Friday, May 17, 2013

5/15 - A Lawn Maze & Both boys at Therapy

We are living up the last few days of our grass mazes right now. Here are pictures that were taken almost 2 weeks ago so you can imagine how high/good the grass and mazes are right now. The boys (and I) have had so much fun running around in them. We plan to mow it all down tomorrow and then let it grow again over the next 2 weeks and then make more mazes for Aiden's birthday party.
After some outdoor time in the maze, we came inside and did some sensory painting. I mixed shaving cream with some tempera paint. I got out cookie trays for the boys to play on and then I found some cars to play with as well. At first they just played with the cars and making paths on the cookie sheet for them. After a bit, I added the colored shaving cream. Aiden did play which was great although he did not get any shaving cream on his hands. Eli had fun and didn't mind getting "dirty" as long as he could rinse them off and then dry them off. They had a great time. I'm determined to eventually have Aiden touch the shaving cream but we will work up to that I guess.
We were grateful to have the opportunity for Eli to go to Aiden's therapy last week. Eli has never been to Aiden's therapy here in Alabama and I really wanted him to see what it was like. They were both super excited for about 1.5 weeks leading up to the day. It was so important to them that I woke-up at 5:30am (eastern time) to drive 6.5 hr and met Brad straight at the location of therapy in Montgomery. There was no way I was going to miss this (and potentially cancel the appointment if I wasn't back in time). 

We got there and right away, Eli just wanted to run around and play. He quickly learned that is not how things work at therapy. Mrs. Rusty set up an obstacle course for them. I took it for granted that Eli has not experienced some things like a ball pit. Part of the obstacle course was standing in a ball pit and Eli was quite scared that he was just going to drown in all the balls. 
Eli got tired of doing the obstacle course and wanted to "play." I wasn't sure what he meant by that but I feel like I have watched Mrs. Rusty enough to know I could figure out how to make whatever he wanted to "play" with as part of something to do with therapy. We did lots of different things. He really liked the reacher thing (see directly below this text, top row). He grabbed those crabs and put them up on the platform and then put them down and then back up. He kept switching between his right and left hand. I was surprised he had the strength to do it but he was more accurate with his left hand than his right hand. 
Overall, Eli had a blast. He definitely learned that therapy is not doing just fun things and that he has to do things he doesn't like to. I think this helps because Eli realizes Aiden doesn't get to go and play all during his therapy time. 

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