A great week, Who knew!

My Boy was HAPPY this week!
Nov. 9, 2012

This week was a great example of hard work and consistency paying off.  I know that day by day things will change for my lil guy but I relish in these good moments!  He is still having some sleep issues but overall, this week just rocked.  We started our week on Sunday with a successful hour at church and then home to decorate our Christmas tree (I know super early but , its a tradition here).  I was really hesitant to keep with the tradition because I thought for sure he was going to tear it down or it would tumble on him, but he did great.  The day before my daughter and I made him a felt tree we saw on www.pinterest.com and it was a perfect way to give him an alternative to play with.

                                        (cant flip it around, darn!!)

He likes the feel of the felt and of course the colors!  We put in on the way just across the room from the Christmas tree, so when he touches the tree I just redirect him to "his" tree.  So far, so good! 

 Tuesday is his long day of DSI and Speech therapy.  He was kinda just in a mood and gave his therapist a run for her money.  By the end of the first session he gave her about 20 minutes of cooperative play.  I was glad he settled and was able to do some of the activities which included:

*playing with LINKS, the simple toys that plug into each other to form a chain, this is great for fine motor.

*reading a book with flaps, this is Jojo's absolute favorite kind of book.

*worked on signing Our goal words are still:  Milk, More, Apple, Cookie, all done  He has signed milk    and  more but not too consistently.

Then his speech therapy started and he went nuts.  He was really not having it at all.  As soon as she came in he threw his head back and started pounding his ears and screaming.  I knew we were in for it.  So we did a swinging exercise to calm him and is semi-worked.  She decided to update me on some apps for the IPAD, and before we knew it this is what Jojo was doing:

Yup he just fell asleep.  I was actually pretty happy about it. To me it showed personality and a defiance, which I never seen before.  These days I take what I can get and make the most of it!  She spent the rest of our time chatting with me and giving me some great ideas and introducing a IPAD PECS system. We are considering using it but, its "another" thing I will have to be super consistent with so I want to be sure its something I can do.
Here's the ideas and things we did:

*Went over Ipad app;  Picture AAC (photo pec system)
*using vowel sounds for Jojo to mimic"ahhhhh" "oooooo" "eeeeee"
*pointing, touching, and saying everything to him

OT this week was just FUN, He loved it and so did I.  He did a fun art project using tissue gift wrap and a paper plate.  We put glue on the plate all randomly and then gave him pieces of the tissue.  He crumbled it up and LOVED the sound and feel, then he put the pieces on the glue area.  It came out so cute and he even put stickers on it.  We worked on the brushing techniques and he was really receptive to it.  She is ordering me a brush so I can do it through out the week and use it for a calming/sensory relief.  We also talked about swinging to replace the need to spin.  I looked into "swings" and found out that the Graco Silhouette swing holds up to 35 lbs!  I was able to find one tonight and he tried it out, it was nothing but giggles and then he had to try and figure out how it swings, LOVE my lil guy! 

It was just a nice week, so very thankful I am!