plugging along, doing very well

Dominic had another great report today from Alpine, he's doing very well.

Today, he also had speech and occupational therapy at the place he's been going to for quite a while. This was the second eval week for speech, adn as they were going back his ST told me that he would probably score in the 1year 3 month to 1 year 6 month age for speech. When they came back out she said he'd done noticably better than she'd ever seen him do, and that the difference between last week and this week was potentially enough to move that age up to 2. She was blown away by the progress being made with ABA.

His OT was out today and he had a sub, so didn't get to talk comparisons with her. Next week should be very interesting with the OT.

one more day of therapies this week and then the weekend. I need a clone.

A few updates

2 more good days of Alpine reports. He's doing great. I had a conversation with his therapist today when I picked him up and they're thrilled with his progress. She said he mastered standing up today. I was like... wha? and then she clarified that tey're working on compliance, so they are asking him to stand up. And today he did it 100% of the times he was asked, where when he started a week and a half ago, it was 0%. Next they'll do sitting. Then they'll integrate. They are working on getting control so that he will be able to do the next kinds of things - colors are on the list for this summer, as are numbers and letters (my request). Will be very interesting to see where we're at in a month.

I am making a habit of working on his vocabulary on the drives home - if I can hold his focus, he'll repeat a lot - we did Horse, Bike, House, Car, Truck, balloon, Water and Foot, as well as GO and STOP, over and over on the way home as we either saw each item, or its picture on a sign, or did the action. And he stayed with it until we were almost home, so way longer that before. Makes me tired. I think these people have the patience of saints.

On an unrelated note, I'm so happy he's a good eater. I've been part of a discussion on one of my boards lately and it seems like a bunch of these kids are not only bad eaters, but absolutely refuse whats put in front of them. My advice to the parents - take everything else away, and only offer what is on their diet. and no snacks at all if they dont' eat their presented meals. If you havee to, grind it all down in the food processor with some water and spoon feed the resulting paste to them them in small enough spoonfuls that they can't spit it out. I promise, the kids won't starve. eventually you will win.

When all other forms of entertainment fail, put them to work.

Today was step one of our clean/waterseal the deck project that we do every summer. the last couple of years we've borrowed an awesome power washer from some friends, but were unable to connect with them this year, so it was back to the old fashioned way - scrub it with a brush and soap (dishwashing detergent, if you care - cuts the dirt really well)

So I set out to do that this afternoon, with a little help. Dominic's job was maintaining the bubbles. As you can see, he took it very seriously.








Here's a quick snippet of how the afternoon went:

imaginative play...

We see it occasionally, and today we saw some, which is nice. He's got this little toy elephant that he's been loving on lately (sleeping with, carrying around, etc). This aftenroon, he came and said "water" to me, so we went in the bathroom and turned the faucet on. He pushed the stopper in, and put the elephant in. He proceeded to have the elephant frolic in the water. When i said it was time to be done, we let the water out and he got a washcloth to dry the elephant off. 3 hours later, he's still carrying it around in the washcloth.

So, pipe up and introduce yourselves....

I just got a nifty new widget over there on the sidebar and it tells me where the IP addresses are from that view this blog. I knew that becaase I've got the URL to this blog in my signature on a number of boards, as well as on my facebook, that there was some interesting traffic, and after all its the internet, anyone can look, but i'm fascinated that I've got visitors from around the globe....

So, If ya'll dont' mind, please delurk and let me know who my readers are :)

For the interested... i've gotten hits from locations in Singapore (i think i know who this is... ), Paris (Hi Rae), several in Canada (Hi Beth and Jesse), several in Britian (Hi Rebecca), and all over the US including Boise, ID (mom and dad), Bellingham, WA (my brother), Los Alamos, NM (Allison), bunches from Colorado Springs (duh)... and then a bunch I'm not sure on. So I'm just curious....

:)

Zoo trip Number 2

Feeding the budgies...

Watching the Grizzlies



On the carousel

On the sky ride....

zoo trip

So we got a special invitation to the Zoo's Dreammaker night, something they do for special needs kids in the community. Completely free, including food. We went and had a great time.

Here's Dominic meeting a giant tiger. He generally HATES adults in costume, so at least he didn't cry.

Obligatory stop to feed the giraffes. Its a wonder the giraffes aren't obese.

Riding the train.

Sitting on a sherriff's motorcycle. He tried to reprogram it.

Inside the SWAT mobile.

science

So earlier this week, Dominic discovered that his Cranky Crane (from Thomas and Friends) had a magnet, and that magnet could attach to Shanti's collar on the occasion that he couldn't locate the leash.... As you can see, Shanti is none to thrilled about this.

