Back to Routine and some Milestones!

We had a great day today. We are back to the Ronald McDonald House Tuesday and had a fun time just relaxing. Tyler woke up, nursed and had some cuddle time before Gabriel woke up to nurse. It's so cute when they're both cuddling me, Tyler will hold Gabriel's hand. When Tyler is closer to me, Gabriel will reach out and put his arm over Tyler, who will then hold his hand and Gabriel will smile. They have both shared my lap a lot since Gabriel was born, so I think they're going to have a great bond. When I get to the hospital, Tyler says "baby!" and I bring him over and they both smile. Dawson woke up next and scooted over to cuddle too. It's funny how 4 people can squeeze onto half the bed! I then realized that the living room light was still on and that I had fallen asleep cuddling Dawson, trying to get him to go to sleep. At home he's fine, but he has trouble settling down to go to sleep here. We do a quiet activity of his choice before bed. Sometimes it's books, or writing on his magnadoodle, or just cuddling and talking about his day. He chose writing. He made huge progress last night! Before he was just doing 1, 2, 7, 0. Now he has mastered the rest of the numbers. Sometimes 5s are backward, because he's used to the 2, and sometimes he makes too big of a 0 to fit the line. It's just a travel magnadoodle, which has about a 5x6 screen and he uses all of it. Next we started on letters. I write first, then he either writes it, or holds his hand out to me to go hand over hand until he gets the feeling right. He catches on so fast. He got A, C, E, F, H, I, J, L, M, N, O, S, T, U, V, W, X, Z. Not bad at all! Afterward we cuddled and talked until we both fell asleep.

Gabriel rolled over! After Tyler was done nursing, he decided he wanted to be closer to mommy, so he rolled over to me. He did it so smoothly! He had a cute smile on his face, like "yep, that's what I wanted" as he snuggled in. We watched cartoons, cuddled, talked and giggled for about an hour. Then it was time to head back to the hospital.

They were happy to head back to the hospital. Both Dawson and Tyler yelled "Yay!" when we pulled into the parking lot. They were excited to ride inn the elevator and be back to their usual things they do. Dawson pushed the cart full of our things all the way to Tyler's room and did really good not running into things. It also kept his speed slower, which was great. He had pushed the cart at RMH too, so he had some practice. A little more progress today! He refrained from pushing the parking ramp elevator. It's in his routine everyday and I tell him no everyday. This time he looked at me with his finger hovering over the button and I was able to talk him out of it. He was beaming over the big deal I made of listening to mommy and he even held my hand for a little bit! Another huge improvement. He's made so much progress over the last 2 years. Even when I was pregnant with Gabriel, I thought for sure I'd be needing a bigger stroller! I'm glad I held off. He does great when we are in routine.

He's doing better with "talks" too. When he's screaming because he doesn't want to go a certain way, I'll tell him to "come talk to me". I often have to go get him and bring him back to the spot I was at, but he looks intently with great eye contact and listens. We're working on the "first we'll do this, then that" concept, which he seems to be starting to grasp. It's so nice to be able to talk him out of a tantrum by explaining things.

Tyler broke my camera yesterday, I told him no to eating a cookie off the floor and he got mad. Swiped the camera right off the table we were standing next to. When I turned it on, the screen had weird lines and then turned off on it's own. So I called Best Buy and got the nearest location and brought it in this evening. We had the warranty with accidental on it, so it's off being fixed. Whew! I still have to go 2-4 weeks without my camera though, which seems like such a long time! This is the 3rd camera I've had to send in for warranty and the 2nd due to toddler destruction!

Tyler's speech therapist in the hospital was very impressed at his bigger vocabulary! He's imitating more words now and has been asking for help "po" instead of screaming. She also thought the Dinosaur Dance was super cute. The kids love starfall.com and there's a dance after they do the memory game, which Dawson is really good at! The boys both stand and do the dance. Dawson does the whole thing and sings along with it. He can even do it by memory now. Tyler sways and dances along with it, humming and babbling. I was bummed that Music Therapy was gone today, they've been in a singing mood lately. We make up little songs for random things, Dawson really responds to it. Like the clean-up song, or our "socks and shoes" song, that Dawson started singing when I told him he needed socks. We're still working on dressing. He doesn't quite have the patience for it yet, he'll give up with socks on his toes or pants just over his feet, but with some encouragement and a little tug here and there from me, he does get them all the way up. Socks he can do all but the heels.

We're getting new beds at RMH in the morning! They had Sleep Number beds, which I loved, but now they got a shipment of Tempurpedic beds in. We have a very firm one at home, it took some getting used to, but I do like those too. I'm sure it will be chaos, I'm wondering what Dawson will think, since he likes pushing the bottons for the bed. He does like our bed too, so I think he should still sleep well on it.

Should be a long day at the hospital too, the 2nd day is usually when the chemo really hits him. So far I haven't had my cousin come back, it's been just over 2 weeks now and it's been going pretty good. I have seen a lot of changes in Dawson's behavior since. Being able to go wherever he wants and having her follow is nice for him, but when it's just me, he thinks he can still do that. He's really improved over the last 2 weeks. We'll probably have her come back for the transplant, or if things get rough during this round. It's nice saving some money where we can too.