I know I've been a slacker blogger lately (well, for me. LOL) but I'm recovering from Thanksgiving, work is busy, and at home it's all about the Christmas tree. But here's a quick update on what Jake has been up to:
Monday night after I picked Jake up, we went to the YMCA and he played with other kids while I walked on a treadmill for 30 minutes. No problems. (My Monday night piano student cancelled.) Then we went to the grocery store and he helped me pick out some food -- he had some social anxiety problems during check-out (doesn't like to be stuck with strangers looking at him and talking to him -- but the check-out people at Publix are SO nice!). We came home and had a mini "food school" in our kitchen -- mirroring the things we've been doing in the food therapy group.
I feel like I've absorbed enough of how the OT works with the kids and the food to be able to do it myself with Jake (I think we just have 3 weeks left in the 12 week program, so I want to get a head start on doing it myself.) I got Jake to taste strawberry applesauce and a kiwi, and then he ate FOUR baby carrots! This is MAJOR!!! I got him to taste them and take a small bite, and he just decided that he really likes them and started chowing down. I guess it's true that kids have to taste something 10 times before they decide if they like it!!!! So that was pretty awesome.
We've been working hard on getting Jake to hold his pencil the right way. He wants to hold all writing utensils like a hammer. I'm not stressing right now about crayons and markers, but we're working with pencils and pens, putting writing grips on them so it's easy for him to know where to put his fingers, and we do workbooks together. I just buy any preschool workbook I can find at Target, Walmart, Walgreens, etc, and we sit together and work on a few pages at a time. Jake actually REALLY likes doing it -- hooray! maybe he'll be like me and love homework! LOL -- and he's getting much better at being able to draw things deliberately.
Jake has been really . . . how do I describe it? . . . bull-in-a-china-shop lately. He has broken two Christmas ornaments because he just hasn't been careful. He's jumping and flopping around a lot, slipping on the kitchen floor, knocking things down . . . he's just not thinking ahead enough to know that he should slow down or things will get broken, people will get hurt. And I know that's a lot to expect from a 4 year old, but he HAS shown me in the past that he can be careful, so that leaves me wondering what's up now. My mom has noticed it, too, especially that he isn't listening well and isn't staying with her. So she's taking him to the mall today to do some shopping, and is going to put the Elmo safety harness (coughcoughleashcough) on him because she doesn't want to lose him and at this point, we don't trust him to stay with her. And that's kind of sad, but you do what you have to do, you know?
Pretty much right now I'm trying really hard to be patient with Jake and hope he outgrows this particular way of acting. :)