But its okay, because kisses make it all better.

Week 1 of Alpine

Since tomorrow is an inservice for them I(which they do a couple of times a month)... And we've had glowing reports from them each afternoon. Everyone is very pleased with how he's doing, and we're just really relieved to finally be getting this kind of therapy. We were told it was the ONLY thing that would help him back in November... so its huge to be rolling.

We're now a full year into OT and ST through the private folks we're using. They're working on his yearly evals. Because of the speech and paying attention issues, he's not doing so hot on the standard testing (the peabody test put him at 28months developmentally, but as his OT said, that just not right because he's playing with things and doing problem solving much more closely to his actual age of 52 months). I'm not terribly excited one way or the other on these evals, but they're something that the therapists do to justify their existance (eg, show progress), so we do them.

From the past....

Rod found these on the computer, and while they make me tremendously sad because Dominic's nowhere near this level, I wanted to share them because they totally back up what we've been saying all along that he was developing perfectly normally.

these are before any shots, before any illnesses.... they're from right around his 2nd birthday. A full year before the regression hit in full force.

Alpine day 2

dominic had another good report from Alpine. He had his clinicals today (where the whole team of folks working with him gets together to work on goals, etc), and they all think he's the cutest thing they've ever seen (ha, we've known that for years).

Anyway, they've decided to focus on 4 core area's for the next week or so - basic stuff:

Attendance: so making sure he's paying attention, that he's not spaced out when spoken to, etc.

Compliance: Following instruction

Eye Contact

Non Verbal communication


With those as a basis, they can then build in instruction, but without those he's not going to be able to follow instruction.

I asked what we could do at home to help with the attending and compliance, because sometimes we have to repeat ourselves 4-5 times to get him to respond to a simple instruction, and what she told us was to make sure we had his attention, even by making him look at us, then give a simple instruction once, and immediately move into prompting him - hand over hand if necessary, instead of repeating the instruction.

Rod and I are both blown away because in the FULL YEAR we've been doing therapy of one kind and another, and getting more and more frustrated at home, this is the first time someone has given us such a clear direction of something that logically makes sense that it'll help.

Day 1 of Alpine and ESY - and we're rolling

This is going to be a very tightly structured summer for Dominic, and we're really hoping that its what Dominic needs...

Here's how yesterday went:

9:30 - our ESY therapist came over and worked with Dominic for 90minutes. She'd been warned by the school folks that his attention span was only 45 minutes, but Dominic did great and stayed very well focused for her for the majority of the 90minutes. We worked out the schedule for each week (m-w-f she's over at 9:30, tues/thurs its 8), and are very pleased with her. Dominic enjoyed himself greatly, and did good talking for her.

11am - ESY teacher left, and I settled Dominic down for lunch, Rod went to work.

11:50 - I head over to Alpine to drop Dominic off. Left a little early to figure out how long exactly it will take in lunch time traffic, plus I still had to pay them, and drop off his snacks and clothes and such.

12:20 - We got to Alpine - hit all the red lights and got stuck behind a slowpoke, so 30min is definately plenty of time.

After taking care of all the details, and showing Dominic the bathroom, his cubby, meeting a few people, etc, I left him there and went to work.

I picked him up at 3:30, and apparently he did pretty good for the first day. Had excellent peer interaction (i guess he played chase with another little boy, and that little boy fell down, and dominic helped him get up - good stuff). They noticed that Dominic does label items, but has almost no comprehension when asked specific questions - like "give me the cup" (which is one of the things making us CRAZY at home -we have to ask questions OVER and OVER for a response, and sometimes he gets it right away, but many times he doesn't. Its so frustrating.) most of this first week at Alpine is them evaluating where he is right now and developing their plan for the summer.

We got home, played for a little bit, and since Dominic was so high energy and it was raining outside, we went ot the gym and he ran around in the kids play area while Rod and I worked out.

Came home, fed him, washed him and put him to bed around 7:30 - he didn't go to sleep for about an hour which i thought was odd, but am hoping he gets back to his sleep schedule soon. Woke him up at 6:30 this morning as his therapist arrives at 8 and we needed him up, fed, dressed, etc.

And today, we repeat.

Monday, back into the groove.

Today is Dominic's first day at Alpine. Hopefully it goes well. We've just had a week off, lots of playing while Mom and Dad did yard work. So he's ready for some routine back. We're all sorted out for the timing of our ESY tutor from the school, and i'm pretty sure she starts this morning, in about an hour. We'll see. I think thats how we left it....