WORDS!!

Oliver has recently started saying just a few words! It's not super consistent, but it's still amazing. This month he has said the following (in his own way): more, water, cookie, bubbles. We can't wait for more words to come spouting out. Super achievement, we are so proud.

ABC's with Oliver

Oliver wrestling and singing ABC's from Ciara Richardson on Vimeo.

Letters, Numbers and Horses - OH MY!

So here's a little catch up since I've gotten behind on his progress.

1. We've stopped with the gluten free diet. It just wasn't worth it and super difficult to maintain. We didn't see big enough results to justify it. We have started to reduce his sugar intake. We think we just might be seeing results with this. Along with less sugar we are trying to not give him any preservatives or dyes or anything like that. His temperament seems to be a little better since starting this.

2. Oliver is fascinated with letters and numbers. He can put together an alphabet puzzle we have for him with ease. He can also say about 20 letters. The other letters he says something but it is a made up sound. The cool thing is that he uses the same made up sound for the same letter. So it seems like he recognizes it, he just can't say it. He can say the alphabet all the way through too. He does something similar with numbers. He can say 1, 2, 6 -10, then he makes up a sound for 3-5 but it's always the same sound for the right number. We can ask him 'what's this?' pointing to a letter or number and he will often tell us.

3. We are trying a new therapy. It's where he goes horseback riding. It's a certain kind of horse and they walk in a circle for an hour. I still have to ride with him since he's still not too keen about it. In fact, he cries every time we pull up to the barn. He usually cries for a few minutes and then relaxes and does really well. He loves playing outside the barn with the rocks when he's done. He seems to be more calm the rest of the day. The therapy is supposed to help regulate his brain (that's the simplified way of explaining it). We go to a place by Spanish Fork called Hoofbeats to Healing.

4. Last, Oliver has been struggling with hitting. He is hitting Ciara and me any time he doesn't get his way. He'll run over to you and start whacking your legs. If you're holding him he will try to hit your face. He definitely tries our patience, but we are doing our best to teach him it's not good. I've stopped doing any sort of hitting when we rough house too in case that had anything to do with it. We don't hit much in our home so we don't know what really caused it. He also has been hitting Liam without any reason. Sometimes he even goes out of his way to hit him on the head. We tried saying 'ow' when he'd hit us to show him that it hurts and we explain that it's not nice. Unfortunately, he then kept hitting us, but HE says 'ow'! It's actually really cute, but he either didn't get the message or he just outsmarted us.

Overall we see improvement. Just today on our way to the car after church I said 'there's the car' and he repeated the word 'car'. He is trying to repeat more and will sing along to some of his favorite shows. We love our little boxer.

Letters and Stuff

Lately Oliver has been fascinated with letters. he has flash cards, iPhone aps and books that teach him letters. He also likes it when we sing the alphabet song. He watches our mouths very closely as we form our mouth too say each letter. He often points to letters and makes his own sound for them trying so hard to be more vocal. He finally has started saying a few letters. Sometimes randomly, but also sometimes when he is looking at the actual letter! He's mostly familiar with A, O, S, X, and Y. Tonight while we got him ready for bed we sang the alphabet song again. He watched Ciara's mouth closely and helped her with the last three letters! They weren't perfect, but he managed to say X, Y, and Z before Ciara did. We were so happy for him. There have been a few times that he has tried to say 'bubbles' as well. He's trying so hard to communicate with words.

He has gotten better at showing us what he wants. He used to just sign 'more' and we'd have to guess what he wants. Now he is pointing a lot more and also taking us to the thing he wants more of so we can help. Before he would take us somewhere near the thing he wanted, but it was still a guessing game. He's trying to make it a little easier on us. Way to go Oliver!

To Gluten or Not to Gluten

So for around 2 months we tried to keep Oliver on a strict gluten-free diet. It was difficult, expensive and showed mixed results. There were times Oliver seemed more calm and then we'd still have days of intense fits. So we were undecided on whether it was really helping and if it was worth continuing. Then when we got home from our week long TX trip Ciara and I ordered pizza. Oliver couldn't resist and wanted a bread stick. That bite resulted in us deciding to discontinue the diet and observe Oliver. It's been about a week and we have really only had one day where he was irritated by anything and everything. So thus far we don't see much of a difference. Plus there are SO MANY more foods that we can try to give him. He's doing pretty good so far, but we need to figure out a few tricks to sneak in some healthy things and maybe some meats.


On a funner side, Oliver is still progressing in many ways. He is more vocal and is saying things like dada, mama, NO, wha?, and what. The only one that he seems to know the meaning of is NO which he uses often. He likes to make a funny face with you where he shows his teeth and makes kind of a frowny face. It's funny. He LOVES swimming in pools or at the beach. When he's in a really good mood he likes to walk around and do a goofy laugh about every 10 seconds. It's like a burst of a laugh with a big wide open smile. He likes to make his toys kiss. He is addicted to slides of any kind. He likes to briefly hold Liam's hand and just look at him. He loves riding in his wagon as long as you don't back track. I could go on and on because he's just amazing.

More signs and sounds

We've been working with Oliver trying to teach him more signs so he can tell us more specifically what he wants. Thus far he has 'more' and 'please' down. We've been working on 'spin', 'cookie', 'drink' and 'thank you'. After we begin to repeat each sign with him non-stop he'll start to kind of figure it out. Usually when we know what he wants we'll ask him for example, "Do you want another cookie?" and after hearing the word he'll make the sign, but he rarely does it on his own without our cues. So he'll often come to us, sign 'more' and then he knows he usually gets something after that. The trick is to get him to be more specific and communicate that to us.

Also, Oliver has been learning lots about animals. He can make an elephant sound which cracks him up when I (dad) make the sound and move my arms like an elephant trunk. He also makes his version of a cat sound which is the softest little sound anyone could ever make. It's like the tiniest little grunt that sounds almost like a cat, but it's his version. Lastly, he's been saying mama again! He says it randomly for the most part but there have been a few times that it seems as if he is addressing Ciara by saying it, either way we are just happy to hear it. Happy Easter everyone. Just for fun I added some pics from a couple weeks ago when I put Oliver's shoes on over his pj onsie to play outside. He played with Ozzie's ball and Ozzie would chase him. It was lots of fun.

Memory Game

So several months ago I found a cool Toy Story memory game on my iPhone. Oliver was starting to get more interested in my phone so I thought he might enjoy seeing the characters. He liked it right away. It started with me holding his finger and I'd help him find all the matches. Eventually he started poking around and occasionally got a match (mostly by accident). Usually he'd get frustrated, grab my finger and make me find the matches. He at least recognized that the matched tiles were disappearing and he understood that that was good. Then about a month ago I gave him my phone (by this time he could easily navigate his way to the game to open it) and I noticed he wasn't grabbing my hand to help him. I also noticed that he had found a match. I started watching as he flips 2 tiles that don't match, then the next one he flipped he recognized that he had just seen its match, so he remembered where and got the match. Still I thought he was getting somewhat lucky. About 3 minutes and 15 seconds later he had solved the puzzle! Then he did it again and beat his record (2:45). He amazed us with his memory and has since then beat his time to close to 2 minutes. What an amazing boy. So smart like his mommy. I'm in search of other games that he'll enjoy while they challenge his mind. If you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them. I just hope this doesn't translate to mindless texting in later years. But as for now he is our little professor.