10/11/12 - Aiden's therapy & my medical

That is a cool date so I felt the need to write the entire date out rather than just the month and day. Here are some pictures from Aiden's therapy session this week. He got to swing on a giant pole with a platform and thought that was pretty fun. He actually didn't like to swing on anything when he first started therapy and would ask to be all done right after getting on.

Mrs. Rusty had him do an obstacle course kind of thing this week. He had to climb up the rope ladder, put paper clips all around a sheet of paper, and then go across the monkey bars (with help). I need to remember that he is supposed to have his thumb wrapped around the bar in the opposite direction of his fingers. He likes to put his fingers and thumb in the same direction but that isn't going to help his grip strength and muscle control. After he went across the monkey bars, he had to cut a piece of paper.  

He cracks me up because he asked Mrs. Rusty why her paper was so hard to cut. It was a piece of card stock, almost as thick as a think piece of cardboard. That reminds me, I was about to recycle a cereal box this morning and I should pull it out and give it to Aiden as an option for therapy. He could draw shapes on it and then cut them out!!! One of the many neat things I am learning from his therapist here is she has lots of ideas of things that I can do with him at home with stuff from either around the house or things that are pretty cheap.

Once he finally got through cutting the hard paper, he got to go down the slide on his belly and then he had to wheel barrow up a ramp. It was neat because he likes doing a "job" and then being rewarded for it. One of his favorite games at home is Treasure Map. Brad and I hide coins or tokens around the house in a few places and we give the boys directions to go find a token. They find it and then we give them directions to the next token. By accident a week or so ago, we also realized it's a GREAT exercise for them to hide them and tell us where they are. Eli doesn't do such a good job because he just runs and points to it and says where it is at. He just turned 3 though so he gets a break. Aiden has to work at it to find the right words to tell us where it is at using directions rather than just where it is. For example, rather than saying the token is 'in the kitchen on a chair at the little table' he'll say "where Eli and I eat sit to eat breakfast." It might not sound that complicated but giving us clues rather than the exact location has helped him learn how to describe things better which helps him communicate better with us.

OK. Back to the obstacle course. After his wheel barrow walk, he had to trace a stencil outline on a special sheet of paper. He had to use a thin pencil-type instrument (it's just a wood stick with a point) to try and scratch away the black crayon/covering so he could see the sparkles underneath. He said it was too hard and wasn't such a fan of that. Once he was done with that though he got to go on a zip line and then hover over the ball pit for 20 seconds (a fast-counting 20 seconds). That was great. His grip strength isn't that great so he has a hard time hanging from monkey bars and such so this was good practice for him and it was still fun. He actually asked to go in the ball pit too. That usually never happens. He's making such improvements. I'm so happy for him. We are going to start incorporating feeding therapy this week which should be good. He still has a very rough time eating and exploring new foods. On a good note though, shower time is going a little more smoothly. He won't take a bath but he will shower and he knows he has to use soap so the whining and complete meltdowns are starting to decrease. It's a quick shower. Once he finally thinks the temperature of the water is right (this sometimes takes longer than the actual shower because luke warm in his world is "hot"), he plays for 1 min or so and then I have about 2 min to soap his body and hair and rinse it all off before a breakdown occurs.

I signed up Aiden and Eli for a painting class at their daycare. This lady comes in a teaches them how to paint using various tools. I wasn't going to ask Eli if he wanted to do it but he was there when I took Aiden to see the painting of what they would be making in class. Aiden said he didn't want to do it and Eli said he wanted to. That was completely backwards from what I was thinking. I knew Aiden would be okay sensory-wise to do it because they were using brushes and a knife looking thing. I thought Eli was too young to be able to do anything. Needless to say, I signed them both up.

They did a great job! Aiden's is on the left and Eli's is on the right. Eli came home with paint in his ears and on his arms and face. He's so crazy and messy. Aiden said he had a good time too. When I asked him to tell me what he did he first asked if it was all dry. He then explained to Brad and I how to make the pedals larger by doing longer strokes and was showing us the motion. He also told us the order he did everything. The red background was first, then the center of the sunflower, and then how he did the yellow part. They are going to offer the painting class once a month. If the boys like it, I'll let them keep doing it. They had lots of fun.

