Things I’m Working On With My Toddler

I can’t express my deep love and admiration for this little boy. He hugs me like I’m his everything, and then 20 seconds later wants to run off and play. We’ve been having some challenges lately, and honestly I’m overwhelmed and exhausted at facing them. I figure if I write them down maybe I will feel more able to deal with them.

Learning Delay Early Intervention

This is a very personal subject because my husband has struggled all his life with learning disabilities, and is basically crushed at the possibility that our precious son might have to struggle through it as well. I first became concerned when doctors told me my son wasn’t reaching his language milestones. After waiting it out for a few months and trying to teach him and figure it out on my own I realized I wasn’t seeing much progress and needed some help. At his age he should be saying hundreds of words regularly, and after making a list he was barely doing 20. I really got concerned when his younger cousins started chattering, repeating, and mimicking away while he stayed on silent and started acting out because he couldn’t use his words. 

Our son was born 10 weeks early and that gives him a bigger chance of having developmental delays. I reached out to an organization in our area to figure out what’s going on and possibly get help to teach my son with his speech. The evaluation was basically a bunch of matching or sorting games, puzzles, playing by throwing balls, and asking some verbal questions or prompts to see if he would respond. It wasn’t the best of circumstances since he just woke up from a nap and had been set on watching a movie so wasn’t willing to participate in the first place. However, the results clearly show that he does have enough of a speech and language delay to qualify for help. I’m scared of this unknown territory that has my strong husband going into mental fetal position. I pray that there’s still time to do something about it because I know my son is so very smart and would love to hear what’s going on in his mind and what he has to say. 

Bath Time

This little boy could spend hours playing cars in the tub especially with L as his partner in crime. Sometimes they just sit in there making faces and laughing their heads off. It all changed when the shower accidentally sprayed him during a bath, and he crawled into a ball in the corner of the tub crying and wanted out even though he wasn’t all washed. Ever since then he cries and clings to me like he wants me to hold him even if I just put him in the tub with no water. Daddy was able to make it fun so he could get reacquainted with loving the bath again, but I have to ask him how he did it still. 

Pumping Iron

His iron levels were just a little low, which makes perfect sense because he refuses to eat anything green or anything that has touched anything green, and will spit out anything leafy when when we mix or hide it in his food. He is also not a fan of meat, especially iron rich beef or darker meats. There has been only one time he has eaten more than one bite of chicken, and that’s because it was a fried drumstick that was fun to hold. 

The dietician recommended feeding him more iron-rich foods and if needed give him a multivitamin. The one Jeremy happened to buy didn’t actually have any iron in it so I’ve been trying to be stealthy about sneaking it:

• Garbanzo beans in a hummus dip with his favorite tortilla chips 
• Split pea soup, which he ate even though it’s green and had chunks of ham in it because it also had his favorite carrots in it! I also credit that I fed some of it to him rather than leaving him to eat it all by himself. 
• Corn dogs with chicken in them. I think he liked the aspect of eating it on a stick. He didn’t even need a dipping sauce! 
• Raisins in oatmeal. 
• Spaghetti with ground beef. We make no attempt to hide the fact there’s meat, give him a normal helping like everyone else, and see if he tries some. He totally cleaned his plate!​ 

Potty Training

I hope the window of opportunity hasn’t passed! He’s not able to tell me when he needs to go, and I don’t yet have the time and support needed to try this alone. I feel like if my husband were home and could help me show our son an example or at least keep an eye on the kids or the chores while I focus on the potty training it could be successful without a ton of cleanup or inconsistency. I did try to show our son that a person goes on the big toilet and have him go in the small toilet, but I don’t think he got it. Plus he dislikes wearing the underwear because I suspect he isn’t used to it yet, so I think training him naked would work better.

I wish I had more time to devote to each of my children’s individual needs. Like, when am I supposed to have that uninterrupted 4-day weekend to potty train my sweet boy? It’s a big job when he can’t communicate to me that he needs to go and I have to set a timer every 20 minutes to check him and have him practice while trying to do all the other Mom things. It seems like if I give to one child I’m taking away time from another and it just doesn’t seem fair that there’s not enough of me to go around. But just look at that picture of him, so happy and in awe of the magic of Woody… Maybe the potty training can wait. Maybe I just have to be ready when he’s ready for all these things.