Back in the swing of things

I'm feeling all better, I had my hard day and now I'm back into regular mode. I'm excited and grateful for all that we've seen in terms of progress and we have much to look forward to!

We didn't have speech until this week. Wednesday to be exact. She answered a lot of my questions, thoughts about preschool. I should be able to take Carver to observe the preschool, maybe ride the bus with him or follow it the first couple days. They teach standard preschool curriculum - shapes, colors, etc... potty training is a high priority, as well. I've been dreading that for years, seriously. But if they want to try it, we'll do our part. I guess it's got to get worse before it can get better. Pull-ups are so stinkin' expensive, though! She thinks morning would be better for Carver, as do I. I need to call today since I still haven't heard from a preschool teacher.

Our ST said that the term for Carver's speech difficulty is "apraxia" which is basically poor motor planning in your mouth. There are 3 types/degrees. The first is just verbal - difficult with speech. The second is oral and relates to swallowing and eating, drool, etc... The third is general apraxia and affects the entire body. Despite Carver's lack of coordination in his motor skills, his apraxia is somewhere between verbal and oral. Swallowing and eating hasn't been a problem, but he obviously has a hard time containing his saliva and feeling drips, etc... This is not disheartening to me. It is just a name for what we've already known. Having a name gives me more books to read, websites to browse. Check out apraxia-kids.org for more on this.

Latest successes:

Lots more words strung together. Mostly 2 words, sometimes 3 if you disregard pauses between them. Even "green lawn mower."

I feel like colors are getting better for him, he's right more often than he used to be. :)

He's counting. I swear I hear him get these right half the time, even up to 10. It's hard to decipher his language, though, even knowing what he's trying to say. Bless his heart for trying!!

He's been doing much more imaginative play - crawling around and making animal sounds. A snake on the kitchen table for example or a lion crawling around my room. I might limit animals to the floor, but it's so cute.

He also assigns familial roles to his toys now - moms and dads mostly. I love seeing that. and usually the dad is the big one, so he's thinking about it.

He sits through books better than he used to, listens and wants to talk about the pictures and the action. He loves Green Eggs and Ham right now. And truck books. Are you My Mother, too? He likes to answer "no" whenever I read, "is the cow his mother? is the dog his mother?" It's great!

Carver has been learning to be more gentle with Grace, even trying to play with her a little. The other day she was trying to tickle him and he looked totally surprised and unsure what to do. He let her play around a bit and then stood up and wanted to squeeze her. It was sweet to see him want to show her affection like that.

He's talking about bubbles and pancakes and loves to make pretend pancakes in the bath.

I could probably keep going, but this is enough for today. Thank you to the many friends and family for your support and love on my rough days and on the good ones, too.