Weekly Update -- 14 - 20 December 2009

Yay, I'm 154 weeks old today!

Masinja had a quite an eventful week this week. His speech session went pretty well. He cooperated quite well with his therapist and she is very impressed with the progress he has made so far. One of the activities she does with him every week involves picture cards that represent verbs. She puts them into a pillow case and lets him pull them out. He cracks us up every week though because after he pulls out each card and she asks him what the person pictured is doing he always says, "crying." For some reason he seems to think everyone is always crying. After she tells him to try again, he tells her exactly what action is being portrayed. Next he will take all the cards and line them up on the floor. He insists that they be lined up just right; none of them can be touching! When it is time to pick up he has to tell us once again what action is being portrayed before his therapist can put the cards back in their box. He is very particular about the entire process :o) This week his therapist had to put even more cards in the pillow case because he wanted to do more.

Masinja has been having some difficulty with stuttering and I asked his therapist about it. She said this time of year it is normal for kids his age to stutter due to the holidays and all of the new vocabulary that they are learning. She said that we will monitor him and if he continues to stutter after the holidays, she will look into it.

Masinja got his second H1N1 shot this week. He handled it like a trooper. About the only thing he got upset about is that the nurse only gave him one sticker instead of two :o)

Masinja had his 25th ECI session this week. We further discussed ways to use the First/Then poster utilizing pictures of his toys as well pictures of daily activities. We also discussed making a Daily Schedule using the same pictures and switching things up a bit from day to day to help Masinja break out of his rigidness. Lastly, we discussed ways to get him to sit in his chair instead of standing directly in front of the tv. He starts out sitting in his chair but he inevitably winds up standing so close to the tv that I swear his nose it touching the screen!! His teacher suggested getting a throw rug and putting his chair on it and explaining to him that he has to sit there if he wants to watch tv. She also suggested turning the tv off any time he stands too close and telling him that the tv doesn't work if you stand too close. When I told T.M. about this suggestion he just laughed and said that knowing Masinja, he'll just walk up to the tv and push the power button to turn it back on :o)

Below is a video of Masinja eating chocolate. We wanted to share it with y'all because his pronunciation of chocolate is priceless :o) He says "crocket!"


Chocolate Video



That's all for now.

Peace,
T.M.M.