Occupational Therapy

A couple months ago, Miles' preschool teacher mentioned to me that he had difficulty with holding his pencil.  Even when he did grip his pencil correctly, he had difficulty applying enough pressure to get the pencil to write.  She suggested we consider occupational therapy.

My first step was to take him to Project Enlightenment.  A child psychologist did a full evaluation of him there, everything from vision to hearing to fine motor skills to social development to problem solving.  The results of that were that he was doing fine in all areas.

After that, I took him to a private physical therapy office (that also does occupational therapy) for an evaluation.  They determined that he does have a minor delay in fine motor skills, and that his delay is related to a deficiency in upper body and core strength.  I was surprised to hear this, considering how much time we spend outside running and jumping and playing on playgrounds.  This also spurred my memory of his pediatrician saying that he had "low tone" when he was about 6 months old.  His therapist, Abby, said that this is probably related to that.

Now, once a week, we take him to therapy.  He absolutely loves it.  He gets to roll down the hall on their scooter board, play games and make crafts with Abby.  She is a gem, and she says that he has already made lots of progress.

We need to spend more time doing wheelbarrows and crab walks and practicing with our pencils, but he has already made strides.  Abby said that he probably would only need about 6-8 weeks of therapy, which would have us ending some time in January.

Friendship Feast

The kids' preschool does a Friendship Feast for the 4-year-olds.  Two classes get together near lunchtime, one class dressed as Native Americans and the other class dressed as pilgrims.  They share a meal together.  And it is STINKIN' ADORABLE.  I seriously almost cried when Miles' class came in because they were so cute.  Miles' feast was last Friday, and he dressed as a Native American.  Vivienne's feast was today and she dressed as a pilgrim.  Jason took time off of work to come watch both kids' feasts.  I'm thankful that he has flexibility at work to attend events like these.

Vivienne's normal glasses are broken, so she is wearing her backups for now (which she does not like because they are slightly too big).  She kept leaning her head forward to be sure her pilgrim hat didn't fall off, and that caused her to be looking over her glasses.  I think she looked more like the Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe than a pilgrim.  She was adorable nonetheless.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Halloween 2014

The kids had been eagerly awaiting Halloween for about the last 12 months.  About once a month, they would ask me when we would wear costumes and go trick-or-treating again.  (I'm pretty sure I can thank the random Halloween episodes of Dora for that.)  Last night, their dream finally came true.  Miles decided he wanted to resurrect the space shuttle costume from last year (which made Mommy very happy).  Vivienne had her heart set on being a "butterfly with orange and black wings".   And Evelyn just had to settle for the free, hand-me-down adorable droopy ladybug costume.  I must say that our crew was quite the cute little posse.

I'm pretty sure we were the first trick-or-treaters in our subdivision.  The kids just could not wait another minute.  After Grandma arrived to join in the fun with her cute orange pumpkin t-shirt, we headed out in broad daylight with our pumpkins (and Evelyn carried her fuzzy monkey from Easter).  Our first stop was our next-door neighbors' house, and then we were off.  The kids lasted quite a while, but after a while, Evelyn decided she wanted to ride in the stroller.  Around 7:30, we came home with heavy pumpkins and tired legs.

After a couple pieces of candy, the kids quickly found their fake teeth and that's when things started to get a little hairy…

Already looking forward to Halloween 2015.  Surely the space shuttle will not fit by then and Miles will have to choose another costume.  Mars rover maybe?