And for those who Doubted ...

... I present to you....

J-man reads "There's a Mouse in the House"





See.  I wasn't crazy or delusional.  Do NOT underestimate the J-man.

The Little Things

I will say being J-man's mom has definitely helped me pay attention to the little things in life.  The simple pieces of the puzzle.  When they fall into place, there is no missing them.  No ignoring or having them pass by unnoticed.  The smallest gain, the simplest milestone is noticed and honored and cherished.  It is a double edge sword, of course, because the lags and delays are there too, and every 'problem' makes me afraid we have a Problem. I notice them too.

But one thing that I hope J-man comes to know about his mommy is that ... if I am anything... I am present and aware of him.  The whole of him. 

And that every single moment matters.

Hot Summer Days

I owe you a post, but I haven't really had a chance to sit down and write.  As you will see, J-man and I have been VERY busy. 






This is an excellent language day for J-man. If you have ever wondered how J-man's apraxia and ASD affect him, here you go! What you are hearing is his language delay and apraxia, but if you listen very carefully you will hear him say a lot.... even one or two full sentences!!  His engagement is pretty great today... and yes, I should be playing with him... I promise you, I did put the camera down and get wet!! 

It is the only way to spend a hot summer day!

Best. Laugh. Ever.

Up North, Ya Know, U Betcha

Itching to get out of town (even for an overnight), J-man and I headed 'up-nordt" to hang out at my parent's cabin. Alas, Big Daddy had to work all weekend, which was a major bummer since it was Father's Day weekend and all. But since he works from home I figured he would rather we be out of his hair... plus a kidless house can be awful nice.


Life is simple "up nordt". As you can see, people in the northland find all kinds of ways to amuse themselves.

Suck it, NYC.
You might have Broadway,
but we have meat raffles!

I know you are jealous.

The highlight of the weekend was going out on the boat. J-man loves the boat. And apparently, J-man loves fishing. This was an unknown until this weekend when we went for a little boat ride and Grandpa started a little fishing. He caught two.

And J-man was in love.

He squealed. He laughed. He wanted to hold the fish. Clean the fish. No really, he took a towel and 'cleaned' them. We let Grandpa do the real dirty work.

J-man has zero... I mean zero... fear of fish.



The next day, Grandpa produced a J-man size fishing pole. J-man is in love with Grandpa now.   J-man was also a bit of a menace. He wanted to "cast" the fishing pole just like Grandpa did. Except there are three really big problems with that. The first was that he does not have the motor coordination down to do a real fishing cast. The second... he has no patience for failure. The third? He will not take direction from anyone. He got the jist of what to do from watching Grandpa, but refused help. So he swung the rod... with a live hook buried in a fake worm... around willy-nilly.

I still have visions of losing an eye.

What it is like...

... to watch a movie with J-man.  The action really gets started at about 1 minute and 30 seconds, give or take.



That phrase making your ears bleed?  "More puppieeee (movie)"

Video from IMFAR

I just thought I would share this great interview with the keynote speaker from the Internation Meeting for Autism Research.  Brings me back to my old days.

Tubby Time and Superman

I wanted to share a little video I shot this evening of J-man and I playing while he is in the tub. 

Now, as you watch, you will hear J-man doing a lot of talking.  Listen carefully.  The vast majority of it is unintelligible.  But he is saying all of the names of the superheroes, and while I can understand them, you probably can only get a few.  The list is as follows:  Aqua Lad, Aqua man, Superman, Red Tornado, Batman, Robin, and Kid Flash.






I am working on balancing and matching him in our play, and I think I am fairly successful.  Certainly, he seems to be enjoying it!

Just for Fun

J-man and I had a little playtime today and made up our own version of bowling. 

I don't think Superboy, Astroboy, giant Gorilla-man, and the Transformers minded.... Much!

Storytelling 2.0

We have a new app for the IPad that I just have to tell you about.   It is pretty fracken cool.

It is called Stories 2 Learn, and it has become something of a rage in the IPad/IPhone special-needs scene.  It is a social stories program that allows you to create stories to teach concepts like sharing and cooperation with pictures from the child's own life, or to provide preparation for something new coming up.  I am not using it for social stories (yet!), but rather to create stories with pictures about J-man's day or about the people in his life as a mode for conversation for us.  I have made two stories up to this point, one with simple pictures of family members so we can talk about Mommy, Daddy, Papa and Mumu, etc etc, and the other one is about what we do at OT. 

Here is a video of J-man scrolling through the A Day at OT story.  Usually I would be commenting about the pictures (trying to get a little conversation going), but in this video I wanted to just show how it worked. 



As you can see, you can put your own pictures, text and voiceover in the story.  How cool is that?

What You Ought to Know

"Where's Spot?"

A few weeks ago I was listening to a show on NPR in which they were discussing films and film-making, and I remember thinking, "Wow, if I could do it all again, it sure would be cool to be a film director.  Make these great stories, think about storytelling frame by frame, setting tone, etc etc.  How fun would that be??!"

