Holy Catch Up post, batman!

My mother called me over the weekend to let me know I haven't updated the blog in a while.   I've been really busy with the CNA course I'm taking and life's just gotten in the way.  So - my last update was Feb 13.  Here're some tidbits since then.


- Dominic is deeply in love with our new puppy, Kumar.  Deeply.  To the point that he has given the poor, waterlogged dog a bath every day the last few days.  (In fairness, Kumar is dusty.  Kumar has discovered digging).  We actually had to stop him from giving Kumar a second bath of the day yesterday.

-  School wise, we are going to visit the middle school sped program on Friday - the school very much does not want us to hold D back.  We are on the fence after speaking with them.  We will see the program and talk some more on Friday,.

- We are loving home based OT and speech.  In the last month, Dominic has done the following life skills with his OT, Ashley - Cooking dinner (yes he did), baking cupcakes, doing laundry, vacuuming, shoveling snow... and I am loving not having to spend that time sitting in a waiting room.

- Dominic has adjusted to the MASSIVE routine change of me going to CNA school remarkably.  I am in school every night, leaving at 5:15 and getting home around 10:30 - so he has had to adjust from Mommy every night, dinner/footbath, shower,  bedtime all consistent to - Daddy on Monday, dinner then going to the gym adn being in daycare until 7:30pm, then shower and bed.  Mr Juan on Tuesday and Wednesdays, doing dinner then hanging out and Daddy doing shower and bed later.... and Daddy on Thurs and Friday.  Its a big shift and he's handled it beautifully.  He really likes Mr Juan - which is very sweet to see.  I have 3 more weeks of CNA school.

- Speaking of routine changes, Saturday I took Dominic to the Zoo and instead of going our usual path, i switched it up and skipped the wallabys, substituting the bears and monkeys, which changes the trajectory of the walk. .  And he was totally fine with the change.  We did have to backtrack to see the tiger because a trip to the zoo isn't a trip to the zoo without the tiger.

Go get dressed

That's what I said.

This is what he did.  

He would particularly like you to note his footwear choice, which he has nearly outgrown and which until today he wore under extreme duress

It's February.  In Colorado.  Snow on the ground still.  But hey!  Warm Enough for sandals....

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For occupational therapy yesterday, Miss Ashley had Dominic bake his own birthday cupcakes.  I didn't manage to get video or pictures of the BEST part, which was his utter excitement to break eggs into the bowl.  He did it with Verve and I'm shocked he managed to get the egg in the bowl not all over the counter/floor

He also thought it was BEYOND hysterical to turn the mixer on high and get covered in powder (cake mix... powdered sugar... cocoa powder..   all of it cracked him up)

He actually did pretty well loading the cupcakes.. didn't make much of a mess at all.

Dish washing was NOT a favorite activity at all. 

As per our tradition, we had him open his presents this morning  in our bed. 

Hopefully he has a fantastic day at school.  In the meantime, I'll be in the corner wondering how i went from adorable baby to almost teenager in a blink.

Introducing Kumar

We have a new family member, who came to us somewhat spontaneously.  The breeder we got Kama from a little over a year ago needed to quickly find homes for some puppies due to personal stuff.  And therefore we got a deep discount on a new standard poodle, who is currently 9 weeks old.  We’ve named him Kumar (continuing with our Hindi theme, Kumar means little boy).   He is a little lover – currently asleep in my lap as I type away.   He also spent his first night – all night – in his crate.  He cried until I turned off the lights, but once the lights were off, he went to sleep pretty quickly.   He’s mastered the doggie door, going up the steps and we’re working on potty training. he is a very chill dog.

Dominic knew we were getting a puppy, but was at school when we drove out to Peyton and picked Kumar up.  He barreled in the door yesterday after  school loudly saying “NEW PUPPY”.  He is officially in love and very gentle with Kumar. 

Mom's weekend away and a plan

This past weekend I got out of town with a couple of girlfriends for a girls weekend.  It was fantastic.  My TMR mama friends Poppy and Rainmaker and I spent 2 nights in the mountains relaxing.     The weekend started with me picking Poppy up from the airport Thursday and bringing her home with me.  Dominic did AWESOME – the coolest part of her at my house was Friday morning.  Dominic was eating breakfast and she was walking by and clear as a bell he called her name to show her something on the ipad.   She was blown away as was I. 

While I was gone, I had a couple of ACTUAL phone conversations with Dominic that were several exchanges back and forth without any prompting on Daddy’s part.  And he and Daddy had a boys weekend, got haircuts, and hung out.

While we were up there and focused, Rainmaker and I brainstormed directions to take Dominic’s healing (she is actually one of our treatment team members)  and we made a new plan.    We are going to (finally) go after the virus(es) that caused his initial and subsequent regressions.   We feel like we’ve cleared enough of the garbage out to finally heal that injury.  So that’s the focus of 2016 – get the latent virus out.

Snow day OT

Two minutes after arriving to do Dominic's occupational therapy,  Miss Ashley decided to have him do some heavy work and shovel snow off our back deck before she settled him down with fine motor.   He's having a blast!

 

And Video too!!!

And after 20 minutes of shoveling (which he loved), he sat nicely and did all his coloring.

then when Ashley left, he wanted to go back outside. I think this look is CLASSIC Dominic. 

He is currently outside flinging snow about and having a wonderful time.

Working balance!!

In case you wondered how Dominic's OT works on his balance - he stood on this bosu for a solid 30 minutes while doing an activity on the white board.  She told me he was getting the train put together faster than she could give him pieces.

We are snowed in for a second day in a row here.... there's at least 15" - i'm going to attempt to measure it officially soon....

Mommy's going to CNA school!

I wrote a blog post for TMR a little while ago about making the most of our resources.   Today we had our appointment to determine Dominic's eligibility for CNA services.  He has qualified for 3 hours a day / 21 hours a week.  In the state of Colorado a parent can be the childs CNA (apparently CO is an anomaly in this case).  And so I'm signed up for night school to get my CNA starting the end of this month!

We have known about this and been semi-actively trying to get it going for several years.  We are very excited to get started.

..... now, where to buy comfortable scrubs, which I will wear for the class and the practicals...