB and increase appropriate ways of communicating. I have learned from other families whose children share Rex’s chromosomal anomaly that our special kids usually have very sweet and loving personalities which we do see with Rex and which gives me hope that the aggression toward himself is an orphanage behavior that will subside in time.
Over the last few weeks Rex has become a much pickier eater. He still eats large portions when he likes a food, but it’s sometimes a guessing game what he would like. He might wolf down a salami sandwich or a bowl of oatmeal one day and reject them the next. It’s been quite challenging for me to have two to three food options ready for him throughout the day, but it’s also helped me introduce some new foods like cold cereal in milk, raisins, quiche (though he now refuses to eat scrambled or fried eggs), and meatballs. I am told that this pickiness is a developmental milestone and a phase that passes, so hopefully this won’t last too long.
I know I must sound like a broken record, but Rex with all of his challenges is a most wonderful child that we're so thankful to call our own.
