Adventures in Being a Mom: Even More Progress :)

In the last 3 months Mason has made tremendous progress in both fine and gross motor skills. A few days after the last post he began 4 point crawling 100% of the time! YEAH! About the same time as he began crawling, Doug taught him how to give a high 5 with his right hand. Ideally we would love for it to be either hand, BUT this is HUGE for Mason. Except for pointing with his right hand (and occasionally his left), he couldn't do any gestures with his hands. Then about 1.5 weeks ago, I taught him how to clap. We have been working on it for a few months now. I got him to first clap his right hand to his left arm, then with a little more practice I got him to clap the right hand to his left fist. We kept practicing and now he can clap with the left hand almost open :)! He is also beginning to clap independently when he wants to.
In addition to working on his motor skills, we have been taking him to new places and letting him explore his world more. Last month he went with some relatives from the Baggett side of the family and my parents to the National Children's Museum in D.C. He had a blast crawling all over the gym they had in the the 3 and under room. He wasn't a big fan of working with shaving cream though (I don't blame him, it stinks :( ). We will have to try more sensory activities at home to get him used to it. This month he went to Frying Pan Farm Park with some relatives from the Cross side of the family. He enjoyed getting to see the farm animals and riding a carousel for the first time too. We look forward to taking him to the pumpkin patch next month :).
He has begun to work with his speech therapist too. She has come for only 1 appointment so far, but has given us some info to help Mason. She wants us to work with giving nouns names, sounds, and actions. That's easier said than done since not all nouns have sounds and actions associated with them. She also wants him to use straw cups exclusively to promote development of his mouth muscles. We were already using them in conjunction with soft spout sippy cups, so we just took away the sippy cups. She also complained about some of Mason's electronic toys, saying they were too young when they are not. They are age appropriate and Mason likes playing with them, so they stay :). If Mason fixated on his electronic toys, then we would take away some of them but he doesn't. I firmly believe that a variety of toys is what is best for Mason. He has electronic toys, but he also has wooden toys and other toys that do nothing until Mason does something with them.