Team Newman / Ferme

Unbelievable as it might seem, Daniel and Lachlan just ate icecream for the first time – and liked it. (Every other time I’ve tried to introduce it they’ve been horrified.)

Adelaide is going through a record heatwave at the moment, which is making life a bit interesting. I’m not sure of the technical requirements for a “heatwave” to be official, but this week we’re having something like 6 consecutive days above 35 degrees Celcius. Today is 39 degrees.  On Monday, while I was at work, the power went down for 2.5 hours, leaving us with little to do. Just when we were going to get the all clear to go home, the power came back on. It turned out this was a good thing (for me, anyway) because when I got home at 4pm I discovered that the power had been off there since 1:30pm. It didn’t come back on until after 7pm. So Richard and I had an interesting evening attempting to heat the boys dinner and milk (luckily we have a gas stove) and keeping them cool (we have a paddle pool in our courtyard). We were a bit worried about how they’d cope with the change in routine for their bedtime (there was no hot water for a shower) but the heat must have completely sapped them, because they went straight to sleep. In fact they’ve done so all week.

As for the boys’ progress, Lachlan has now learnt all his numbers and can put them in order from 1 to 10. Apparently this doesn’t signify high intelligence, but is another condition called hyperlexia or something. Strange how everything seems to need a label. Anyway, I’d prefer he knew all the numbers because of a condition rather than not know his numbers because of some other condition. Anyway, he’s now learning how to count a little bit (thanks to a great app on my iPod) so maybe he’ll be able to assign some meaning to the numbers he can recognise.

Speaking of the iPod – he’s such a wizz on it. He’s very adept at navigating the pages and applications and can pretty much load whatever he wants. Who would have thought it possible that Richard and I could have a geek for a son!?

As for Daniel, we’re constantly surprised by the stuff that comes out of his mouth. He seems to be saying so much and some of it is even directed at Richard and I. He’s developed a liking for standing in the hallway and shouting what sounds like “Dad”. We’re not sure if that’s what he’s doing, or if he wants Richards attention or if he’s just enjoying the sound of his own voice echoing down the hallway. But it’s still pretty cute. He’s also started spouting torrents of babble at the TV when he’s watching a show that he likes, and he’s been observed by more than one witness singing  and dancing along to nursery rhymes. Apparently Lachlan is more likely to hum. Daniel also reads himself stories and has started imperiously signing “more” whenever he wants something. It’s the only sign he really knows well, and he seems to think it means “give me what I want”. The only problem is trying to determine what he wants, though I don’t think he always knows himself. Other signs he seems to have picked up well are “open” and “book”.

Richard and I have finally made the big move to an iMac, and we’re already completely hooked. We’ve been sharing very nicely, but I’m pretty sure we both want to use it all the time. Anyway, when I’ve figured it out properly, I’ll be uploading some more pickies and videos. We’ve got some more good ones.

* 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.

Lachlan talked to me again tonight, so I wasn’t imagining it. He was having a bath and right after Richard and Dan left the room, he looked at me, smiled and very carefully and deliberately said “go”. I tried not to react too much and we had a very nice little exchange of “go”s for a couple of minutes. I’m thinking he only wants to do it on his terms and doesn’t like it when I try to force him to say it. He also said it to Richard in the bedroom afterwards, so I now have a witness.

Yesterday I believe Lachlan spoke his first word. We were playing on the beanbag, playing “ready, steady, GO!” and I was shaking the beanbag on “go”. I would pause before I said “go”, and wait to see if he would say anything. On four or five consecutive occassions he frowned, formed the ‘o’ shape with his mouth, and very carefully said the word “go”. It was very exciting! Of course, he’s now refusing to do it again, so I can’t proove it. Grrrrrr.

Just a quick update to say that the PECS is still going great with Lachlan and Dan is picking it up slowly. He still won’t initiate a request but is quite compliant when we guide him through the process. We’re also having some success with sign language too. Lachlan has learned to sign “money” and “open”. (The money is for a toy cash register.) The problem is that he uses the most recent sign he’s learnt (at the moment it’s “open”) for everything. It seems that in his mind the sign doesn’t mean “open” it means “do what I want”. But it’s still progress and I’m over the moon. Again, Dan doesn’t initiate any signs, but is happy to be assisted to sign “more book” when we’re reading a story.

As for me, I’m driving again and the foot seems to be getting a lot better. It was hurting quite a bit last week but it isn’t as painful anymore. I’m supposed to start going back to the office two days a week next week, however, I have been thinking about asking if I can work two days at home and just one day at the office. I’m not sure if I’ll do it though, because Lachlan makes the nanny’s life pretty difficult when he knows I’m home. He’s ultra clingy at the moment – hopefully because his last molars are coming through. It makes life quite difficult when I can’t do anything without him wrapping himself around my legs.

Finally, Richard had a big day today with his bus project getting some great publicity. There’s heaps of news coverage about it on the web, just no kudos for him.

For those who don’t know, PECS stands for picture exchange communication system and is part of the speech therapy that we’re doing with the boys. The way it works is that we create a whole stack of picture cards for everything the boys could want or need, and then we teach the boys to get the card for the thing they want, put it on a board with a card for “I want” and then give the cards to Richard or me. So they build the sentence “I want X” and we can give it to them (or not as the case may be).

It’s taken me a while to get organised enough, but I’ve finally made up a bunch of cards, and we started in earnest yesterday. Both boys were quite resistant to it at first but they’re much better now. In fact, Lachlan is doing unbelievably well. I thought it was amazing yesterday when he started handing me the card with “I want swing” written on it (after I’d given it to him, already prepared) and would point to the pictures. Then today I started giving him a few cards to choose from and he would select “swing” and build the sentence himself! I though that was brilliant until he actually started constructing sentences for himself without me supervising him! I was doing something else, so he went up to the board that I had left out with the cards, and he went and built the sentence and brought it over to me. This is exactly what we want him to do, and he’s achieved it in less than 48 hours. Now he just has to learn what all the other cards offer him and we could be well on our way to establishing a great communication system.

Dan is still a little resistant to taking the cards (in order to give the request back to us) but once we guide (force) him through this process, he’s quite interested in what the cards look like and what they say, so he’s at least paying attention, which is more than I really expected. He’s also learnt the sign (as in sign language) for “more” when it comes to reading books, and he’s also started to point to things which to us is totally amazing. I’m really happy and excited about how well the speech therapy if going. It’s wonderful to be seeing some progress!

Just a quick post to update my status. I’m now walking again without the moonboot, but it’s going to take a little while to build up the strength in my calf and ankle again. I’m allowed to drive, but I’ll be starting with short trips before I head back to work. The 60km round trip would be a bit much for me at the moment.

As for the boys, they’ve been a bit sick this week. Dan woke with a fever in the middle of the night one night last week and spent the next couple of days out of sorts, off his food, and sleeping with me. Then he’d pretty much recovered and Lachlan came down with much the same thing. Unfortunately for Lachlan (and for me) his suffering included vomiting instead of nights in the big bed. Anyway, they’re both mostly recovered now, though they’re still very tired and quite grizzly. One positive to come out of this is that Dan seems to be sleeping through the night again. Hopefully he’ll keep it up.

And here’s the picture of the week. One of my most favourite pictures ever.