Grace's journey

Therapy

YEAH!!! We are back into the groove of things with our therapy!! I'm so excited, and I could tell Grace was too! We walked out front today with her stand up walker to wait for her therapist to come, and she was so excited to see LeeSee!! She screamed and laughed and waved at her when she was walking up the drive! Therapy today went really well. Grace really surprised me with her ability to choose between two different items! LeeSee would let her choose between things like a book and a ball, or bubbles and a writing tablet. It was so fun to actually see Grace look from one thing to the other, thinking about it, and then leaning forward and pointing to what she wanted!
The above picture shows Grace working with LeeSee with the Jack in the box. This toy is used to teach so many different things! Here's what Grace learns when using this toy/tool: push button to make Jack pop out, pull Jack out, make Jack squeak by bouncing him on the ground, put Jack in, beep beep Jack's nose, Jacks hair, Jack's eyes, Jack says hi by waving his hand, close Jack's lid, Clap our hands and Jack comes out, share Jack with LeeSee, share Jack with Mommy, Jack is baby. So many things from this one toy! And I didn't even mention learning all the colors, and then learning how to enunciate "out, in, baby, more, push, all done, more, and bye bye." We work really hard with Grace and showing her our lips when we talk, so that she understands that when we say words, our lips are shaped different ways. And she does GREAT at watching, shaping her own lips, and whenever she feels comfortable enough, she speaks the sounds!!
Here she is loving Jack! She was beeping his nose with her left thumb! We just taught her that because she kept trying to bite his nose, so whenever she would do that, we'd say, "Thank you, lets beep beep" and we poke his nose! We try not to say "no" but rather, "thank you" and show her was we DO want her to do! Keeps it more positive than always saying no, because she might not understand what we don't want her to do, but she definitely gets what we DO want her to do!!
Here she is drawing! She's so good!! I love watching her draw, and will probably be buying one of these tablets shortly since she not only loves them, but does so well! We worked on up/down, side to side, and drawing circles! She just loves drawing on here, and we can actually just sit back and not help her, and she does great. I noticed she drew with mainly her right hand, so I've probably got a rightie! I will have to learn how to teach a right hander how to crochet, since I'm a leftie! Anyways, we are still working with her on learning how to erase it by pushing the blue thing on the bottom, but she doesn't care about erasing!! Silly girl!



Here is a video of working with LeeSee. I just love watching the two of them work together because they get along so well. There are actually times when Grace needs a little loving, and she will go to LeeSee to get it. I don't mind though, I'm glad she sees that there are more people out there that love her and not just Mommy and Daddy!


I love watching her draw! And I especially love this because she doesn't get ink anywhere! And she gets so much excitement out of it...how can it be bad!!




Today we made yellow jello for snack later. We did that as part of our celebrating St. Patty's Day! We will do something fun every day to celebrate Patty's day, and I will try to post all our fun activities on here. I am hoping to have a post a day with picture or video of our fun St. Patty's activities.

Amanda