Wednesday, November 13, 2013

BFF Learning Opportunities

Our day has become pretty routine around here. Tonight we switched it up a bit. We had dinner at 6 and bedtime at 7. Scott and I may actually have an evening now! It never seems like even a possibility to fit everything we want to into our day. When I have a moment to do nothing I know in my head very clearly that I am forgetting to do SOMETHING. Scott also created a menu for the week.

The Social Sibs program at Portland State got back to me today. Unfortunately I was in the midst of a semi-unnerving eye appointment. It was weird. The eye doctor just seemed like he wasn't telling me something. He gave me glaucoma drops to help my pupils regulate during the night. Apparently they get very large when the lights go off. The drops should help with the "starburst" effect I see when looking at lights during the night. Driving is a strange experience. Other than that they say I'm 20/20 and that my flap is crystal clear.

See the link for SocialSibS info : http://asdchildlab.research.pdx.edu/projects.php  It sounds like something the boys could do. I would be THRILLED if we could get more social and communication help for Judah. I would think that working with Sebastian could be a huge help, but of course there's no way of knowing that until we do it. Sebastian is going to attend Judah's music therapy group on Saturday. He is very excited about it! That will give me a shot to see how they interact in an environment set up for Judah to learn communication and social skills.

Our team meeting is going to be November 20th. Judah's teacher said that each team member has 2 free hours of time according to their schedules. Although, she said the speech therapist will have to leave after an hour and a half, and another member had an appointment at the same time but she said it was something they could skip. None of this is "confirmation" to me. I wish she would have spoken to the team members!!

Sebastian and Judah had a lot of bff time today, doing flips on the reconstructed play pen, having a bubble bath together, laying next to each other and playing in our bed before bedtime. This is a big reason why I would have strong hope in the SocialSibS program, because they are so close and Judah is very engaged, happy and admiring of his older brother. When Judah is doing something he loves, it is the most opportune time for him to learn. It probably works that way for a lot of us!

Willow refers to her bottle of milk as a "ba ba". We were laying in bed this evening, and as she was drinking her bottle she stops to look over at me and say, "Mmmm, good ba ba". hahaha! I swear she spent as much time as Judah on the potty chair today. She is probably very trainable right now, just one more huge thing to squish into our day. It would be nice to get it done though. Right now she really enjoys it, could be a key time to take advantage of. She is following Judah's lead in going to the potty. Another bff learning interaction! Today Judah followed Sebastian's lead going potty. Sebastian was on the big potty and Judah was 1 foot across from him on the small potty. The same situation happened later, only with Willow in Judah's place. Our bathroom is stuffed full of kids, parents and a dog very often!

Last night I drew a big triangle and rectangle on a piece of computer paper and laminated it. Scott showed me how to make these shapes on the computer after that, so I made a few more sheets of shapes and laminated them as well. I did another paper with "Judah" written across it in very big letters. Today Judah traced a couple of these shapes (like he does at school). The triangle and rectangle he did very well, and pretty quickly too. His name was obviously a brand new one to him, he wanted to color it, not trace it. We did hand-over-hand on that one. We'll try the other shapes tomorrow. Willow colored one of the pages, because of course she wanted to do what Judah was doing! She loved coloring with the markers. She calls coloring, "cracker".

Judah is singing some different songs. I love how confident he is when he sings. We were a few minutes late to pick up Sebastian because Judah wanted to stay and watch the Thomas episode that had all of the songs in it. He fought me for quite a while when I was trying to get him into his car seat. You never know when that issue is going to come up and there is no easy solution that we have figured out yet.

There was a story about a boy in the news very recently. He is nonverbal, autistic and just started singing a Katy Perry song the other day! You can understand the words he is saying when he sings. The mom said he does speak when told what to say. But still, very cool story. See the link here: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/8-year-old-with-nonverbal-autism-delights-mom-by-singing-katy-perry-s--roar-185817648.html

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