Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Down and dirty

The good news is, I have a lot brimming in my wee head.

The bad news is, I don't have the time to write it.

So, in uninteresting prose, the latest:

1. We are getting the surgery done again to re-straighten Brody's right hand. In addition to his earlier comments, he offered up the following gem:

Me: (driving out of the daycare parking lot) Ok, Brody, which way, right or left?

Brody: RIGHT! And I tell da doctor to huwee up and make my wight hand straight!  I say, "Huwee up docta!"

Except for what I've mentioned here, we have NOT talked with him about his hands or the surgery. In law, we call what Brody said a "spontaneous utterance." I'm concluding it's okay for him to have the surgery. Timing is after the trip to Europe, because I'd rather not travel with a chance of infection, a metal rod in his ulna that could poke out of his skin, or a metal rod that would make the metal detectors flip out.

2. The 40 before 40 list is coming this week. I swear. No one cares but me, I realize, but I say it anyway.

3. Brody had a playdate with my co-worker's daughter, who is his age. Ann loved Brody and it was so cute to see them play together. They raced horses on sticks. Then another girl's mom at Brody's school asked us to get together with them for playdates. She has two daughters, one older than Brody (she is 5 and is in B's class) and one younger (she is 2). The older girl invited Brody to her birthday party a few weeks ago. He is in demand.

4. Our house faces east. Since having a child, as we all know, I am awake before dawn many times. I never noticed until Brody though how beautiful the colors are in the sky. When Brody was learning his colors, and really because the sky was just ridiculously stunning, I would hold him and ask him to name all of the colors he saw in the sunrise: purple, orange, pink, red. . .

One morning this weekend, I was making coffee in the kitchen (facing west) and Brody was in the living room. He said, "Mommy! Come see all da pretty colors in da sky!" I walked into the living room, picked him up and listened as he told me all the colors he saw in the sky.

I thought, "My work here is done." He's 3 and appreciates sunrises.

5. We had a meeting with the occupational therapy team at Brody's preschool. I was, naturally, anxious about it. It's my go-to reaction for everything. In my defense, I thought we were only supposed to meet once a year, for the assessment. The OT team is two sisters, who look very much alike, and it was a bit unsettling.

Until they started telling us how sweet, and brave, and courageous, and smart Brody is.

Their job is to make sure he can get through the day in the classroom. Some days, they said, they wonder what they are doing there, because he can get through the day without assistance. He does everything the other kids do, just perhaps a bit differently.

We talked about how he holds a pen. It's not the classic tripod, how you and I hold a pen. We thought that was the way to do it - remind him to hold it how we hold it.

He doesn't. He holds it his own way.

The OT sisters said for us to not care how he holds it, but to care what he is drawing, the output. If the output is legible, then how he holds it is irrelevant.

The OT sisters also said, and I love this, we have to honor how Brody is creating connections between his brain and his hands, we have to honor how Brody figures things out.

Our brains go the path of least resistance, they explained. So it may take Brody a few attempts to figure out how to best perform certain tasks. Coupled with that, the sisters said, Brody is at an age when he learns at a furious pace, and his brain is acquiring thousands of pieces of information each day. I suppose the message was, relax. He'll figure it out. 

His goals for the 2009-2010 schoolyear: draw a sun, a cross, a circle, stand up without using his head for balance. Completed (three months early).

That's why we were meeting. We needed to create new goals because the darling boy is ahead of our timeline.

Other improvements: At the start of the school year, he refused to go on the slide at the school. Not because of the slide, but because to get to the top of it, you have to climb, using your hands. Brody just said he didn't want to do it and wouldn't try.

Now he does it regularly, without assistance. Just figured it out himself. He doesn't climb like the other kids, but he gets up the ladder, and slides down the slide.

With abandon.

3 comments:

Dawna Rockey said...

You said, "stand up without using his head for balance." Glad to know there is another mom who gets to smile when she see's that one. Ben used to do that all the time. I thought it was so cute!

Dawna Rockey said...

You said, "stand up without using his head for balance." Glad to know there is another mom who gets to smile when she see's that one. Ben used to do that all the time. I thought it was so cute!

SaRaH said...

If we lived nearby, we'd be clamoring for Brody time, too! I'm so proud of him. And you.