Misc....

This weekend Dominic learned how to play Angry Birds on the ipad, courtesy of our roommate.  It was really adorable AND kept him occupied until he ran the ipad battery down (all morning).  He not only got the concept but he laughed himself silly at the game.

We are in the middle (well, hopefully more towards the end) of re decorating the dining room and Kitchen.  Some of Rod's friends who do this professionally have been helping in their spare time and Dominic just loves them.  They play with him and carry him around, etc.  He thinks its HILARIOUS.  Yesterday, tho, they put him to work.  He actually sawed that whole piece of wood.

 

Legos and Cognition

Dominic was too young before he regressed to really understand the concept of his birthday and getting older.  Then he regressed and cognitively just didn't get it or seem to care, tho opening packages was fun.  He never asked for anything or told us he wanted anything for his birthday. Or got excited.  I kind of didn't enjoy celebrating his birthday because it reminded me of everything we'd lost.

This year, at Christmas, he got given 2 small sets from the Lego NinjaGo series.  It was an experiment, we weren't sure if he'd like them / play with them or not. To our extreme pleasure, he has really enjoyed them. Even tho he doesn't have the cognitive skills yet to follow the assembly directions and needs an adult to do it, he loves to play with them and actually has attempted to put the ones that came apart back together himself.  (*In fairness, it took 2 of us with higher educations a full hour to put them together*)  Dominic even took one of them with us to Mexico.   In the kits, they have a little pamphlet that has pictures of their other pieces to the series.   He has, for weeks, been poring over the pamphlet and looking at the different options.

We couldn't decide what to do for his birthday (which is coming up on Tuesday), so we decided to tell him a week ago that we were going to take him to ToysRUS and let him pick out his own toy.  To which he responded by getting the pamphlet, pointing to one of the NinjaGo series kits (same one every time) and telling us "PRESENT".    There were 2 he primarily has been interested in.   So we decided to buy one for him and our roommate decided to buy the other.  ALL week, he's been bringing the picture, pointing and telling us "present, go shopping" and we've been telling him "Saturday".

Today, we went to lunch at Tucanos (Brazilian food which oddly enough we managed to make fit the Keto diet parameters beautifully) and then did the aforementioned ToysRUS trip.

2 funny stories from lunch... 

1.  They bring carafes of water to the table for you to refill yourself.  They are smallish carafes.  My water was empty, so he filled me up spontaenously, and then furtively looked each way and chugged the rest of the water straight from the carafe.

2.  The waiter brought the dessert tray.  Bad move.  Dominic saw the Cake and wanted Cake.  Cake is nowhere near his diet.  He really hadn't enjoyed his salmon at all so that was still on his plate and Rod told him he could have some cake if he ate EVERY bite on his plate gambling that he wouldn't eat the salmon.  So the waiter comes and takes my plates away, and while he's lifting, Dominic SNUCK the salmon onto my plate as it was leaving, polished the rest of what was on the plate off and looked at Rod for Cake.  We didn't get him any, and i'm not making a dessert for him because its nowhere near our diet, but it was hilarious and SO neurotypical.


Then, the toy store.

We walked in, he went directly to the Legos, picked out the 2 boxes he'd been pointing at all week and walked to the cashier.  We were in the store MAYBE 5 minutes.

We had to run an errand on the way home - a quick stop at Lowes.  We got there, and i opened his door for him to get out and he was clutching his boxes with a "Are you kidding me, Lady" look on his face.  But.. BUT... he kissed his boxes goodbye and came in and and was completely fine in the store.  He even walked past a very loud key grinding operation without flinching.  The sound sensitivity thing is GONE.

We came home and he's "helping" put them together....

The cognition shift is huge.  The chattering is increasing.  we are making awesome progress.

"Light on Tummy"

One of the new things we've just added to Dominic's regime is infrared light therapy (this thing) on his tummy.  The idea here is two fold - first, it actually slightly heats the body up and when you get the body temperature over 99, it disrupts the parasite life cycle (eggs don't hatch), and second it improves circulation and reduces inflammation in the area that gets treated.  (the whole family is going to end up using this... it felt fabulous on my back when i tried it).

Anyway. 

It arrived on Thursday, we set it up and jumped right in. I bought the bigger pad so that we could just strap it onto Dominic's whole belly and its perfect.  He didn't object to wearing it, so we did 15 minutes on Thursday.  Last night, he ASKED for it.  He said "want light on tummy".  So we put it on. 

The most interesting thing happened.

After we took it off, he went into full on die off mode:  Eyes dilated, non compliance through the roof, growling, and needing to move.   We know that parasites release, among other things, morphine and ammonia when they die, which explains the eyes dilating.    it ALSO explains why he tends to have dilated eyes after a hot bath.

So we are making progress!  today he's fantastic.  He let Daddy give him his GCMAF shot with minimal  complaining and we trimmed fingernails with no drama.   He's very calm.

Just another tool for the toolbox. :)