In the past couple of months, a few small wins have warmed my heart. I can see my littlest love, Luca’s little brain working and recognising how things work.

The first real recognition of him understanding how to make things work, or “cause and effect” was when he was introduced (many months ago by his speech pathologist) to a “switch” button. When you press on this button it has a recording of my voice saying “more”. When feeding Luca snacks, I will use this button. I put it in front of him and if he wants more food- he knows he’s not going to get it, unless he presses that button. A funny/cute thing Luca does is presses things with his nose- we’re trying to sway him to use his hand more! At Kinder, his teachers also use this button. They now no longer feed him more than 4 bowls of food in one sitting!! If he doesn’t  “say” more- they give him no more. Luca is very good at eating. If you put a spoon anywhere near his mouth- he will ALWAYS open his mouth- which is why, the “more” button is so bloody great. He will now only get more if he asks for me. He gets it.

Doctors and carers will always ask me, “what does Luca like and what doesn’t he like”. I know this is very helpful to them- but its always been so frustrating to me because its VERY hard to work out what my own 4 year old son likes/dislikes (and with that comes a level of guilt!). Until….. Luca started to show an interest in toy trucks. We don’t have toy trucks at home. So he would happily play with them at kinder- not even realising I’d left the room. Like most objects, he picks up the trucks and studies them very carefully. One day a few weeks ago, a neighbour was having something done that required a large truck. Our dining room window sees right onto the street. Beep beep beep, the sound of the reversing truck went- and zoooooom off Luca went. If you can imagine Usain Bolt crawling… that’s how fast Luca made his way to the window and just watched this truck as if he were hypnotised. Ok, so now I know that Luca loves three things for sure. Trucks, water and music.

The next thing, I’m still not 100% sure Luca has grasped. But kissing. Ask any girl at his kinder and they will tell you how much they love kissing Luca. I adore kissing Luca. His cheeks are so soft and unlike most 4 year olds- he does not try and wriggle out of your kisses- or tell you off- or try and run away! So its so easy to get carried away with kissing him. Well, recently, we’re pretty sure he’s been trying to kiss us back. I say trying, because he open-mouths you and then pulls his head back away from you…. and then… smiles. GAH! Its a little bit cute.

So these are the things Luca has noticeably learnt in the last 2 months. In the next month we have a few medical appointments coming up:

1. Eye doctor- pretty certain little man will be getting some cool specs next week.
2. Orthopaedic surgeon for hips- to see if they have progressively shifted into the position they should be in… if not, he may need to look at surgery? or a cast? Don’t know!
3. Hopefully we find out how Luca’s diagnosis is coming along!! (we were told March/April)

Onwards we slowly march/crawl.