Well, Mom and I have officially graduated to medical-condition-recognition status. Jonathan has at least two hernias along his incision from the surgery last year and it was pretty easy to spot.
The good news is that it's easy to fix a hernia. The bad news is that there's a pretty good likelihood that the hernias are contributing to his reluctance to get up on his hands and knees to crawl and we don't really want to go anywhere near a hospital during cold and flu season. The earliest we'd be comfortable scheduling surgery is in April, and that's a few months away yet.
So...Jonathan will probably not crawl until summertime, if our suspicions are correct. Poor guy - he really wants to move and spends a lot of time inching for things or rolling!
In other news, Jonathan seemed to make a bunch of connections this week. For one thing, he learned how to play peek-a-boo. We've been playing this for months and he usually just gives us a dubious look that says, "And this is funny...how?"
But this week he started laughing and getting all excited when someone put something in front of their face and popped out to say "Boo!", and the day after he did that he was sitting in the bathroom while Mom was taking a shower and started putting a towel in front of his face and then popping out with a big grin and making squealy noises if anyone took notice. Yesterday was even funnier because he was doing it with a napkin at the dinner table and giggling; and since he doesn't laugh much, something has to REALLY tickle his funny-bone to get him going.
Another thing he figured out was to eat things someone gives him. Mom tried giving him a french fry and he just kept dropping it over the side of the chair with a disgusted look; but I tried giving him a breadstick and taking a bite out of it before handing it to him and he looked at me for a minute and then began chewing on it. Judging by the amount of bread he got all over his face, he enjoyed it, too.
Chewing things has become much easier because he is the proud possessor of a brand-new little tooth and another on the way. Hopefully he'll get some front ones soon - little kids are so cute when they start getting teeth in their smile!
But by far his sweetest thing he does lately is give kisses. Open-mouth on the cheek or chin, and usually if you ask him for a 'kiss please' but sometimes for no reason at all. Although this week he's figured out something not so cute: if he doesn't want to kiss you he squinches his face up and leans as far away from you as he can while putting his hand on your mouth to keep you away.
He also has finally decided to be descriminating about who he wants holding him. For the longest time he would let anyone and everyone hold him without a murmur, but for the last three weeks or so he instantly starts crying if someone he doesn't know holds him. This is kind of sad - it was really neat when anyone who wanted to could cuddle him. On the other hand, I think it shows how much he's started observing what's actually going on around him. He really looks at everything if we go somewhere new, whereas up until recently he would just go along without ever seeming to notice if we were home or not.
It's getting harder to fend off well-meaning advice about how we should get him into this program or that program, because as he gets older the grace time allotted to us in most people's minds is running out. The current thinking on children with Jonathan's characteristics is that they need to be put into special classes and PT sessions right away or else they will never learn what they need to be 'independent'. We aren't too convinced this is very smart, especially given the whole way we live our lives - I mean, the current thinking on raising children in general is that it's best to get them into nursery school by age four for the same reasons and we scrapped that pretty thoroughly with very satisfactory results. So Jonathan is firmly out of the school system and will stay out...but this is very hard to convey to many people around us who are worried - as they were when we never were sent to school - that Jonathan will suffer for Mom and Dad's ideals.
Once a maverick, though, always a maverick. I think it gets kind of addictive, once you've bucked the system successfully. If you've done what all the common wisdom of the day says you shouldn't and gotten results far and away better than what you'd hoped for...common wisdom starts to seem pretty nonsensical. Common wisdom says Jonathan should already be in school. But he's not and I'm confident he's going to turn out a good man anyway, capable of being an asset wherever he's needed. Just as long as people quit thinking that he can't be unless we give up and let 'the professionals' take over.
After all, God made him in His image...and then He placed him in our family.
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