Adventures in DNA Mixing

I thought it was time to give some general updates on Camden. He's a busy boy. This weekend I noticed he has been saying guh, guh when he sees the dog. I think he's trying to say Dog. Chelsey has read that sometimes kids only say parts of words when they are starting to talk. We're going to keep our eyes and ears on that to see if it continues. Today I asked him to give the dog a hug and he went over to Odin and gave him a great big hug. Other words he's seems to understand: Big Bird (thanks to his toy), Mom, Dad, box (If you ask him to put his block in the sorting box he will do it), more, food, giraffe, open.

We wrote about a month ago that he was saying a version of Cat but he hasn't been saying that as much lately. I have read that verbal development sometimes slows while kids work on physical development. Cam has certainly been working on physical development. He's walking like a madman. He doing a little running too. This weekend he pushed open one of the heavy swinging antique doors from his room to our room. He's been trying to do it for a while but did it pretty well tonight. It is a precursor of things to come as when he wakes up at night in the future he'll have to push the doors open to come find us at night if he gets scared. He's really strong! He loves to open and close all of the doors in the house. Another skill he's recently mastered is turning off (and finally on) the light switch at the top of the stairs which he can reach.

We've taken a few trips to the park near our home as well as the park at Chelsea Heights school to go on the swings and he seems to like that. He also enjoys playing in the sand. I'd like to get him outside to enjoy the weather while it is still reasonable. This winter will still be a little tough as he'll only be a year old. He probably won't be playing in the snow much until next winter.

He's getting really good at climbing stairs now and he loves doing it any chance he gets. We had to buy a baby gate to put at the bottom of the stairs leading upstairs as he makes a break for the stairs any chance he gets. Yesterday he made it to the top in about 30 seconds. We took the fish in from the pond and they had babies over the summer. There are three big goldfish and five little baby ones that are silver. Cam likes watching them. If you mention fish he'll go over to the gate by the stairs and has even tried to say fish. The f sound is still new to him, but he's practicing.

I took him in to the pediatrician a week ago because we suspected he might have an earache. He didn't have a fever but he was doing a couple of things that seemed to indicate he might indicate earache. He's been pulling at his ears, he's not sleeping well at night, he hits his head on things, and he sometimes cries wildly when you set him on his back to change a diaper. Any one of these things is perfectly normal but they can all also be signs of an earache. Since he was doing all of them I figured I'd take him in. His ears were perfect which just reinforces the CF clinic's assertion that kids with CF don't get earaches. Weird but true. I was kind of hoping he did have one as another possible sign that his CF is atypical and more mild. Is that a weird thing to wish your child has an earache?

Since he was fine they gave him the first of two flu shots. It made him a little irritable and groggy for the rest of the day.

Food wise we're trying really hard to get Cam onto chunkier solid food. He's a master of the puree but whole peas, corn, etc take more work and he seems to get bored. He mashes them up in his mouth and just packs his cheeks like a pocket gopher. I think it is mostly the skins he stores up and then spits out. What this means is that he eventually gets bored of all that chewing and doesn't eat as much as he would have if it was pureed. We're trying to balance learning and practice with nutrition. We're also trying to teach him to drink out of a cup which is super messy.

We're going to go pick out pumpkins tomorrow and check out some farm animals. More pics then.

t bv v vc cv v b bbb b mn m ikm.i32142111ew42ssssssssssssdvvbcg m kxs <-- Camden's contribution to this post.