Day Five - GOT TO MOVE

Mondays are Speech Therapy days with our private SLP. Frog was up, active and ready to go today. He was a very happy camper at speech, but really reved up. He and his Therapist worked on body imitation, trying to form their bodies into the poses depicted on simple stick figure drawings. Frog had trouble staying on task and exhibited some delayed processing (forming the previous pose instead of the one they were trying for). Therapist decided to copy Frog instead of having Frog copy her. This held Frog's interest for a longer period of time. I'm going to add follow the leader to our games at home. At the therapy table, Frog did some vocal imitation with physical prompts. He choose to work on writing letters, but had a hard time staying on task and needed to flail his arms about, seek deep pressure from the Therapist and play with her hair. They moved onto a book about ducks. Frog did not stay actively engaged with the story, but he did not resist the story either.

After Speech Therapy we headed for the grocery store. I asked Frog to push the cart, but he indicated that he would prefer to ride. He did a great job during the 30 minutes we were shopping. He got a cookie at the bakery and choose some trail mix for the car. He tried to open the Frenches French Fried Onions, and complained when I said "no" and took them away, but there was no melt-down. We had to wait in line at the checkout stand. This is always the hardest part for Frog. He did great! No fussing, no complaining, no loud outbursts.

We left the store and took a drive to a local beach, listening to some classical music on the way. We spent an hour on the beach where Frog was free to run, climb, and explore.





It is always nice for both of us when we are in an environment where Frog can have some freedom to explore without mom hovering. And we had a nice lesson in natural consequences - walk in the water, wear wet shoes!

We went home to clean-up, put away the groceries, and get some lunch. After lunch we tried a little art. Frog was actually curious about what I was doing with all those bowls out on the patio. He came and explored the paint and water with me for a few minutes.




Our face project today was putting chocolate chip eyes on pumpkin cookies. I took this opportunity to work on Frog's pointing finger. I placed an eye and helped him make a pointer finger to push it into the cookie dough. I had him do 4 cookies (8 eyes). He did the last eye by himself.



We spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool - taking advantage of the sunny weather. He is playing the duck, duck, goose game with three people now. He is very tired this evening.

Day Three - UP, UP, UP!

We started our day taking Diva to school. I sang the "Frog is getting in Mommy's Car" song and Frog took himself to the garage and climbed up into his seat without assistance. Diva is working on getting Frog to wave goodbye to her. She is very animated as she waves to him. I asked Frog if he was going to wave goodbye to Diva. He clapped yes, then put one hand up and played with his hair - its a start.

Back at home Frog quickly discovered that the fountain continued to foam all night. There was a mountain of soap bubbles with large pieces breaking off and floating around like low lying bubbly clouds. We had to go check that out. An hour later we were still playing with bubbles, the fountain and the sandbox. It was clear that I was not going to get Frog back into the house and I wanted to distract him from trying to climb up on top of the fountain, so I suggested we get in the pool. He didn't give me any response. I went in to get my swimming suit and some swim pants for Frog. When I looked out the window, I saw him up at the top of the stairs to the pool with his body plastered against the gate. I guess he was listening.



So our school morning was spent in the pool. At first he wanted nothing to do with me. He swam, he dove and swam under the water, he bobbed up and down - eventually he came up with the dive sticks I was throwing to get his attention. Slowly he warmed up to working with me. I came up with an auditory processing game I thought he would be able to participate in and enjoy - our version of Duck, Duck, Goose - we hold hands, he puts his feel on my knees and we slowly bounce around in a circle. I say duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, GOOSE - then take a big breath and we go under the water. After a few rounds he swam away. Later, when I asked him to play again, he took my hands, I began the circle, I said duck, and he said "gez" - down we went. We also practiced some of the hand movements from the Smart Moves video and practiced throwing the dive sticks overhand (hand over hand at this point).

We got out of the pool, dressed and ate some lunch then left to run errands and to keep Frog from climbing up on the counters. We put the Smart Moves video on in the car. At the bank, Frog got a lollipop. We had a long wait at the pharmacy drive-thru, but between the music and the lollipop, Frog stayed content. We ended our outing by stopping at the Estuary downtown on the waterfront.



We read the placard explaining that "An estuary is a semi-enclosed coastal body of water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. ..." In other words, its a big old transition. And that is exactly what our visit turned into. Frog was not happy about putting on shoes; he was not happy about looking for letters or words (or at least pointing them out); he was not happy about being asked to stand on his feet and move forward. Eventually he settled in and let me know that he did not want to go back to the car, he wanted to go to the observation tower. So we went, Frog in his socks, up, up, up the stairs of the observation tower. Such a happy Frog 15 feet off the ground, bouncing like a pinball off the tower fence. We spent some time pulling up the grass and watching the birds and boats then headed home to meet Diva.





Frog spent the rest of the afternoon showing off on the trampoline, playing in the sandbox and the water table. He even requested that I join him on the trampoline. We took turns and tried holding hands and jumping together (harder than it sounds). We finished our day by frosting and decorating the cookies we made yesterday. Frog watched as I said each feature I added to the cookie. He waited patiently until it was finished and I gave the "OK" before he grabbed a cookie and took off.