I've been experiencing some problems lately and was in the ER about 2 weeks all day on a Friday. I had to drink a HUGE think of liquid and then wait for a few hours and they did a CT scan of my abdomen to see if everything was working okay. During the CT scan, they then injected some kind of dye into my IV line and took some more pictures. They determined that the problem I was experiencing was coming from my colon. They then gave me a note to give to my primary care that said I needed to be seen by a gastrointerologist ASAP. On Monday morning, a nurse from my primary care contacted me and said I had an appointment on Thursday at 1:00pm with this dr. I saw this doctor (although I had to wait forever) and he said I needed a colonoscopy ASAP so he scheduled me for Monday morning. In case you don't know (I didn't realize it), you have to prep for a colonoscopy which is actually the worst part. My doctor follows very strict guideline about what you can and cannot eat and my last meal was Friday afternoon. I had vegetable soup for dinner and then no more solids until Monday after the procedure. Needless to say, I have never drank so much in my life and was so sick of drinking by 12:00am the night before the procedure, that I didn't want to see any liquid for the next few days. We had some logistical problems about me getting to the procedure. I needed to be there at 6:00am but since I was going to be sedated, I had to have someone else there with me to drive. Well, daycare isn't open that early and I'm certainly not going to wake up the boys that early to come sit in a nasty waiting room for hours on end just so Brad can drive. I sent out an e-mail to our pastor and the spouses running club members who live in Prattville (about 7-8). Needless to say, one of the spouses agreed to pick me up at 5:20am and take me to Montgomery and wait until Brad could get there at about 8:00am. Well, to give you the reader's digest version, I was done by 7:45am and was waking up from the anesthesia. The doctor came and told me (and my driver) what was wrong, and then we were done. I texted Brad and told him not to come and we ended up meeting him for some breakfast. They found a few things wrong and did some biopsies. I go back in 1.5 more weeks to get all the findings. I had to stop by the office earlier this week so they could do one more lab. I have a medication I am supposed to be taking in the mean time but I've only taken it once. I finally sat down and did some research to see what the implications were if I didn't take the medication because I actually feel pretty good right now. Needless to say, after I read what can happen if it goes untreated, I started the medication. The medication is just a week-long dose but ..... I'm praying it's worth the effort. :)

I also been feeling extremely tired lately and am still fighting a battle to get in to see the endocrinologist. My autoimmune system is just not working quite right and I'm praying we can get it figured out. The boys (all 3 of them) are so sweet. When I couldn't eat for a couple of days, Brad took the boys out at night to eat which was really sweet. When we picked up the boys on the monday after my procedure, Aiden asked if I was "allowed to eat food now." He has such a sweet heart.

10/10 - Daycare picnic & Awana

On Saturday, the boys daycare had a family picnic. It was from 12-2 which makes no since to me seeing how they nap at daycare everyday from 12-2. Anyway, we went for part of it and got there right at 12. The boys were excited to see the jump houses. We let them jump for a bit and then persuaded them to have some lunch.

They ended up eating a few bites and then going and playing and then coming back for more lunch. Below you can see Aiden throwing a ball at a couple of plastic cans and he knocked some down. He was having a blast.

Eli follows Aiden to most places so he wanted to try the game too. He was too funny. He didn't have enough skill yet to actually hit the cans from the far away so we had to eventually move him closer to the table.

He thought it was awesome when he actually hit some and they fell.

After success at the cans, Eli headed back to eat some of his hotdog. Of course Aiden wanted nothing to do with a hotdog so he had his yogurt.

Aiden is loving bounce houses now and usually asks to go in it right away. Eli is still learning to like the bounce house so he hesitates a little more. They both finally got in there and enjoy bouncing and wrestling. Eli is in the blue shirt with sleeves on the left and Aiden is towards the back with a white shirt that has a helicopter on it.

You can see in this next bounce house picture that Aiden was taking down Eli. I should include another picture showing Eli taking down Aiden but I'm saving space. These two go at it in the bounce house and have fun. I was so scared they were going to hurt someone else though so I eventually had to slow them down.

There was another inflatable there that had a ladder-type thing on it and they had to climb up it and then slide down. Here come Eli and Aiden down the slide. Eli loves to slide laying down and it's rare that he actually sits up to go down an inflatable slide. 

I was able to get a picture of Aiden with his teacher, Ms. Jennifer. She has an awesome southern accent that cracks me up. She does really well with Aiden and he likes her and is learning a lot.

The boys even got to go fishing. This game cracked me up. They put a fishing pole over the curtain and then someone puts a treat on the end of the line and then pulls at it (like a tug from catching a fish). Both boys enjoyed it and thankfully the teacher attaching the prizes gave the boys the same thing so there was no fighting later at home.

The other game they had there was a throwing the bean bag in the hole board. Here is Aiden throwing his bean bags. Eli did it too but he had to scoot a little close to get them in the holes.

Even though it's October, it was quite warm and sunny out on Saturday. This picture below is a special group of ladies!!! They are my Journey Girls (Journey is the name of the daycare/church) that I train a few times a week. From left to right is Susan (she's an unleashed monster), April (the director), Me, Erica (Eli's former teacher), and Shenika (Eli's new teacher). It all started with Erica and it's been so fun to train these ladies and see health-related improvements in them. Erica and Shenika think they are going to stop after the holidays but they don't realize I won't allow that :)  They are all doing such a great job.

