Milestone and Scavenger Hunt

Okay, to some this is no biggy, but to me it is! In a way it makes life easier! In another it tells me that my little guy is doing SOMETHING developmentally better than he was just a few days ago even! That makes me feel good because lately I have been concerned that he has no desire to crawl despite being able to get his knees under him. I know he will do it in his own time, but that is just where we are at!!! So on to the milestone for today! VERY early on, Jesstine was able to drink from a straw. This, to me, was great because I had heard that it is actually better to transition kids to straws rather than sippy cups because of speech development. It seemed to work for Jesstine (a 100 word vocabulary at 18 months!!!). So, I introduced water to Emmitt (and Jesstine for that matter) as soon as he was eating some solids. I did the same to Jesstine, but she NEVER cared for the sippy cup and I tried every one under the sun! Eventuly I started giving her little bits of water from my straw when we would go out to eat (by placing it in the water, covering the top hole and dropping it in her mouth). Soon she caught on that she could control the amount if she sucked it out herself. The rest as they say is history. I have been REALLY hoping to get to that point with Emmitt because he LOVES to drink water when he eats. He even likes it in an open cup...a mess, I know! So periodically I would give him sips from my straw much like I described above. Today we were eating donuts for breakfast and he put his lips around the straw (his mind you, not mine, I gave him his OWN water because he is MESSY) and sucked the water out before I could get my finger off the top hole! I was astounded. He only did it once though, so I was really sure it was a fluke. Later when I was feeding him his dinner, I had one of my sturdy straws in a double walled cup. I thought this might be better to attempt because I could keep him from sucking the straw down his throat and it wasn't a thin plastic that could hurt his mouth as badly. I gave it a try and he did it SEVERAL times! He is still learning the control part, but he actually sucked water down! I am so proud of him! See for yourself:

In other news, we are soon headed out for a family vacation. A while back, I picked up a wooden Melissa & Doug "Memory" game at a garage sale for $2. It reminded me a lot of the car ride bingo games I used as a kid. This was of course before DVD players in vehicles. Jesstine has a bad habit of begging for a video as soon as we are backing down the driveway because she is aware that if we are going on a long trip, she gets to watch a movie. Well, Stephen and I have often mentioned how we made up things to do in the car growing up. So, I thought it would be cool to turn this "Memory" game into a scavenger hunt that would force Jesstine to notice things around her. I scanned in one of the cards and did a google image search for certain pictures of things I knew she would recognize and see out her window. To test out her ability to do it, I simply opened all of the windows on the vehicle page (and later the color page) and had her try and find two of every vehicle. It took a little while, but eventually she was able to do it and even enjoyed it! The rule is that SHE has to actually see it! I can point it out to her, but she has to actually see it to cover the picture up. So pretty soon, she will get to try out the one I made. Here is the finished product (memory game on the left and scavenger hunt on the right):

Oh and I must mention that before I saw this at a garage sale, I saw THIS post on a blog I follow that had some travel bingo games by Melissa & Doug.

Hopefully you will hear about it when I post about our trip to the Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City!

In Him,

The Hutchins Family