Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Picnic!

At speech therapy today, we did a pretend picnic. At first Michael was protesting it, but after a minute or two, he decided he wanted to play. It took him a bit to get the idea of playing with imaginary food, but he caught on and was playing along. He would pass me my food and laugh as I pretended to take a bite. He even pretended to take imaginary bites too! We would ask him questions like "What kind of cookies should we have for our picnic?" and he wouldn't respond. But if we told him "Oh look, chocolate chip cookies and sugar cookies! Which does mommy get?" He would gladly make a decision. It was really cute. I bought the kids a bunch of play food for Christmas and now I'm pretty excited to play with them with it. :)

This Week

Wow, this week Michael has made some amazing progress. I can't even explain it. He's starting to really articulate his needs and engage with me and the rest of the family. We still have issues with communication when it's not in the moment, but wow, I can't even tell you how proud I am of his progress!

Here's a little snippet of him doing some pretend play and interacting with the family. I've tried to get some of these new little magic moments on video but they are so fast, that it's hard to capture them.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Adding to my last post...



I took this video tonight to further explain what I was talking about in my last post. Today Michael went to a birthday party for a friend of mine's son. This is our conversation tonight about it. The video is black because I was recording it in the dark as we rocked before bed. Every night I ask him questions like this to try and get him to engage in a conversation with me about his day. Tonight was actually a very good night. Most nights he won't even respond with yes, only his favorite "no way mama".

I was explaining in a little more detail to my friend about my last post as well. She said that her daughter typically will come home and she'll ask her what she did and she'll say "I don't know". The way Michael differs is he doesn't even understand the concept of you asking about the past. In neuro-typical children you could then ask details like "Did you learn about your letters?" and they will recall some of what they did and start to talk about it. Michael would probably only respond with something like "Yeah, letters" or "No way mama".

But as I was saying in the last post, he is doing awesome if you are talking in the moment. Although I did notice his conversation is very concrete. He doesn't understand abstract concepts like "that's cute", etc. For example, he will play Angry Birds and say "Oh the red bird flew so high! One pig left! We got them all! I won 3 stars!" But if you then said "What is your favorite bird?", he'd probably respond with "No way mama, my Angry Birds!" because he didn't understand what you were asking.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

It's my blog and I'll whine if I want to

So THIS blog link has been circling my Facebook. I hate blogs and posts like these. I don't know why I bother reading them but somehow I get sucked in like a freaking black hole. Every time I read something like this I feel like I just got kicked in the gut. The universe is laughing my face saying HA! your kid should be doing these things and they are not! So I get sad. Then I get irritated that people are bitching about the fact that their kids are completely normal. Then I get mad at myself because I know somewhere during my day I do the same thing in my own way and I feel like a complete hypocrite jerk. So there's my circle of self misery. Yeah, like I said, it's my blog and I'll whine if I want to.

The Present

Oh man the last few days I've been thinking a lot. I've actually typed out several blog posts and then just decided to delete them. This artist brain of mine has never been good at forming things into words. I understand concepts and feelings best. I actually think that's one reason I can understand Michael so well. Anyway, that's not the point of this post.

In all of my thinking the past few days, I've realized something about Michael. He lives completely in the present. I know that this is part of normal toddler-hood, but by this age typically they start to understand the concept of past and future. Michael doesn't. When you ask him about something he did, he can't respond. When you talk to him about something that is going to happen, he doesn't understand. If I told him we were going to Disneyland to meet Mickey Mouse tomorrow, he wouldn't wake up tomorrow and be excited to go. He would have completely forgotten about it. And if we did go to Disneyland and met Mickey Mouse, when we left and came home, if someone said to him "Did you meet Mickey Mouse?", he wouldn't excitedly tell you his tale of meeting Mickey. Most likely he'd respond with something like "Yeah, meet Mickey Mouse". Which you might think he's relaying the tale of him meeting him, but actually that's just him echoing your words.

However, when you engage in the present with him, he's really growing. He is doing so much better at interacting and sharing. He actually asks me to take a turn when playing Angry Birds on his tablet. You can engage so much with him if it is something that is happening right now. During those times, back and forth conversation is emerging and it's amazing, beautiful, and so SO exciting!

Monday, November 14, 2011

It's working! :)

In speech therapy we've really been focusing on turn taking and back and forth conversation. The other night Michael was playing Angry Birds and was not letting me near it. I asked him "Michael can I have a turn?" He sat there for a second and then said "Sure! Go ahead!" I think my jaw about hit the floor. Then we played several rounds taking turns and he'd say "Mama's turn!" then I'd play and he'd say "Michael's turn next!" He was doing so great letting me play along. This is a huge change to what we were able to do even a couple of months ago.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Just a passing thought

The day that Michael comes home from school and is able to relay to me something, anything that he did that day, I'm probably going to cry. I'm excited that he is in school, but I wish I knew what he did that day and what he enjoyed, etc. But for now, I'm just rejoicing in the fact that he was okay getting on and off the bus all by himself!

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Michael's First Day of School!

Today was his first day of preschool! I had the new nanny follow the bus in the car so I could ride with him. He did great! When we got to the school I dropped him off in the classroom. He was a little uneasy but gave me a hug and let me leave without fuss. I was working when he got home but the nanny said he happily walked off the bus. :)

I sent an email to his teacher asking how his first day was. She responded super quickly with this.

Hi Lindsay-
Thanks for the email-He did GREAT!  He stayed a bit to himself at first…I got him interested in a couple of puzzles, and then he seemed interested in what the kids were doing.  He got excited about circle and even sat with the group off and on for several minutes at a time.  Snack went well too…!  He took a piece of plum (didn’t eat it, but didn’t freak out) and he ate several cheese puffs.  He never touched his cup and tried to drink water out of an open cup!
Michael had a great start!


I'm so proud of how well he did! :)