It's really quite amazing how different three months can feel. When waiting to bring our son home it felt like and eternity. Now that he's home I can't believe how quickly the time has gone by. We've taken this time to get settled in as a family of six and begin to get to know our son. He is a mover, he loves to be in on the action and he's quite the determined little boy. He enjoys giving and getting hugs, whenever he hears music his little body can't help but bop along. Our big boys still enjoy playing with him, but they've gotten past the point where everything he does is cute. There's the normal "Mom! He's getting into my ______!!" Our daughter is coming to terms with the fact that she is no longer the youngest. She had to let him know exactly who's boss, but she toned that down a bit (with a good deal of parental supervision!) She's now claimed him as her brother.
We've started school now as well. This year I have two kids doing school and two little ones. The first couple days were . . . well, they were awful quite frankly. I wondered how in the world we would get through this year, but I adjusted my expectations and we made some big changes in the schedule and things have gone better overall. I may have some more schedule tweaking to do.
We've also used the time to get a feel for what kind of therapy he may need and how we would work that into our schedule. As his evaluations for speech, physical and occupational therapy approached, I was feeling like we would probably need minimal help at this point. As far as his physical development goes he came home doing more than we expected and he's just continued to progress. Verbally, he's not forming words, but is quite eager to communicate using sign language. The physical and occupational therapists said at his age, these two therapies as pretty closely connected and the physical therapist felt that he really didn't need much outside therapy at this point. She gave me some activities to work with him on and we'll go back to see her in a month and then again in about six months. The speech therapist works mainly with having children learn to vocalize and since he is more interested in communicating through sign right now, she gave me some ways to work with him to help with his beginning vocal sounds as we continue to work on sign language. In the end he won't be needing a lot of therapy right now. As he gets older, that could very well change. I am thankful to have a background in therapy, because I think it's made it easier to work with him. However, I am very glad to have therapists who are willing to work with us and help us know best how to work with him, since my training is not in these specific areas.
Do you know what his biggest assets in therapy have been? His big brothers and sister. He's so determined to keep up with them that he's learned to hop on his little push car to keep up with them (something the physical therapist was surprised he could do), he can climb up on the couch with them now and he's willing to walk across the uneven grass to follow them. I'm drawing the line at learning to climb on the dining room chairs for now, though. The last thing I want to see is his little grinning face as he proudly stands atop the table. While teaching him signs, I was really wanting to use the sign for "more" exclusive to eating, so I know that means he's hungry. For a few days I was trying to teach him the sign "again" if he wanted to do another activity. I knew he could do it. He gave a few half-hearted tries, but just wasn't too interested. Then I was squirting him and my daughter with water which was quite the fun game. I signed "again" to have him ask for another squirt, but it was my daughter that started signing it. He watched her closely and then signed "again" perfectly. It has since become one of his most used signs. Most of the therapy at his stage is fun and games and the older kids are eager to help. Group therapy helps make the learning more fun for him. :)
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