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.