Thursday, January 30, 2014

Sad Panda

Today was rough!! Not the usual overwhelming rough but the emotional rough. Judah was sad & it seemed as though there was nothing that would cheer him up. His siblings were with Gramma & Papa today & he was on his own with me. Once I realized he wasn't his usual self, I took him to the Discovery Center. He played with a train in the gift shop for quite a while. From there he took me directly to the train room. They had repainted the building, but he knew exactly where he was going. We watched the trains for quite a while, sitting in the same spot the entire time. Judah was up & down, running to press the button on one side of the display for one train and then dashing over to the opposite side of the display to press the button for the other train. Then he would sit down with me, directly between both buttons. We would watch the trains run for about 60 seconds. As soon as they stopped he was up pressing buttons again. I couldn't count how many times he did this, it was a LOT.

He just wasn't himself today. We went to the rest of the rooms at the Discovery Center, and as we left he looked up at me with big eyes & said, "Train?" I could see in his eyes exactly what he was saying.. he was politely asking for the train in the gift shop, letting me know how much he loved it. We headed towards the gift shop & suddenly he was happy! He said "bye!" to the couple leaving and walked into the gift shop to pick up his train. He grabbed it & showed it to the lady at the desk. Earlier he had just played with the train, not taking it off the shelf. He knew exactly what we were doing, we were buying his train. He was happy during the ride home, but eventually got sad again. He told me "bye" a couple of times when I tried to talk to him at home. This meant that he wanted me to go away. I asked him if he wanted to go to Gramma & Papa's and he looked at me and said very seriously, "Bob", meaning that he just wanted to watch SpongeBob (what he was watching). I asked Scott to come home & take him over to Gramma & Papa's. He did. Scott was getting ready to leave Gramma & Papa's until Sebastian started up a conversation with him. Judah jumped in and said to Scott, "Go! Bye!" haha. Apparently Judah was much more, vocal, communicative and happy while he was there. He even ate for them. He hardly ate for me at all today. Once home he went back to being sad. I don't know how to cheer him up, I hate this. Tomorrow has got to be better.

Sebastian did about an hours worth of reading with Gramma today. He has to chart his reading for school. He needs to do 15 minutes every day. Gramma also worked on Spanish with him. He came home & told me what he had learned - he took it all in! Yesterday we read one of his Star Wars books for 15 minutes. We made it through one sentence, he worked hard on every word. He's been bringing home Star Wars books from the library every week. Gramma brought him a book about monsters today. He was excited about that. I was too!

Willow saw her tutu and wanted to wear it today. She loved being in it, and she looked adorably unmatched & happy. Toddlers can get away with anything. When we had our Mommy/daughter time this morning she heard me say, "Oh jeez!" and repeated me. It's so funny when you hear toddlers say things like that. It never gets old. ;)

Judah recognized his cubby & put his things away as soon as he walked into his classroom this morning. He told me "bye" a couple of times & "love you" - initiating "bye" on his own. All of his friends were coming in at that time. Saying "bye" to me over all of the kid traffic was impressive. I talked with his teacher, mentioning some of his recent changes & asked her to let me know if she saw any other jumps in progress. She told him "bye" & waved as she was walking across the street after class. That told me she has seen changes. A week ago she wouldn't have done that. I was only able to talk with the aide after his class, who didn't fill me in on much at all, she just apologized for the crap in his hair.

At home I showed Judah where the play button was on the remote control, which is filled with tiny buttons. I asked him to press it. He pressed it & held it down. After a few tries (with my help) it worked. Later I asked him to press it if he wanted Wubbzy to start. He kept ignoring me & then finally just pressed it & had no problem finding it.

Judah said "jacket" beautifully today.

Judah has been putting his dishes in the sink for a week or two? now.

Judah's eye contact today was incredible, he was looking at me every time we talked - even talking with his eyes at one point to plead for a train.

There were four chicks on the television. Judah pointed to each one and counted, "One, two, three, four" and stopped! Typically he counts things kind of randomly, doing a couple of things twice or adding more, etc. It's rare to see him count things accurately!

Judah took - vitamin d, probiotic, fish oil (after very purposely & slowly spilling the first dose down the stove vent right in front of me) and l-cartinine. He drank a lot of rice milk today.

Notes from Gramma (what happened at their house this evening)
 
David said "Thank you young man!" Judah repeated with almost exact words and tone! I jumped!

Judah looked at me each time I said his name this evening. He made great eye contact and smiled.

Said, "potty" requesting to go to the bathroom and did he ever go!

Said "cake" for Sebastian's cinnamon roll and smelled it. He would've touched it but that's when Sebastian protested.

Told Scott to "go." At least twice. 

Proudly showed us his new train. Very nice!

Never got into anything he wasn't supposed to. I'm not putting things up anymore as it's not necessary.

Judah laughed and played all night, talking and interacting.

Put on his pajamas with little assistance.

Said, "no" when I asked if he wanted a bath.

Brushed his teeth and again politely handed me the brush to put away. Almost always he's pitched it. This is the second time he's handed it appropriately and smiled.

The one thing that bothered me was when Judah looked into the full length mirror and started pulling at his hair and lightly hitting himself on the sides of his face. It was as though he was angry with himself, maybe frustrated. But it lasted just a short time and he was back to laughing and playing.

The washcloth fell into Sebastian's tub prematurely and Judah attempted to retrieve it and give it to me. He knows that the decorative washclothes don't go in and I think he thought it was one of them.

Sebastian informed us that Judah was saying a lot more words and would be talking soon cause he'd had a lot of therapy and stuff. He was pleased. "I can understand everything he says," Sebastian declared proudly. So supportive.

Sebastian wrote five words and one "ai" vowel dipthong today in Spanish and we translated into English which he read. He also learned a new word: 'rio" for "river" and drew a picture of a river with the two versions of English/Spanish words on it for his teacher. Stuffed the envelope with chocolate and his drawing.

Read Monsters You Should Always Avoid with me today for 50 minutes! The illustrations were riveting! Stayed focused, asked questions, pointed at words he knew and read them. He also re-read some simple sentences in the book, pointing at the words. We are working on basic sight words. I think he needs to either do the pointing to stay focused or maybe use a marker. He also is learning two phonetic alphabets so this is a little confusing to him. But in the end, he'll code switch beautifully, I predict. We talked about "code switching" and he was pretty fascinated.

Shot his bow and arrow. Willow retrieved the arrows very diligently, saying "Bastian, bow." The arrows got stuck in the trees at one point and Sebastian climbed up to rescue them by shaking them out. Papa helped. Willow and Gramma cheered.

Sebastian alternates between calling me, Rita or Reet, and David is David and occasionally, Dave. Funny!

Willow talked a lot today. She and Papa went to Safeway and she was so pleased to get to go by herself with him. She talked non stop, I guess. She's saying Bamba for Gramma a lot and took my necklace today and said, "Bamba, pretty." Repeats everything! She ate turkey, a little cheese, some bread (Sebastian made her mini sandwiches from bites of his GF roll) and milk.

Dinner: Willow had yogurt and applesauce with a stab at turkey then some "ice." Sebastian had GF pizza and corn on the cob flanked with GF cinnamon rolls for dessert.

Judah: applesauce and Lay's chips. He didn't want anything else but I figured he was happy so that was good.

Everyone played stairball with Papa before baths/jamas.

Buenos noches!

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