However, as you can see from the video below, I will not be quitting my day job.  In my defense, however, this video was taken with my Samsung Moment phone via its' digital camcorder, propped with a  'phone holder' made of Trio blocks on a stack of books on J-man's nightstand.   So clearly I was lucky to get even this....

I wanted to capture one of J-man's best moments, and bedtime stories are quickly becoming that time.  We are reading a new book, "Where's Spot?", a flip-book with hidden animals under the flaps.  J-man thinks the flaps are like doors... as you will hear!




Ding Dong!!!

Boys Will Be Boys

Really, believe me.... we don't promote violence.  Really. 

But... well... somehow, boys just know how to be boys....

This video was shot at my birthday party last week.  The "battle" began spontaneously between my nephew A-man (the blond) and my J-man (shorter and not so blond), and after a minute of completely normal, appropriate boy battling with the very safe foam swords, I just had to try and capture the beauty.  They loved it. I loved it. 




I think I see some pretty good interaction and turn taking going on. What do you think?  Oh, and although you can't hear it, J-man followed some "encouraging instructions" from the sidelines.  The Cops and Robbers soundtrack provided for your pleasure (and to protect the bad influences.. ahem...lets just leave it at that).

J-man has really taken a keen interest in his cousin, which is just flippin wonderful.  A-man is a little older (5) and filled with energy and great ideas, and J-man definitely is paying attention.  As I have always known he does.

But really.... believe me.... we don't necessarily condone violence...  but what is a little foam swordplay between cousins?

Bathtime Is Playtime

WARNING:  Three year old boy in bathtub.  No 'naughty parts' seen, but if you are a perv who gets off on watching a three year old in a bathtub, bugger off.

I just had to post this short video of J-man in the bathtub.  We are playing "the lion is chasing Buzz and Woody".  (You might wanna turn your sound down just a tinge, because it is very echo-y.  And my voice is obnoxious.)



Now, this is a pretty good example of the CP approach, and yet I fail miserably in one area:  Matching.  Clearly, I am overtalking him.  I really should have minimized my words and word combinations a lot more.   But he is keeping up with the action okay.  This is the first great example I could get of where he is at in his pretend and interactive play.  This is pretty typical for us... he can take it out one or two ideas, but it sort of stalls there.  But, given we had NO pretend play three months ago, I call it a win. 

The other part I love is how much he is watching my face for my reaction.  He is really enjoying my over-reaction to the lion.  And did you notice how he wanted to keep it going by telling me to have the dolls go "that-a-way".  Pretty darn cool. 

The K-less DUC and the Buzz Lightyear Blaster

Communicating Partners/Play to Talk approach is like MAGIC.  You need to hear this story.  Grab a drink, it is long.

It started out so simply. 

A few days ago, Daddy bought J-man a Buzz Lightyear Blaster (aka 'the gun').  Now, let me just say I am not a huge fan of toy guns and this is honestly the first one J-man has had.  But it lights up and shoots foam darts, so J-man thinks it cool.  Whatca gonna do?  Apparently it is in those boy genes.  He can't actually fire the darts yet, and it lights up and make "pew-pew" shooting noises.

Yesterday, J-man found a old Word World Duck.  Without the K.  The letters stick together with magnets to form the duck/word. 

So we were in the living room.  J-man had given me the Duc in frustration because he couldn't get it to stick together properly.  I fixed it, and while I fixed it he started playing with the gun. You know, pulling the trigger to make it do the "pew pew" noises.  When I got Duc fixed, I showed it to him and said "Here's Duc".

He shot at the Duc.  With the gun.

Now, you have to know that J-man hasn't really understood what the gun IS.  It makes noises and shoots foam darts.  But not people, or Duc-s.  And to be totally honest, I am not 100% sure that it was intentional (there is a story here too... just wait).  But that didn't matter, because I made a split decision on my response..

The Duc 'fell from the sky and landed in a dramatic fashion on the floor, breaking apart into D-U-C parts'.

J-man looked surprised.  Intrigued.  I put the Duc pack together (hastily) and made the Duc start to fly. I said "shoot it!!".  He shot again.  And again, and again.  I switched it up, fixing the Duc, giving it to him and taking the gun.  J-man protested (he likes the gun) but then I shot the Duc.  It took him a second or two, but then he had the Duc fall down from the sky in a J-man-like-dramatic fashion, breaking apart into D-U-C parts.

J-man grabbed the gun away from me and while I was trying to reassemble the Duc, pulled the trigger.  So then I fell down in a dramatic fashion, groaning and making "you got me" noises.  Much hilarity ensued.  We did this over and over, Duc and Mommy dying repeatedly dramatic deaths.  I called Daddy up.  Soon, he was also dying in a dramatic fashion on the floor. 

Then I managed to sneak the gun from him (sly mommy) and shot the J-man.

Who fell on the floor in a dramatic fashion, making his own groaning noises. 

Back and forth we did this.... honestly, probably 25 + minutes. 

