Getting closer to potty trained?

Melissa

Monkey has hit a bit of a plateau on potty training for a while now.  We had him on a schedule and he was fairly well catch trained at one point but then he began resisting our efforts to go on the potty and we backed off a bit.  In his new classroom at school he has been resistant to using the potty as well.  So we wait.

We’re finally getting signs that he may be progressing in the BM area, he is coming to us and telling us that he’s had a BM and demands a new “‘per!”  It’s (a very small) something but we’re back to hoping we may someday actually succeed here.

I’ve always heard that the feel and learn style pullups are a waste (expensive and not very useful for training ultimately.)  Has anyone switched from diapers to these pull ups and then had potty training success?

Don’t mind my bragging

Melissa

Sometimes we’re almost brilliant, if I do say so myself.  Check this out…

Back story:  Last year we had zero worthwhile communication with Monkey’s teacher.  Every child received the same handout (no individual comments) and we received the verbal “he had a good/great/challenging day” reports and the cute stories but when it came time to sit down last June to hear reports we realized we had not been given anything worthwhile all year!  According to the daily verbal reports he was the model student but when we had to meet to discuss placement for this year suddenly he needed to be in a substantially separate classroom, he was not progressing in his placement.  We were not happy with this for obvious reasons and we decided it would not happen again.

So…we developed, along with our advocate, a communication sheet.  Monkey’s new teacher filled in the schedule and the school behaviorist defined the numbering scheme.  It ended up looking like this:

communicationplan

Pretty nifty, no?  But wait! It gets better.  We finally sat down with Excel on Monday night and plugged in all the numbers and we used the charting tool to come up with line graphs for both regulation and participation.

Regulation:

Participation:

Cool, eh?  Already we can see that Monkey’s regulation (and thus participation) are falling off drastically after snack and not rebounding until playground.  We’re asking the teacher to work with the OT to put in some sort of intervention in the book/group work area to try to even out the drop. His art time have been improving a great deal over the last few days so we’ll hold off there and see how that shapes up.

We NEVER could have done this last year.  I am so pleased with how this is working out!

Woo hoo, no ER for us!

Melissa

Thankfully, the antibiotics have done the job.  Monkey’s eye is much better.  Phew!  It looks like we’re back to school tomorrow rather than off to the ER.

And!  Somehow Monkey seems to have received the DST memo.  He woke up at 6 AM (just like every morning) despite the fact that the clock rolled back.  I fully expected a 5 AM wake-up but he stayed in bed (our bed, but whatever) until 6.  I do wish I knew how he managed that but I’m grateful regardless since it’s Duhdee’s turn to sleep in, lol.

Home from school.

Melissa

Monkey woke up yesterday with a runny nose.  He otherwise seemed fine so we sent him to school.  His teacher called after he’d been there for a while to report that he had been unhappy most of the morning and that he had fallen asleep, in the gym, during free play.  She wanted to let him nap for a while longer and then see how he was feeling.  Duhdee ended up going to bring him home.   Monkey’s left eye was a bit red and puffy but he seemed to be feeling better as the afternoon wore on so we took a wait and see approach.

This AM he woke up with the same puffy eye and we took him to the Dr.  His normal Dr. was out today so we saw a substitute.  Stranger + eye exam + FX = Not Good.  The Dr. did praise us for staying so calm, lol.  We’re just used to it I guess.

She couldn’t see a foreign body and she didn’t dare to try to test for an abrasion given his thrashing. 

We were sent home with two prescriptions, one for oral and one for topical antibiotics.  We’re not holding out much hope that we’ll be able to use the ointment on his eye (maybe when he’s sleeping?) so she gave us both.  If he’s not better in 2-3 days she said we should take him straight to the hospital for a more thorough exam.  Wouldn’t that be fun?  She did mention “possible” sedation needed, ya think? 

Fragile X 5K

Melissa

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt!

I’m so happy we did it.  We didn’t come even close to placing obviously but I was very pleased with how we did considering we’ve only been running for the last 10 weeks.

I think we placed 29 and 30 err…make that 39 and 40 overall, Duhdee was the #11 male in his age bracket and I was #10 woman in mine.  Also, Duhdee appeared to be the first person to finish who was pushing a stroller, lol.  I think that extra 45 lbs. he was pushing deserves some extra credit 😉

We’re now going to drop down to only 2 runs/week for the winter.  We’re going to try to improve our times.  We finished in a little over 30 minutes, the first place runner finished in a little over 15 minutes.  Ouch!

I don’t know what to write about!

Melissa

It seems like school issues/drama have been totally taking over our lives for the last 5 months.  Now that we have Monkey in a great classroom and he’s being successful I’ve hit a bit of a wall.  We are so thrilled with how things are going right now, a huge weight has been lifted from our shoulders and it’s a little disorienting to suddenly have a major source of worry disapper.

Duhdee and I finished our last training run for the Fragile X 5K on Monday.  Last night we did a test run and we’re fine, we will totally finish the race.  The race is this coming Sunday!  I think we’re going to keep running after this too.  I know I had planned on it but I wasn’t sure what Duhdee’s thoughts were.  He is not a big fan of running!  I doubt I will ever convince him to run anything more than a 5K but it means so much to me that he decided to join me in this.

That’s about it.  It’s so weird to not have any drama but I’ll cope!  I’m definitely going to enjoy these days where our biggest problem is what to do with all the art pieces Monkey is suddenly flooding us with!  He sat yesterday for TEN MINUTES and worked on a gluing project.   That is easily a record…perhaps by more than 9 minutes, lol.

 

He did it AGAIN!

Melissa

We talked up how well he did yesterday before we left this morning and we shared some high fives.  He asked me to carry him down the stairs (“Ride?”) and I agreed.  I let him know that I was carrying him down the stairs because he did SUCH a good job walking to class yesterday!  He seems very proud of himself.

On the way over to school he took some unprompted deep breaths.  Traffic was awful but he did very well.  He was a little upset about getting out of the truck once we got there but once he was on his feet he fairly sprinted to his classroom.  He checked in to class by moving his picture from his cubby to the group board and then joined 2 friends at the water table. 

That’s it, piece of cake.  Our experience in the past has been that once he reaches this point he maintains really well.  Last year we hit this point in…MAY.  I really think this has been a great switch for him.

ALSO, yesterday at lunch he finished faster than the other kids (shocker, the kid is an eating machine these days) so they sent him to read books while the rest of the class finished up.  He sat down to read “Brown Bear” and pointed out the pictures and named them.  That’s a first for school too.  He’s done it at home before but this shows how much more comfortable he is in the new class.

HE DID IT!

Melissa

Monkey walked into his classroom today without once sitting down to protest.  He whined a few times in the car but he’s now taking deep breaths with Duhdee and I to calm down so it really was very minimal. 

It was the best transition he’s had since last June.  We are SO excited!  Go Monkey!

Once we were in the classroom Duhdee helped him move his picture from his cubbie to the group area to signal that he was now in school (they move it back to their cubbies at the end of the day to signal that they are now going home.)  He then joined some friends at the water table, he didn’t even glance up when we left.

Fortunately, there was no one in the hallway to witness the Victory Dance.  Ohhhh, yeah!