4/20/09

Ty is still making a lot of sounds, yahoo! We heard him a few times using word approximations, i.e. coming close to saying the actual word. I can't remember which words it was, but there was one time that dad, grandma and i all looked at each other like, did you hear that? Ben has been wanting to go to the dinosaur museum for a while now so Grandma, Dad and Ben all went to the dinosaur museum on Saturday morning and Tyler and I went to the Hands On Museum. It was really fun. Tyler really likes the water table at the preschool room. This time it was great because I now know most of the signs for water animals so I was able to sign them all for him and he really liked this. In true autism fashion, he lined up all the animals just right and then would point to them and I'd sign them. Other than fish, he isn't signing the water animals quite yet. There was a nother little girl t here that kept bringing him more animals, it was quite fun. There were other areas of the museum I think he'd really like but we hadn't explored with him on any previous trips. We've been working a lot on transitions and such from preferred items to maybe items that are unknown or less preferred items. This gave me a good chance to work on that again. I knew he would not want to leave the water table but it was time to go see other thing. I gave him appropriate warnings and counted down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, to say good bye to the water. He screeched a little but walked on his own free will over to the apron hangers to put away his apron and then we walked to the exit door of the water area, he wasn't happy but wasn't crying or kicking his feet up.. we were leaving that area entirely. I knew he wouldn't fully understand what was happening as that was the only area of the museum we knew so I just said, we are gonna go play with lights (so he'd know we weren't leaving) and then picked up him up and we played dog (ooh I have good news there too, will explain later) and he was giggling and we got outside the door and went up instead of down so I think he realized we weren't leaving. Then we got to explore the lights and that was so fun, that's the video that's attached. We were dancing away having a great time. We left there and picked up everyone from the museum and went to a park in Ann Arbor for a picnic and some play time. It went very well. I brought a chair for Tyler and a blanket for the rest of us. I thought if Tyler had a chair to sit in, he may have an easier time sitting still to eat and he did. It went great. Everyone played on the structure and swung and it was a lot of fun. Ok back to the "dog" play. I always ask people when they have horse play or gross motor games to play with Tyler that they have a name for the game, i.e. a sign. A way for Tyler to ask for the game rather than just jumping on someone. Steve uses the horse sign to indicate horseplay when he roughhouses with Tyler. Tyler loves it when we play dog, it's definitely provides him some sensory input and it's a way for him and i to communicate so fun for both. every time we play, I'll play once with him (i initiate the game) and then after that first time, I ask him to sign dog before we play again. He does this quickly and we continue the game a few times until i feel he's gotten the appropriate amount of sensory input and hten I give the one more time warning and then we are done. This weekend we were up stairs and Tyler came up to me (I was kneeling on the floor) and stepped upon my thighs and clenched his jaw and shook a bit, that means he needs some sort of squeezes, but he did not ask for it in an appropriate way. So I ignored him, did not make eye contact, did not give him any input other than to remove him from my legs and stand him back on the floor. Then.. the greatest thing happened, he signed "dog", yahoo. So immediately I started to play "dog" with him. Ok so dog goes like this, I get really really close to his head and neck and bark, growl and pant. There are lots of squeezes and pressu re involved and the panting his his favorite as I think eh likes my breathe on his neck in between the squeezes. He gets overstimulated quickly so I just monitor him to make sur ehe's getting the right amount of input and then end it as soon as I see him start to get too much. This may be too hard for me to explain if you aren't seeing it.


On to a quick updated about Ben, he's doing great in his big boy bed. it's funny cause last Saturday morning he was standing outside his bed saying Mommy, I'm ready to get up, ha. I walk in there and say Ben, you are already up. So cute. He's been a bit more obsessive than usually with dinosaurs and has this obnoxiously loud roar that he's continuing to do. We are hoping that it's just a phase and he grows out of it. We are also hoping to get him into some sort of sport or something this summer to get him around other kids with other interests. We probably don't expose him to as much as we would if we didn't have Tyler and realize that although he's incredibly social, especially to adults, he's a bit awkward around other kids. For example, playing on the play structure at the park, he just walked around the one area roaring but no one (kids) knew what he was doing. What was kind of cool about it all is that Tyler looked like the typical kid playing on the structure compared to Ben. So we realize all kids usually have a fascination with something and that it changes, i.e. Ben used to love trains but we want to make sure that Ben is getting exposed to normal social activities for kids his age so that we don't hinder him because of what we do for Tyler, it's a balancing act. So hopefully we can get Ben into soccer or swimming or something this summer.