It has been a crazy month!Had a lot of work that kept me busy and added to my already high stress.
I finally feel like these last 2 weeks I have been able to rest and I am looking forward to this faux South Florida "winter" break. :)
A lot to post about but where to even begin?
I will begin with the little monkey.
After a tumultuous month doing the Nystatin he got rid of a lot of the main yeast stimming he was doing. Some of it remained but the majority of it was finally gone. He calmed down a lot and started to focus once again. Reports after reports from teachers and therapists all said just how well he was doing compared to while ongoing the treatment. The little bit of yeast related stimming is still there and annoying.
-Got a phone call finally yesterday that yes, his stool sample came in and instead of a +3 he is now at a +1 with the yeast which means they are not colonizing successfully like before. Have an appointment for next week to probably repeat the yeast protocol. Not looking forward to it though.
-Back to the school and therapy news, he has been using the learned phrases from ABA and using them in real life scenarios. An example is when he said "he is riding the bike" to tell me that a child that was at our house was using his bike/tv toy and to get him out! lol
-Some skills have come naturally to him. Simple things like putting his socks on perfectly, shirt and shorts are all great breakthroughs. Such little things that we all take for granted huh?
-He is riding his razor scooter much faster now and balancing quite well compared to last month too!
-While at his holiday party at school he grabbed my arm and said "mommy, go home now please" Not that he wanted me to go home, this meant LET'S go home now please. I almost packed up and left just because he formed the sentence on his own without it being taught to him. We didn't leave though. Made him stay. Mean mommy. :)
-So, overall, he has been a doll behavior wise and back to his usual laid back, smiling, singing and dancing adorable monkey with all sorts of new skills to show!
On to something else...CHRISTMAS IS COMING!! woohoo...yes, I am excited. We'll see how excited after Thursday but it's been a full year and my hopes are high once again. Last year he conquered opening gifts with A LOT of prompting but he did it. He showed selective interest in the gifts but it was a success to have him rip the paper open even if he did run away afterwards.What started out as a frustrating task of putting the ornaments on the tree ended up being very enjoyable. He put on at least 3 ornaments on the tree. He had done so last year as well so when he initially refused I thought he was regressing! but, turns out he just wasn't as into the Nemo ornament as I was. As soon as I showed him an old one he did it with no problem. Yeh!
I have finished wrapping the gifts. All of the toys have been taken out of the box, filled with batteries and are ready to be played with right out of the wrapping! I labeled the outside of the wrapping with his name, the word TOY really big and corresponding #'s to see if I can get a pattern going to show him that a- it's a gift FOR HIM, b- it's a TOY and c- there is a limited amount he will have to open. I also numbered them from least enjoyable (a spinning top) to the one he is going to go insane for (the leapster). Only because if he gets the Leapster first, the other toys do not stand a chance! ha ha ha ha
I took the contents out of one of the gifts this afternoon and left it unwrapped by the tree to "test" him. It's too much all on Christmas morning anyway so this is his early bird one. He bit! boy did he ever! He ran to the box which is way bigger than him, brought it over to me and said "mommy, open golf please!" (it's a mini golf kiddie set). I was so excited. I rushed to get the contents I had hidden and brought it out for him. He proceeded to help me build it. Wasn't too hard but it was such a nice feeling to have him next to me "building" something.
Ok, almost done I promise. 2 more BIG announcements:
1- I am 5 months pregnant! yes! very exciting. It's another boy so there is a lot of worrying going on but we are doing our best to make this a healthy pregnancy. Taking my prenatal (which have been very tough for me), probiotics, eating as much organic as I can, planning a toxic free nursery and well, you get the picture. REALLY trying to keep those darn "environmental insults" out of our lives. Due date, May 10th! woohoo!!!
2- We are seriously considering stem cell treatment for my son. I am researching up and down and all around for the best location (they are all international), information, side effects, results, etc...But, what started as just a casual interest has turned serious. We might even go as early as February! It really makes sense and we are NOT waiting until 2020 to get this done for my son in the US! More on that once I figure out all of the details.
Have a GREAT holiday everyone and as always, thanks for reading!
