Monday we started the week off with blind-low vision. The therapist comes to our house to work with Caelan which is fabulous - man I wish they all did!! The best thing is as soon as Caelan sees her he gives a great big smile and scoots over to pull his work bench out. There's no delaying him as he drags it out into position and then scoots up to it all ready to get to work/play. This tells me that he really looks forward to these sessions and enjoys his time with her.... and all the fun toys she brings!! This time she brought a small Rubbermaid box half full of different coloured rice with gemstones, worms and other treasures hidden in it. I wasn't sure how this would go over with Caelan but he loved it! He was in there digging around and scooping it up, putting the rice through a sieve and just having a grand ole' time!
On Tuesday we headed to OCTC for physiotherapy. This isn't really one of Caelan's faves. It's a lot more work for him and not so much time to play. In physiotherapy we basically work on Caelan's gross motor skills and everything leading to walking. His therapist was extremely pleased with the ease at which Caelan is now pulling himself into a kneeling position. At home this is done regularly at the side of the bathtub whenever one of his sisters are in the bath or on the edge of his toy box, or couch, among various other places. At OCTC it's a little more difficult despite their great big toy box; Caelan isn't one to perform on command. It's still very much on his terms so I was happy when he finally decided to play along! The next step is to work on the half kneel position.
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| Caelan kneeling at his train table |
I was also very impressed and proud of our son when he showed that he knew how this walking thing is supposed to work. Up until very recently Caelan didn't seem to ‘get it’ or care about this walking business. If you supported him in a standing position he didn't have that instinct to move one foot in front of the other, or move them at all for that matter unless it was to pull them up off the ground! Tuesday he walked with support back and forth from one end of the therapy room to the other, REPEATEDLY!!! He pushed a shopping cart and used a therapeutic walker thingy too, all the time being supported by his therapist as well. It was great to see that sneak peek into the future. I've never doubted that this walking thing would happen but it's starting to feel like that day is getting much closer. Exciting!
Today was our sign language day… oh, it’s been a while. Our teacher was kind enough to point out that when we started about a year ago we always had a pad of paper between us to resort to for communication and now we don’t. However I do keep the dictionary close by! We actually started by going to Speech Language Pathology (SLP) at OCTC. We missed so many of these sessions in November-December because of our colds! We’ve actually only had an assessment and one session out of our block of ten! She would like to see him stringing more signs together and we’re going to work on getting some more verbs into his vocabulary. She asked me to make a list of all the signs that Caelan spontaneously produces and I came up with 39!
We came home in time for our ASL lesson. It all comes down to practice, practice, practice… We really have to make more of an effort to sign all the time. It’s a big adjustment but one we are happy to make. So... if you see me talking and my hands aren't moving, please feel free to remind me!
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