J-man was playing with us.  J-man was turn-taking with joy and glee.  J-man wanted to keep the party rolling. 

And in the last 5 minutes of this play, spontaneously, with no prompting done or needed, he started talking to us.

"My turn"  "More please"  "Shoot"  "Your Turn"  "Duc"

Commanding us to continue!!!

Are you excited yet?!  Freaking out?!  Well, oh, it gets better. 

The chattering continued all night.  Not all words, or words we could understand, but intentional directed vocalizations to us.  Lots of requesting for interaction.  We responded with intention, even those things that didn't sound like words.  We treated them like words.  And then later that evening, J-man brought me the k-less Duc again, the gun in his hand.  Our new game continued!!!  Willingly and child-lead, with no persuasion on our part, no "forced interaction", no pressure to perform. 

This is the true beauty of the Communicating Partners approach.  Before, I might have pressured J-man to say words for the events:  "Say Duc... Say gun...  Say my turn".   I might have made my participation conditional on his talking, or turn taking, or interacting in a way that I required.  I might have made him give up the gun before he was ready, before the game and the interaction had more value than keeping the gun.  And he would have been gone. 

But I didn't.  I was patient. I didn't have a GOAL in mind.  We just let it happen, scaffolding new ideas when he seemed open to them, and let it evolve.  And we had fun.  The kind of fun you cry about later.

I tried to capture some of it on video, but all I got was this little piece.  (I swear, we should just wire up the house Big Brother style)



Oh, and the last bit of the story?  Remember how I said that I didn't know if J-man intentionally shot the k-less Duc?  Well, get this.  Two days ago I bought Disney's Beauty and the Beast.  We watched it yesterday morning during breakfast.  He loved it, even tho there are some pretty scary parts.  And last night, after bath, and before bed, he asked for "beest".  So we sat down and watched the first 10 minutes of the show.  And in that 10 minutes, Gaston (handsome bad dude) shot a duck!!!

So anyone who thinks J-man isn't paying attention, or able to process, generalize, and reapply concepts to different situations:  Think again. 

(And yes, we are going to have to really watch what he is watching now)

Sharing a Cookie

One of J-man's all time favorite foods ever are cookies.  Specifically, chocolate chip cookies (preferably straight from the oven).

One of my all time favorite foods ever are cookies.  Chocolate chip cookies... straight from the oven...

So here we are, J-man sharing a cookie with me.  You will hear him right at the beginning ask for (and sign) the cookie, which has just arrived at our table for an after-meal treat.  (Sorry for the awful videography)



Clearly, as this video shows, I need to get on Weight Watchers.  But I am so proud of my J-man, sharing his favorite cookie, however little the amount!

We Interupt This Irregularly Scheduled Freakout....

...for a quick video!

You know you missed the J-man in all his glory! 

Ok, here is the back story:  J-man has taken to imitating TV and movies.  Instead of allowing him to do this alone, we are full-bore into playing with him in this medium.  Heck, if you can't beat'm, join them.  So here he is watching Aladdin.  For a time he wanted us to fly him around on our arms like he was Superman during the flying carpet scenes.  However, now, Daddy has developed a new flying carpet routine. 

Watch the fun:




I think he is doing a pretty kick-ass job of communicating.  What do you think?

Videos A-Go-Go

Just for fun, some little videos of J-man. 

Here he is, playing mini golf with his cousin. 
As you can see, he plays golf like I play golf.




This is pretty typical play behavior for him.  Not inappropriate, but not exactly engaged.  The paper has a large track drawn on it, along with 'parking spaces' in the center.  I did end up getting a little back and forth play, but only after I put down the camera.  I need a tripod.




And lastly, just cause it is fricken funny.  Hey Grandma, check him out!!  Aren't you proud!?

Fearless

J-man is developing something of a fearless streak in him.

Check him out checking out the minnows.




He bravely... almost stoically...  held a bigger fish at the cabin.  He looked it right in the eye. He was most serious. And then set it free.  He picked up a toad.  It jumped up his shirt and he calmly, seriously, and with the eye of a scholar, picked it off, looked at it for the longest time, and then set it back down to hop away.  Same story with an inchworm.  (Note:  they all lived!!  PETA will be so relieved...)

He was afraid of the water at the beach at the beginning of summer.  Now, he heads full force in, and would keep walking in deeper and deeper if his helicopter mom would let him (I won't... he can't swim).

He is climbing up the jungle gym rope ladder with no assistance.  Have I mentioned that he has a serious clumsy streak, can't jump or walk down the stairs unassisted?  Can you say motor planning problems?  And yet, up he goes... giving his helicopter parents a heart attack as we hover below to try and prevent the inevitable head injury or broken bone, should he fall...

The confidence and curiousity is wonderful.

The complete lack of any appreciation of danger... a little nervewracking.

A Blast from Christmas Past

This is from Jonathan's First Christmas.
He was about 9 1/2 months old.
He is still as delightful.