One transition which our legs and hips have appreciated is that we are now completely baby gate free! There used to be a baby gate between our family room and the stairs. We put it there because we did not like Xiao Yu climbing up and down the stairs by himself, since he was still a little unsteady on his feet.
But then, in the fall, Xiao Yu started to want to be potty trained. And the downstairs bathroom was in our foyer just beyond the baby gate and it became very laborious to keep lifting him over the gate every time he needed to go to the bathroom.
So finally we took down the baby gate and all of us experienced freedom!
Another big transition was moving Xiao Yu into Gabriel's bedroom. For almost a year, Xiao Yu had been sleeping on a mattress at the foot of our bed. While this was necessary at first, but it got old quickly, as we could never have the lights on in our bedroom after Xiao Yu fell asleep, etc.
However, we wanted to wait until Gabriel had settled down with the new member of our family before we moved his little brother in with him. Although he was not totally pleased about this new development, he was not overly upset either.
The arrangement actually worked out fine...sometimes they wake each other up early in the morning, but we have trained both boys, that if they wake up before the other--to leave the room quietly and they stick to this usually. And we now have our bedroom back!
If you had visited our house in the past months, you would notice a cardboard box underneath Xiao Yu's high chair. Most people who came over did notice and asked about it... We filled this box with books, taped it shut, and put it underneath Xiao Yu as support for his feet. This is because when Xiao Yu's physical therapist came over, she remarked that it might help Xiao Yu concentrate on eating and learning how to chew and swallow better, if he was able to have more stability for his body by having somewhere to put his feet on. But we didn't really follow up on that piece of advice along with the dozens of other exercises and things were were supposed to do with him but didn't because we had a hard time fitting it into our schedule. And then his speech therapist mentioned the same thing, and then another did as well. We realized that if three professionals are all saying the same thing, then maybe we should follow it....
And the biggest transition we've had for Xiao Yu is that he has started pre-school! He qualifies for a special ed pre-school because of certain delays, such as his speech and so he now goes to pre-school 4 days a week from 8:30am to about 11am. At first we were a little reticent in sending our new little guy off to pre-school because there was very little parental involvement and because it seemed weird to ship him off to school. However, we knew that he is a very social kid and likes that type of a setting. Also, the thought that there would be a teacher and aides teaching him skills sounded great and would take a certain amount of burden from us. So after meeting the teacher (she was VERY nice) and the aides (they were very nice too), we signed him up. Here we are walking to his first day of school. He has his Paw Patrol backpack on, which is bigger than his entire torso. So it looks like a turtle shell.
Because it's a program run through the school district, they also offer busing. This for us also seemed quite drastic as we weren't sure how he would react to boarding a vehicle without us on it. However, he has had and continues to have a crazy fascination with buses and would throw tantrums when he saw other kids on the bus but we didn't let him go in. So we did sign up for the service where the bus takes him home every day. This helps Emily with the driving and Xiao Yu is a very happy camper for getting to ride the bus!
So now, in the evenings if Elvin asks Xiao Yu, "How was preschool?" Xiao Yu's answer is always "Two buh!" (Meaning, "school bus!") That seems to be the highlight of his day.
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