As I mentioned in the last post, I've been updating Aiden's Therapy Book to include his occupational therapy exercises. While I was taking pictures of his stuff the other day, he insisted on being in the picture. He cracks me up. He likes tools and such so when Rusty showed us this exercise, I knew I would have to get some stuff so we could do it at home. He has to take the little nuts and gather them in his hand, one by one. Then he has to put a little nut inside a big nut one at a time (using only his left hand). This makes him have to manipulate all the muscles in his hand to move the nuts around so they won't fall and is great therapy. After I bought the gigantic nuts (we literally bought the biggest size they had), I told Rusty we had gotten some nuts for us to do therapy at home. She asked if I got the bolts too. I said, "no, we didn't use bolts the other day." She then informed me that putting the nut on the bolt is good therapy as well. I went back to the store and took my big nut with me but to make a long story short, we ended up just getting a package of nuts & bolts so he can do that too.

We check on the boys every night before we head to bed and I had to take a picture of Aiden. He was so cute because he was curled up on his pillow and had his head on his blanket. Totally opposite of how he should be. 

Here are a few pictures from Cubbies that I took on Sunday night. This is such a neat group of kids and I've enjoyed teaching them so far. The woman in the white sweater is Kristy, one of the leaders. Aiden is sitting at the table (it looks like she is pointing to Aiden) playing with play-doh.

I took this during 'Coming In Time' after we handed out all the vests. I want to get a group picture and think I'll try that this week. I imagine it will be difficult to get a group picture of this class but I'm going to try. 

Here is Aiden and two other Cubbies (DaMond & Eric) showing Cubbie Bear and Luv E Lamb the bugles they made. Another one of the leaders built that stage this year for our puppet shows and it's been great. Another friend had a good idea when I saw that she puts plastic table clothes over the toys and things that they kids are not supposed to play with. That works awesome for this class especially since there are a handful of kids that have an extremely hard time staying in their seat and not playing with things.

I can't wait to see what the rest of the year offers for Cubbies. I'll post more about Aiden's therapy and some medical stuff I've been dealing with in the next day or so.

10/9 - Therapy & the Fair!

It's been a bit since I've updated because I need to transfer pictures off my computer to make room for more and that takes a little while to do. Aiden is finally back in therapy and has done really well!! I'm excited with his progress. Ms. Rusty, his new occupational therapist, is quite awesome. She's really good with him and gets him to do stuff that he won't do for me. Last week, she had Aiden draw a bear. I didn't think he'd be able to do it but he copied her pretty well and made his own bear. See how he is up on his knees? He doesn't like to kneel like that (he'd rather put his bottom down to his feet and sit on them) but it helps make him stronger.

He just made the bear a hand...

Now she is teaching him how to draw a fish.

After they finished drawing their bears with fish, Aiden had to play the bears a song on the iPad using just his fingers (not moving his entire forearm).

The crawled over to the bears and were trying to get the fish some water using a squirt gun. It was a neat idea/story to incorporate a bunch of different therapy things.

Grandma and Grandpa Hoyt went home about 1.5 weeks ago. We really enjoyed visiting with them! Here is a picture with the boys the night that they left.

The boys are enjoying their new swing set. We have to be careful going out at night because Aiden and I get lots of bites. The boys were doing mazes outside last week. Aiden wanted to sit on the table on the swing set to do his. Eli didn't like sitting at the table because the seat was farther away than he would like.

Aiden is actually really good at mazes. I've printed a bunch of mazes out and laminated them so he can use them numerous times. I even have a few really easy ones for Eli. It's great therapy for motor control and writing and I would have never thought that until Ms. Lisa (his therapist in Jax) gave some to him.

Here is little Eli doing his. I tried correcting his grasp but he doesn't like that and starts crying. I (and his former therapist) worked on that for months with Aiden and just in the last couple weeks has he started to use a regular grasp of marker. Aiden still likes to use his whole forearm to draw/color but we are working on getting that stronger. Eli cracks me up in this picture because he's actually resting his elbow on his leg so he doesn't have to move his whole arm. They are complete opposites!

Eli found a tape measure in the toy bin in the car (I have no idea how it ended up in there) and brought it inside. He said it was his snake and carried it around for a while. I've already told these boys that they will never have a real pet snake in the same house as me. :)

These two boys love to play with each other and one of their favorite games is Puppy. That's right. They act like dogs and love it. Aiden made Eli, the puppy, a bed by emptying out everything in this storage box and putting Eli's blankets in it.  

I brought blocks to Cubbies last week and had to go pick them up this week from another leader's house. I brought them home and the boys really wanted to play with them. That's funny considering they never usually want to play with them. Aiden is building a little city with all his blocks.

Eli wasn't as interested as building with the blocks than he was with playing with the wood-shaped automobiles.

