29 Months Old!

Last week I started to realized that when someone asked me about Diego's age I would say "almost 2 1/2 years old"! Really??!!?? Well, today he is 29 months old, one more month and he really will be 2 1/2. I can't believe that my little baby is really a little boy... And actually in the last month we have seen a more confident and independent boy. He now can play by himself without me by his side (for a little while), at the mall playing area he is now OK with me seating and chatting a bit with other mothers while he plays, and most of all, he wants to do EVERYTHING by himself! Well, not exactly everything, because there are quite a bit of things that I would like him to do (like feed himself, put his shoes on, use the potty!), but for the last month or so his "middle name" is "I DO IT!".

Yeah, he is also totally in his terrible two's. He really enjoys saying NO, everything is HIS, and he gets REALLY upset or frustrated when we don't let him do certain things... We had to start the time outs again and even though we still have some ways to go to "tame" his temper, I can tell that if we don't stand firmly he will manipulate us quite easily! But no, I am not complaining (at least not right now, but at the beginning he was driving me crazy!), I know all of these behaviors are typical for toddlers. And part of me is happy to see how he is growing and going through this phases and learning experiences that all kids go through...

His therapists (OT, speech and developmental specialist) are amazed with Diego's progress during the almost 7 months they have worked with him. The OT is the therapist with the most experience of the three and who has met Diego the longest and last month when she came she pointed out several times how mature Diego looks and that we should consider enrolling him in a 2 year old program so he can benefit from regular interaction with other kiddos. I was so happy with her remarks that day, since she usually has been very blunt in pointing out his weak areas, but this time she stressed how well Diego is doing! Last week the speech therapist also decided to do an evaluation and see where Diego's speech was for his age. Yesterday she called and said that his scores were great and that now his speech is at an "average" level for his age! Yeah!!! We had noticed that he was consistently using 2 and 3 word phrases and sometimes he gets "gutsy" and gives us 5 or 6 words sentences! His speech has really blossom and we believe part of that could be due to the change in his diet (no dairy, no wheat, no gluten).

We were lucky in June with the weather, but the heat is ON here (last week it was 110F, today 104F) and it is getting harder to get Diego entertained without being outside. We have started venturing to new libraries in Scottsdale (city next to Phoenix) for their toddler programs, because Diego kind of got bored with the Phoenix libraries. I also have been trying to get together with other mothers and their toddler kids and Diego looooooves playing with other kids. I love that, he is so nice, gives them hugs, and asks me about them later. After thinking about it for a while we decided to register Diego at a preschool where he will go 2 mornings per week starting in August.

So that's about it... Keeping busy, trying to squeeze some time to finish a bathroom remodel (the contractor's work is done and now it's all about things that we are supposed to finish!), and get couple of docs ready to send to CSS in the next few days. And now, a pic I took today of my boy, with his summer shorter hair and his cool shirt!