SHHH!

In an attempt to stop vocal stims, I have decided to turn off the TV, radio, and all other electronic devices during the day. How can I expect Cotton to stop humming if he hears jingles and kids songs every waking hour. It was like coming off crack today. I hear the signing time lady singing "baby signing time, baby signing time." in my head, and realize how much noise we hear all day.

The kids usually watch videos, when I am in the shower, and when I am making dinner. Yesterday, I had the kids play with pots and pans while I cooked. Mr. Chief had a lot of fun, Cotton was not as impressed. I will have to get more creative.

Cotton is doing some new things spontaneously recently. He started using a fork, and taking bites of his food. Both of these activities have been difficult for him, and I am grateful he was able to pick this up. While we have worked on this it has not been a focus, I am excited that he has learned something without hours and hours of practice. This may be a first for him.

My little duck

While things are not perfect right now, I thought I would focus on something positive. Cotton is learning how to swim. He is doing great, with little instruction. We started with a life jacket, and a floaty, now, he is swimming with just the life jacket. He really loves the water, and has asked, using an actual word (iimm) to go swimming.

So we lather, and I mean coat him with my favorite blue lizard sunscreen and his spf 50 protective swim gear, and head for the back yard. He is going to have to learn to swim, God help him he is so lubed up, he would slip right out of my hands.

I SUCK

There is no other way to say it. I have had Cotton "home" for exactly a week, and I am totally coming unglued. How do I split time between the kids, get any RDI in, and not go horse from yelling at everyone!!! I had all these plans about how wonderful it would be to not do school durring the summer, but I am a bit overwhelmed at the moment. Cotton wet his pants, first time in months, pooped in his pull up 3 nights in a row, (also not usual for him). He is stimming like crazy on every magazine he can find. My dad gave him a phone book while he was watching him, and he happily looked through it for 2 hours!!!!! AAARRGG I know the stims come and go, but I (to my chagrin) get so angry about them!! Especially the vocal stims. The crazy wacky sounds that pretty much paint a huge yellow sign that says AUTISM.

I know next week or hopefully tommorow will be better, but right now I am mad at myself for not having it together, being angry about vocal stims, and hiding the phone book. I want to be DOING things all day, not redirecting ALL day. So I am going to sit and try and be patient. These episodes usually go as quickly as they come. so this is me being patient.

Over the river and through the woods...

Yeah, we are finally at Grandma, and Grandpa's house! It looks like Cotton is rounding out stage 3 and 4 of the old stages!! Stage 4 has been coming along nicely with stage 3. I knew this would be the easiest stage for him, as it is a strength of his.

However, I find myself very focused on referencing activities. His referencing is still very scaffolded, and I want it to become more natural before I move forward. We are starting to look at the new objectives as well. There are a few in stage 1 that I want to spend some time on, but for the most part I think we are early stage 2.

I really like the new objectives, they are so detailed I feel like we will leave nothing out! We had a great day fishing, Our coordinated action was throwing stones in the water. Together, taking turns, I hand him a stone, he hands me one. You get te idea.

Language, language, language

Cotton as I have mentioned before is non-verbal. Completely meaning he has zero recognizable words, he gives good attempts and does his best to mimic me, but if you did not know what I was saying you would have NO clue what he was saying. Mind you this is not in my opinion communication, but he really needs practice using his mouth to form said words (which he will eventually:)

Anyway my delima is how to get this practice without constantly prompting him, and ignoring his non verbal communication, (which I actually count as communication lol). My consultant came up with a good idea of using familiar songs, and stopping at a word and practice that word, and move forward making it fun. I am totally up for trying this, but it is so frustrating!!!! His ST has actually said he does not think Cotton has apraxia, because his oral muscles work fine, it is just the communication from the brain to the muscles to form words. I would take ANY real word at this point!! So I am going to try songs and more songs, if anyone has any great ideas, I am all ears.

Jumping through hoops!

Ok, so I know it is not about teaching any skills, but I am so darned proud of this one. So, I took the old stage 2 standby of walking from chair to chair, referencing to see when and where to continue, and added throwing a ball back and forth. Not only was Cotton (who has major visual challanges) able to do this, he had a blast. This one blew me away! We also worked on putting two puzzle pieces together each holding one piece, not nearly as cool, but coordination none the less. I plan on changing my blog site soon, I have a mac now and they have a nifty blogsite so I can show video, I want to show this one off lol.

Otherwise things are going good. I of course would love to sleep in an actual bed. I can truly appreciate, having my own room, sleeping in a bed, having a closet.... I will not take these things for granted for a while. Next week we move in with grandma, I am looking forward to getting there:)

Cotton and I played a fun games on some stepping stones today. At first I would point or indicate to the stone he needed to step on,(stage 2), then We played a game of follow the leader (stage 3), then we added variation to it, by jumping to a stone, moving to a stone backwards, etc. It was a fun time. We are still doing a lot of walking, running, trotting (whatever) together. This really seems to regulate him. Yesterday we pulled and stopped with our suitcases together. For a little variation we would push our suitcases instead of pulling them. We tried to carry them, but Cotton's was too heavy. It was good for uncertainty. So we had to carry that one together. Over all he is doing much better, and for that I am grateful, only a month and half more to go!!!! Mr. Chief is in heaven, he loooves all the changes, flirting with the house keepers, and pulling the cushions off the couch to pull out the beds:) He is full steam ahead to the terrible two's. He is gaining words daily, it is absolutely amazing to me.( I love it).

Foot hold

I am happy to report that things are slowly getting better. Cotton is back, and connected, there seems to be ample opportunity at the TLF (temporary living facility) for coordination. We are havig fun again!! I also got my new computer so although I do not exactly have internet, I am somewhat starting to "reconnect". For the past few weeks, I have focused hard on stage 2 which for Cotton leads directly into stage 3 stuff. It has really paid off he is referencing better than ever. Coordination is snapping back into place as a result. So yehaa, here we go.