I've been more diligent lately about working with Aiden doing some of his therapy stuff. I'm in the process of making a new section in his notebooks with all the different things he can do for therapy so that when we put our schedules together, he can choose what kind of therapy he wants to do. My goal is for him to do one therapy activity at least once a day but have 2-3 days where he does a couple different activities. I'll take a picture of it when I finish the book. Below, Aiden and Eli are painting while Skyping with Nana. Aiden actually painted 2 pictures (I drew things/shapes on the paper in pencil so he had an outline), did an entire Snip It picture (I'll show some pictures of that in a few days) which was hard for him, and even did his putty for a little bit. He then said he was really tired and I don't blame him. He did a great job. Eli painted a picture too and enjoyed it. He was all done with therapy stuff (no he's not in therapy) and wanted to play Meatball (a made-up game in which you throw a balled up blanket at someone and yell "meatball") with his dad.

Aiden had been telling me he wanted to be a parrot for Halloween. I started looking up parrots costumes to see how I could make one. I then asked Eli if he wanted to be pirate since they kind of go together. Eli was excited and said yes so I went to the dollar store and bought a hat, mini sword, eye patch, and gold coins for $2. Aiden liked it so much he said he wanted to be a pirate too. Needless to say, Halloween costumes are all planned out now.

On Friday afternoon, Brad and I picked the boys up and headed to the fair. The local fair in Prattville didn't open until 6pm so we drove over to the Montgomery county fair which opened at 4:00pm. We walked around for a while and showed the boys the different rides. We were not sure how the rides would go because Aiden didn't care for them much when we went to Disney a few months ago. Wristbands for unlimited rides were $30 each and we weren't willing to dish that out not knowing if they would even like them. That said, we bought 24 tickets for $20. We headed up to the first ride the boys wanted to try not even thinking Eli might not even be able to do the kiddie rides without and adult. Thankfully, he measured in right at 36 inches so he was able to go on by himself/with Aiden (Brad and I didn't have to waste tickets for us to go on the ride).

Wow. These boys LOVED the rides. I knew Eli would because he's a thrill junky. I wasn't sure about Aiden.

After a few trips around on the motorcycles, the ride ended and Eli started to get upset and asked for "more." It was too cute. We told him he could pick another ride. The boys chose these SUV trucks as their next ride. They each wanted to drive their own which was fine because it was not busy at all (it was the first day of the fair and the rides had just opened at 5pm).

These pictures of Aiden enjoying the ride so much just melt my heart. We don't get to see him this happy very often, especially on a ride or something that moves.

This one is a little blurry but the look on his face is equivalent to most people's toothy smile; he's loving it.

As I mentioned, Eli is a thrill junky and I knew he would have fun. I'm glad they enjoyed doing rides together this year because as soon as Eli is tall enough for the crazy rides, he'll be on those. The whole family can get wristbands then and Aiden and I can do fun houses and little rides and Eli and daddy can go on the zipper, graviton, scrambler, and other rides that turn my stomach upside down.

We did go to one fun house. I used to LOVE fun houses. This one was pretty neat but Eli got a little scared at one point because he had to climb a huge ladder rope. He was scared and starting crying. We told Aiden to go back and get him and he tried. Thankfully, the woman working the ride/taking the tickets, jumped over a banister and helped him all the way up. He was good to go from there. Thankfully, Aiden waited for Eli at each section of the fun house (what a sweet brother). It ended with this HUGE slide. I wasn't so sure they were going to do it but once they got on there, they actually didn't move that fast. 

The boys really wanted to ride a kiddie roller coaster but the little one was closed down. They had a slightly bigger one that they wanted to go on but they were not tall enough. They were sad but there was nothing we could do. We told them they each had enough tickets left for one ride. We walked around and got some cotton candy while they decided on what the last ride would be.

Here they are standing in line with their tickets, staring at the roller coaster they weren't tall enough to go on. They chose these balloons for their last ride. They went up and down while going in a big circle and it was a perfect last ride for them.

Here they are just sitting down.

For as much as they enjoyed the rides and wanted to keep riding, I was surprised that when this ride was over, they didn't complain, cry, or meltdown that it was their last ride for the night. I told them we will definitely go to the fair next time it's in town. I wanted to make sure we got a family picture. Aiden didn't really want to because he was so tired. I look like I have blue teeth from sneaking a few bites of the blue cotton candy. :)

We had a great time at the fair and I am so glad we were able to go as a family. Last year, I took the boys but Brad was gone so we didn't do any rides (Eli was way too little and there was no way Aiden would go on a ride by himself) so I promised Aiden we would do rides when daddy could come with us. Promise fulfilled. I'll be posting again shortly since I have room for pictures now on my computer. We had a fun day on Saturday too at their daycare family picnic and Aiden had another successful therapy visit today. Cheers from the Hoyt Family.