7/1/08

Today was our first session with Carrie in over a week as she was on vacation. I spoke to her about some behavior concerns with have right now with Tyler. He's beginnign to once again be interested in the dog but he is far from gentle. He pulls on Clifford and jumps on him, etc. and Clifford is getting upset so we were fearful that Clifford may hurt him. Carrie worked with us today on that. She suggested leaving a CLifford's brush near by so whenever Tyler does go after Clifford we can have him hold the brush and show in the proper way to play with Clifford and it's also something Clifford likes. That is the plan for now.

we also introduced coloring. Tyler hasn't become intersted in coloring yet and we long to add this activity to his reportoire so that we can more easily go out to eat, go visit family, friends, etc. so he'd have something fun to do that he doesn't have to interact with people if he's uncomfortable. Carrie brought some triangle crayons and we plan to get some of our own for Tyler. Not only are these supposedly easier to handle but Tyler can't spin/roll them like he wants to do with normal crayons. We taped a blank piece of paper to the table (easier to see the colors than a coloring book) and then put out little blocks that matched the colors so we'd h elp him color for a few seconds and then label th block color or crayon color as his reward for coloring since he loves labelling.

Carrie also asked if there is anything we'd like to address this month since this is the last month we have her :( and I said yeah. We really need help getting TYler to stay in one place, again, so we can feel comfortable leaving the house, with one parent, and know we can keep both boys safe. Tyler wanders and we spend all the time away from home chasing him from one place to another which if there were only oen of us, Ben then is left alone, which we can't do so it leaves us unable to reallly go outside our comfort zone unless we have a helper. Carrie is going to help us, yeah! so hopefully by the end of the month Tyler will enjoy coloring and he will also be able to hold still or be able to stay in an area for at least 5 -10 minutes without having to be contained in some way.

Video went ok, Tyler wasn't really big into eating today, in fact he was a little strange last night and it carried over a bit into today. So I wasn' t able to push him too much but he did a very good job of demonstrating his pointer skills and is really enjoying some of the signs now. He likes to watch mommy make some of the signs like ball and he likes it when mommy helps him with hand over hadn signing for things such as gorilla, monkey, and duck. We have the first baby signing time video and plan to get the next 2 sets. Daycare enjoys the videos as well as it helps the other kids learn to communicate with Tyler too. So we are all ready to learn our next set of signs.

We are beginning to do speech twice a week now, YEAH! That will be the schedule for the next 6 weeks anyway. We all really like Lisa and she's doing a great job of incorporating Tyler's study goals with his speech goals.