One, two, three...

I've added a link to an article I found that describes the brushing technique (though after reading the article, I shouldn't call it that anymore). Several people have asked me about this technique, and I haven't done a very good job of explaining it. If you are one of those people, I apologize and encourage you to click on the link.

Today we did the technique four times, which is almost as many as we had been doing during those initial two or three weeks. Per the article, I did it a little slower tonight and made sure, as always, that I was using deep pressure and not an annoying light stroke. It seemed to make a difference: Dom lay there calmly and appeared relaxed. We'll continue this way and see if it helps.

Playgroup today was a little better, though Dom still had issues at the beginning. He didn't even want to get out of the car. I let him take his time going into the house, and though he had a few moments, he warmed up pretty quickly, thanks in part to some of the other moms who played with him. Dom did refuse to eat at the table with the others, so I fed him his lunch with him sitting on the kitchen counter. Oh well. Baby steps, right?

He continues to progress speechwise. I can't even keep track of all his words now, and although many of them are creatively pronounced, we understand him. He uses new ones all the time without any prompting, like this evening when he pointed to a piece of plastic fruit and said "strawberry." Last night Dom impressed us by counting the buttons on Mike's shirt. We didn't realize what he was doing at first, but then it was clear that he was counting from one to six as he pointed at the buttons.

These types of things (saying words, counting, blowing bubbles, etc.) may seem rather mundane to a lot of people. To us, they are big events, though I suspect that if Dominick had done all these things much earlier, I'd still have been exceedingly proud. Funny how seemingly little things are more meaningful because we waited so long to see them happen. What ommy wouldn't be excited?