A lot has happened in a small amount of time. We have been on vacation to Disney World, we have had Alison's dance recital, we are winding down with school and oh yes--we bought a house and moved. Crazy.
First of all Disney World was great and while Jason may take the opportunity to provide our readers with much more intricate details of characters and rides, I will provide an overview of how much we have seen Daniel grow in his communication skills in just the past few weeks. It is amazing how much Daniel is now trying to say and/or sign words. He will try almost any word that you say and he will sign and say whatever words he knows. He is also doing it very appropriately too. He even has done something he has never done before while on vacation he actually asked to eat. He signed and said the word eat when it was actually dinner time! In school Daniel was eating lunch and signed and said cookie because he knew there was a cookie to eat but it was not even in his sight! We are delighted. This is a great thing in terms of his communication as well as his ability to tell us his wants and needs.
He was great at Disney World. He enjoyed many of the rides that were in the dark and that were in the air. He really enjoyed the Dumbo ride and Jason said he asked to go up! We all had a great time. It was weird though to go to the parks with a handicap tag and once again to have a sticker on Daniel's stroller. I am glad that Disney does such a good job of recognizing people with disabilities. We were able to get on rides and into shows without having to carry Daniel for a very long time (he is a big boy). With a special needs sticker we did not have to wait the 90 minutes to see the fairies, only 30 minutes. While I appreciate all of this and know that there really is no way Daniel would have been able to wait 90 minutes, I still think how unfair it is that we have to do any of it. I would much rather be that family with my children running all around the waiting area than to be singled out and treated differently. I guess I am saying I wish more and more at those particular moments that Daniel was a normal little boy. What I would give! Ah but still we are so lucky to have both of our children and love them more than anything!
We had Daniels annual IEP meeting and things are going along very well for him in school. He loves school which is no surprise because his sister loves school too. He is doing great in his regular preschool class as well. In school he uses a Gator to help him walk and he is doing really well with it. He will have extended school for part of the summer and I know he will love that as well. We learned a few things in his IEP that we did not realize before. One was that Daniel is still having difficulties chewing. We kinda knew this already, he clearly can not handle foods that are not broken into small pieces, he also cannot have a lot of food in his mouth and his food needs to be mashed or soft, but we did not realize the extent to which Daniel is not learning the skill of chewing. It needs to be learned or he might have to eat soft foods forever. We were and still are concerned. We asked the OT what we can do and she gave us some ideas but really, how do you teach someone to chew? It is something that I never needed to do with Alison and something I really don't know about and so I am at a loss and am really worried that if we can't do this then who will? Another thing we learned was not new except for part of it--Daniel is delayed in all areas: speech, gross motor, fine motor, etc., but there is one thing Daniel can do that is so skilled in fine motor--he can put the cap back on a marker (go figure)! The last thing concerns something that Daniel does and has been doing for a while now, he will throw his head back in excitement. It looks like it could hurt but he does it whenever he is happy or excited and he never seems to have a problem with it. At school though, his teacher said she will calm him down when he does this. We did not think to ask her in the meeting but now wonder, is that something we should be doing at home as well? Is it a concern of theirs that he is doing this? We have emailed his teacher for answers.
All in all though the meeting went well with some good goals set for next year. We also learned that next year Daniel will be in school all day instead of coming home at one. This will be interesting but I know he can handle it fine the question is, can we?
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