Lots of gains

Time Change week, and a  couple of weeks worth of updates at once

 

I was not planning on it, but at the last minute decided to take Dominic trick-or-treating. It’s been many years since we have attempted this and so at the last second I grabbed all of the Dominic safe treats from the kitchen and preloaded the neighbors with them. Then we went and we trick-or-treat it at for houses. It was no big deal. I am blown away

This week with the time change, Dominic has been all over the place – from absolutely refusing to work for his Occupational therapist, to spontaneous playing with a peer in a waiting room and firsts in the kitchen…  The time change weekend has also guaranteed that now we always have first dinner (when he walks in the door) and second dinner (closer to 630)… and sometimes third dinner.  Daddy and I are starting to have discussions about the pro’s and con’s of discouraging the third helpings.  We may go broke feeding this kid through puberty.  

 

So – 

 

I didn’t share these with you guys, but I shared them on facebook last Friday night because the event made me LAUGH so hard.  Dominic and I were watching Food Network and he watched and rewatched thse two (back to back) commercials at least 10 times.  His … commentary … is hysterical. 

 

Monday, as I was putting Dominic to bed, I found this scene in his room.  Mind you, I put away all the Halloween stuff over the weekend, so at some point he hid Skelly.   I am amused and so I’m going to leave Skelly there and see what happens over the year. 

Tuesday at our OT appointment, a little boy approached Dominic in the waiting room and asked to play.  Now this kiddo and Dominic work together in therapy for social skills, so it wasn’t like a stranger asked – but it was in a different environment, so we’re calling it generalization.  (I got permission from his mother to take this picture).  Then Dominic proceeded to absolutely refuse to work for the duration of his therapy session, which repeated itself at our therapy appointment Wednesday…

 

Thursday morning, Dominic made his own fried eggs, with just verbal cues and minimal hand over hand support from me. So this morning, I videoed him doing that.  It’s a long video, but he did almost everything himself, needed a smidge of support with one egg (duck eggs are HARD SHELLED).  Very proud of this. One of our biggest goals is around ADL’s (activities of daily living) and ensuring that Dominic will, at some point, be able to take care of all of his ADL’s on his own.

 

Thursday evening, he had speech therapy with Sarah, and he did something I’ve never seen him do, although she told me he did it once before for her.. here’s the text back and forth with Daddy describing it.  It was very cool.  She also told me he did the best he’s done for her with focus.  One of the biggest challenges we are having in getting him to read is that he glances at the page really fast and struggles to focus on it. The increase in focus gets us more reading and better answers.  One step at a time. 

 

A year ago – even 6 months ago -  I am positive I wouldn’t have had even an inkling we would be where we are now.  The combination we are using: Ioncleanse by AMD footbath for a foundation (which reminds me, he needs a footbath today), genetically targeted SNP support for his specific mutated pathways, mitochondrial support, a nootropic for his cogntion, and Prime My Body Hemp oil for cognition, speech, sleep, anxiety, inflammation, and autoimmune… is making a HUGE HUGE difference.  I have some other things that I want to play with, namely camel milk (will probably do that over Christmas break from school) and antiviral herbs, but I want to go very slowly because we’re in a good place and I don’t want to overturn the applecart.