Pictures and more OT and conferences

We had family pictures taken with Michael's family on July 11th.  We got the disc with all of the images two weeks later.  And then, somehow, we waited weeks and weeks and weeks and didn't order anything until last weekend.

I woke up last Sunday (the 23rd- I'm, of course, a little behind on blogging) on a mission to re-do this wall.

This is in the family room.  The fireplace is to the right.  This is the "before".

This could be considered the "during". We thought it was going to be the "after", but I wasn't happy with it. It wasn't balanced and full enough.

So, we ordered more prints on Monday.

Final

I also wanted to add pictures to the wall in the entry hallway.

Before

After

The only thing different on the right side is the picture of Michael's parents. 

After on the left side.  The before picture isn't very good so you can't really tell what's different.  Sorry.  Now we just need to take new pictures with my side of the family and as long as no new babies are born, we'll be good to go.

We had another surprise OT session last Monday.  Chad (the OT) called me at about 9:00 to cancel our Wednesday session.  He said we could either skip it entirely or reschedule, so I chose to reschedule at 1:00 that same day.  So, once again we headed off to the hospital.

This is the scoring sheet for the long form of the Sensory Profile.  Elliott is "much more than others" for Low Registration, Touch and Body Position.  He is "more than others" for Movement.  He is average or "just like the majority of others" for all other areas. There is nothing surprising to me about any of this.

Chad started the session with a lot of swinging.  Elliott LOVED it.  It was really hard to photograph though.

On Tuesday Elliott and I went grocery shopping.  I bought these at Sprouts for $1.99.  They totally made my day. 

I went out in the middle of a huge monsoon storm on Tuesday evening to attend Spencer's parent/teacher conference.  No one was scheduled after me so we ended up talking for an hour.  Spencer is doing very, very, VERY well in 2nd grade.

I had Elliott's conference on Wednesday morning.  He went with me. 

Elliott is also doing great in school.  He is way ahead of where he needs to be for preschool.  He can consistently count to 40, he knows all of his letters, he can identify about 8 letter sounds, he can identify all numbers up to 20, he knows all of his basic shapes and colors and he can write his name, although the E is a little suspect.

Wednesday was National Dog Day.  We waited very patiently for Michael to get home from work so we could take a family picture.  

While we waited Spencer wanted to take my picture while I took his.

We used the timer on the camera.  Ginger was not incredibly cooperative,

but at least we got a decent picture.

I'm going to try to be very good and on top of it to get all caught up because this weekend is the big double birthday weekend, so there will be much to discuss very soon.

Ice cream and sarcasm

I forgot to include these pictures in my last post.  This was a really funny five minutes that I want to remember in 20 years, so I'm going to add it here.

It was Monday night last week.  Spencer asked if he and Elliott could have ice cream after dinner.  I said yes.  He said he wanted a really big bowl of ice cream.  I got out our biggest mixing bowl and let Spencer watch as I started scooping.  He was flipping out thinking I was going to scoop out the whole container for him.  

Instead, I gave him this.

He was not impressed.

Oh, and Ginger is standing behind him in this picture.  Spencer did not grow a tail.

I was nice though and gave him a normal portion of ice cream and transferred it to a normal sized bowl. 

Normal sized bowl not pictured here.

OT and other stuff

Somehow I have not blogged since last Tuesday.  I'm always surprised when that happens.  I'm also surprised, no, shocked, that next week will be September.  WHAT?

Here's a nice little recap of the events of last week.

Ever since I went to the Yankee Candle Factory in Massachusetts last year I get emails notifying me of their sales.  Votive candles were on sale for $1 last week so we made a quick trip to the mall on Sunday.  I let Michael and the kids pick two scents each. These were my picks.  Longing for fall much?

Spencer has been bugging me to make alphabet soup for weeks.  It was only 179 degrees outside, so I made it for dinner that night.  That's spinach, not squid ink, on Elliott's lips.

Right before bed we took Elliott's 3 years 8 months pictures.  He is naked from the waist down and I'm in no mood to crop a million pictures, so these are the best three.

Official

I was walking out the door to pick Elliott up from school on Monday when the hospital called me to schedule his occupational therapy appointment.  They had an opening at 1:00 on Mondays (including that day), so I took it.  Then I changed my mind and we moved our regular session to Wednesday mornings.  But we still went for the session on Monday.

Elliott is having difficulty with sensory registration.  According to the evaluation report he has proprioceptive hyposensitivity.  His sensory profile puts him at "low registration". Low registration refers to a pattern of sensory processing that is characterized by high sensory thresholds and a passive self regulation strategy. When people have a low registration pattern of sensory processing, they notice sensory stimuli much less than others. 

Elliott also continues to have difficulties with bilateral coordination (that was apparent in his PT evaluation as well) and low muscle tone.  The goals of OT are to improve his fine motor and self help skills, improve his strength/stability and improve his sensory processing.

Mr. Chad is the OT.  He's pretty awesome.  He's very knowledgeable, very calm and Elliott had a great time with him. 

I tried to be sneaky with my picture taking.  I don't know that I was so successful.

I learned so much during just one session.  Elliott needs a lot of deep pressure on his muscles to register the touch.  This was a "kid car wash" that provides this deep pressure.  Chad gave me ideas to replicate this at home.

I want to get a bean bag for home so Elliott can crash into it.

On Tuesday I set up our own obstacle course at home.  Elliott really needs sensory stimulation throughout the day so we're working hard to work it into our schedule.

First he wound up a jack-in-the box.

Then did a bear walk across the living room.

Through the tunnel.

Onto the scooter board.  Sometimes on the tummy,

sometimes sitting.

Into the tent in the guest room for a little fine motor practice.

Wheelbarrow walks across the hallway and then deep pressure massage with an exercise ball.

After that we did hand walk-outs with the exercise ball, but that was totally impossible for me to photograph.

We got ready for school really quickly on Wednesday and had like 10 minutes left before we needed to leave, so I made the kids take pictures.

Elliott wasn't mad or sad.  That's his silly/crazy face.

We made apple, carrot, zucchini bread on Wednesday afternoon.  It was called bread, but it was more like cake.

I worked on Thursday.  Monica and I met after work to buy our shoes for Travis and Brendan's wedding.  This is the correct size, but the wrong color.

This is the wrong size, but the correct color.

There are no pictures from Friday.  I worked and it was so flippin' hot I was in a bad mood funk from about noon until after dinner. 

On Saturday we went to Costco specifically to finally order prints from the family pictures we had taken with Michael's family in July.  I took pictures of the walls to remind me what to order and what size.

We were just thrilled to see signs all over Costco announcing that their photo processing equipment was broken and would be broken all weekend.  Great timing.

We did finally re-install the basketball hoop by the pool though.  It was broken in a wind storm 17 months ago and it took my dad that long to replace the plexiglass.  He had volunteered to do it, so we just let him do whatever he wanted.

It will be nice to have this for Spencer's birthday party in a few weeks.

And that's it!  That is last week.  This week has parent teacher conferences, another OT session, a visit from my parents and maybe dinner with Monica and Rick.