Team Newman / Ferme

* except for the lunchtime vomit from Daniel and the fact that Lachlan didn’t sleep.

Daniel had his best ever speech therapy session today. His therapist was so impressed with him. He was quite happy and was babbling away during the session and he’s really coming along with his PECS. He’s also doing well with his behavioural therapy, having already ‘mastered’ one of his exercises. I’ve found some really cool toys to offer him as rewards for doing the exercises and he’s happy to sit and work with me for quite a long time. I think one of our sessions lasted about 45 minutes the other day. The hardest exercise is trying to teach him to respond to his name. In order to do this we have to limit our use of his name to times when he’s required to respond. This is extremely difficult as we use his name all the time.

Lachlan is also coming along well. His occupational therapy is going well though he only has one more session to go. He’s also learned to blow a little train whistle I bought at the shops, which is a significant milestone for his speech development. He’s also learned to recognise all of the numbers from 1 to 10 and can almost put them in order. His absolute favourite toy of the moment is my iPod. In a very short time he’s learned how to navigate using the touch screen and he can select the applications he’s interested in. We’ve downloaded a toddler quiz game which he loves playing, answering questions about shapes, colours and numbers. Once he’s mastered those (which he pretty much has), we can include letters, counting and phonetics.

He’s also becoming quite adept at peeing in the toilet with pretty much 100% success rate at the moment. The big problem is getting the adults to remember to take him to the toilet at regular intervals. He’s not yet at the stage where he’s letting us know when he wants to go. He had his first big accident yesterday, but I take the blame. When I came home from work I took him to the toilet and removed his nappy. I then got so busy unpacking groceries, cooking dinner and doing therapy with Daniel that I forgot to replace it. I only realised when I heard a splash and Lachlan and I were both surprised to find him standing in a puddle.

Minor notes…

• Lachlan is quite taken with fish at the moment.
• His favouite colour is still green.
• His favourite number is 2.
• Dan is loving the books I’ve mended (again).
• He’s also loving going down the hole in the road on his horsey rides.
• They’re both loving the Baby Einstein videos their Grandad bought them.
• Finally, I’m loving all the cuddles both boys are learning how to give. Lachlan has learned to run to me and throw his arms around me. So cute.

Everything’s going pretty smoothly at the moment which is really great. I just thought I’d write about a new achievement for Dan. This afternoon Richard and I caught him playing with a puzzle. He was actually trying to put some of the pieces in (after a fashion) instead of eating them. I was very impressed.

He and Lachlan have been so happy recently, for the most part. Lachlan is a bit of a performer and throws some very dramatic tantrums, but he generally recovers quickly and moves on to be happy again. Daniel too actually. Other than that, they’ve both been very engaged and there have been lots of laughs, games and general silliness. Fun, fun, fun.

I haven’t written for so long but I guess I finally have a few things to talk about.

I’ll start with what’s going on with Lachlan. We’ve finished the Hanen speech therapy course that we were doing at the hospital and I think on the whole it was pretty successful. He knows a few signs now, including “open”, “help”, “dog”, and “down”. He also learnt “money” and “block”, but he hasn’t used them much recently. He’s still pretty reluctant to use his voice to try and say words but I did manage to entice him to say “go” for me today. Normally, he’ll only say it when it suits him. It’s still the only word he says, unless you count the continual mumumumumumumums we get sometimes.

We’re on a break from the private therapy at the moment but Lachlan will be continuing weekly on Thursdays next term. It’s at a difficult time when he’d normally be sleeping, but we’ll take what we can get. Luckily, he seems to be dropping his day sleep, so maybe it won’t really matter.

The major difficulty we’re having with Lachlan at the moment is battles over food. He’s starting to refuse to eat the food that I’ve been cooking for them, which wouldn’t be such a problem if he wasn’t refusing to eat anything new. I’m at my wit’s end trying to find something, anything that will appeal to him.

One major milestone that Lachlan has achieved in the last couple of days is to wee in the toilet. I’m really quite proud of him. We had noticed recently that he (and Daniel for that matter) usually pee either just before or just after they get in the shower. So the last couple of nights I’ve stood Lachlan on a stool in front of the toilet and he’s done a little wee. He loves flushing the toilet, so hopefully that’s enough reward for his good work. It’ll be a much more difficult challenge to get him to sit on the toilet, but it looks like we’re on our way with the toilet training.

There’s good news for Daniel as well. We started him on losec again for reflux about a month ago, and it’s really made a difference. He’s sleeping better and is much happier during the day. He talks/babbles all the time and we’re all (including the nanny) convinced that there are words in there. We can hear “tickle, tickle”, “mother, mother”, “buzzy, buzzy” and “go” among other things. The problem is that he’s usually talking to himself, and the words don’t really have a context for us to be sure. However, today I was finally convinced that he really is using words. This morning he was reading his “That’s Not My Bear” book and on every page he’d say to himself “ah ah ah ah BEAR” very clearly. In fact he was doing it all day which was really sweet.

In other news Dan is also on a break from speech therapy, but today we started the ball rolling with behavioural therapy. I’m still a little wary, but at this stage we’ve only signed up for five training sessions so we’ll see how they go. Naturally the timing is difficult and it means that I’ve pretty much got every hour of my week catered for with work or therapy. The biggest difficulty is going to be finding someone to look after the kid who isn’t going to a therapy session. I guess we’ll manage somehow.

There’s not much else going on with Dan. His eating habits and appetite pretty much haven’t changed, which is a problem in itself. Once again I’m struggling to get him to try anything unfamiliar. At least he hasn’t started to refuse the familiar just yet. Also, I’m willing to take a punt and start working on the toilet training with Daniel too, but I’m less confident about the chances of success. Finally, I wanted to add that Daniel is loving his horse rides (on my knees) at the moment. He keeps coming up and climbing onto my lap and bouncing up and down to ask for a ride. He’s then in fits of giggles throughout the whole rhyme. So lovely.