Developmental Overload
As has been the case for the last many weeks Nick is constantly learning new things. It seems to have gotten to be a lot for him to process though because everything keeps coming and going. We never know what he’s going to want, or be able, to do when.
Last week I wrote about how Nick had started walking and was getting better at it every day. I also said how I felt lucky in a way that he couldn’t pull himself up yet because the house hadn’t yet been safety proofed, and if he couldn’t pull himself up then he couldn’t start walking without us knowing. Well guess what he did this week? You guessed it, he pulled himself up. He grabbed onto the side of his toy box and pulled himself right up. He pulled himself up into a bit of an odd position though, so I had to help him adjust, but I could see we were in trouble then. He’s now done it a couple times using the toy box. He’s tried to do it with other objects, but the other ones he has picked haven’t been strong enough to support him. That is until yesterday when he realized he could use the side of the crib!
Now here’s the strange part. As soon as Nick started pulling himself up he stopped walking by himself! Jason and I sit on the floor trying to get him to walk back and forth between us every night. He either grabs onto our hands and won’t let go, or he sits down. He loves walking so much that this behavior shocked me.
This past weekend Nick’s newest development was working on sitting up better. We had worked and worked with Nick on how to sit up, but he refused to do it any way other than doing it by doing a sit-up. He had done it a few times completely on his own, but it was so difficult that he usually needed us to hold his legs down to help him. Recently he has been working really hard on doing the more traditional way though. On Friday we realized he had mastered it in his crib (he uses the bumper to help get himself up) when we looked at the monitor and saw him sitting up. Now were going through the stage where he sits up as soon as we lie him down. I can’t say I’m enjoying this stage too much. The strange thing is though that he never even tries to sit up when he wakes up in the morning.
I wouldn’t say that Nick is delayed in his physical development, but he did spend much of his first year focusing more on language development than movement. It seems like he’s ready to really focus on it now and he’s trying to learn months of physical development all at one time. He even wants to spend time on his tummy. Yes, this is my “hate my stomach, and you can’t make me be on it” Nick we’re taking about. He only seems to be able to focus on one type of development a day. It is as if doing more than one of them a day is a developmental overload. I have a feeling that he’s going to put everything together soon, and we’ll be in really big trouble then.