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Well, things are better now. Lucas feels good again; the antibiotics worked like a charm. The nasty behavior lasted about as long as the antibiotics did, but the 9th was definitely the worst of it. He never got as obnoxious as that again. He even got to the point where he was taking the antibiotics without complaint—just about when we ran out of the stuff.
Since I last wrote we actually had our first parent-teacher conference. Miss Karen came to our house on Saturday the 19th and we chatted about how Lucas is doing at Little Gate preschool and how he’s developing. Obviously, he is very articulate, but he’s now learning how to communicate his needs to other children. She says his sharing skills have improved and he’s learning to negotiate. She is glad to see that he now has more varied play. At preschool he plays with the kitchen and the blocks (which are natural branch blocks, not unit blocks), as well as the train set. She says he builds “towers” and “castles” and “tunnels.” His creative, imaginative life is blossoming. Lucas is also very interested in cutting with scissors. Karen really has to watch him with scissors because he occasionally says things like “I’m going to cut you” or “cut hair.” Basically, he’s testing the boundaries. When that happens, he loses scissor privileges for the rest of the day. Karen also says that Lucas’s physical well-being really seems to affect his mood and behavior—I’ve noticed the same thing myself. His fine motor and gross motor skills are developing apace. Outside he enjoys the slides, the sand box, and also balancing on things. Karen thinks he really enjoys the kinesthetic and tactile things like sand.
Karen also recommended we put him on probiotics to counteract the negative affects of the antibiotics.
I haven’t mentioned this yet, but one new development in Lucas’s life is that he’s become obsessed with alphabet letters and writing. Beginning at the end of January, he began writing some letters. Now, he hardly scribbles anymore, he’s always writing letters. He can write E, F, I, H, A, B, J, O, P, U, W, and X. That’s nearly half the alphabet. E and F are his current favorites. Sometimes the E has more than three horizontal bars—sometimes it has many, as if the excitement and enthusiasm he feels about E can’t be contained in only four lines. However, it’s truly unmistakable that writing letters is what he’s doing. He’ll tell ya all about it too.
Lucas is also interested in the magnetic letters on the fridge. Sometimes they are put away and sometimes they are out. Lately he wants them out and he wants to spell words with them. They are no longer just building long letter “trains” like before. Now he says the letters in order, then says “that spells Dad.” He knows how to spell his name: “L-U-C-A-S spells Lucas!” and “M-O-M spells Mommy” and “D-A-D spells Dad.”
Oh, and he’s into making letter shapes with his fingers too. He makes O, C, and L (that one he makes with his left hand, like I showed him). I’m thinking of starting to teach the ASL finger alphabet since he’s so interested.
Another thing worth mentioning. VoVo says that last week Lucas asked, “Did Puffer Cat died?” Grandma said yes, he did. Lucas replied, “When he’s undied, he’ll come back.”
