So, as I promised a reader a while back, I went looking for the video of the Monster drumming.

Now, I rarely think about how to archive my iPhone, so I had figured that the images were just on my harddrive, so I went diving into the movies in my Pictures folder.

What I ended up finding were movies of the Monster from when he was 12 to 18 months.  It’s.. interesting, especially with a second child, not remembering how things went with the first one at that age.  (The baby is, admittedly, only 8 months old, so.)

It’s actually weird to watch him at that age, back when we were starting to get the impression something wasn’t quite normal developmentally, but nothing we could put our fingers on.  He was a happy, playful toddler like most others.  We have videos of him in the bath, in a bounce-house, fooling around with cats… nothing that really seemed all that unusual, that weird.

Not that there’s anything I can put my finger on towards his regressing either.  I’m not seeing anything in the videos that he did do back then that he doesn’t now.  It’s more… a delay, as his evaluations have said all along.  (The wife would argue he’s regressed in food choices, but again, I don’t call becoming a picky eater a regression.)

I still, deep down, wish we’d thought to push harder, sooner, that we’d worked harder to get him help when we first had any feeling that we were facing something.  I almost wonder – obviously having to wonder, since I don’t have notes from back then – if we just thought we were overreacting or something, if we were just being blind, or if we honestly thought it was the ‘some kids just are better at some things sooner than others’ thing…

(And yes, I’ll post the video soon – I just want to trim it down from 30 Mb…)