I rented a DVD called Potty Power from Netflix for Cooper. I didn't exactly expect him to watch it, but I thought I would try. He loved it. He would not take his eyes off the screen the whole time and really seemed to be concentrating. Then when Matt sat him on the toilet tonight he actually peed in it! It may just be a coincidence but that is the first time he has ever done anything in the toilet. Thank you mister talking toilet paper roll, if you can convince Cooper to go pee-pee in the potty more power to you!! :)
I can't wait for school to start! Quinn really misses it, he is bored just staying at home. I keep telling him to enjoy the free time while he has it since next week he will be going to school everyday all day. I don't think he understands that yet though. I am sure he is going to love it!
Cooper pretty much entertains himself. We are still working on naming family members and letter sounds/words. He is at the point where he can repeat anything really. I think he can talk, he just choses not to most of the time. Before he went to bed tonight I had on a show about a girl who never grew, she has some syndrome that makes her look like a baby even though she is 16. Cooper was watching and started laughing, then he started saying "baby!" over and over and laughing. It was weird but good that he recognized what looked like a baby.
School will be really good for him too. I wonder if they will be willing to put him in the inclusive class more often now that he is talking!
We survived the dentist. Cooper was not thrilled but all he did was whine a lot and Matt did have to hold him. The dentist said his teeth were very clean and we were doing a great job with brushing, who knew? Then he said his front teeth were all very overcrowded and he had an overbite. Poor kid got his teeth from his Daddy. I was pretty amazed that they could look into a 3 year olds mouth and be able to tell you he is going to need braces, but they did and he will. So do we start saving up for it now? When you put what we are going to have to pay an orthodontist together what we already have paid (and will pay) for all his therapy, Cooper is turning out to be one expensive kid! All I can say is he better get a good scholarship to college!!!
On the other hand there was a slight miscommunication and the nice people at the dentist office had no idea that Cooper has Autism. I realized right away that we were getting a very different treatment than when I brought Quinn. No private room, seeing the assistant before the dentist, etc. When the assistant (who had already been interacting with Cooper for a few minutes) asked me about the check mark next to "speech delay" on the form, I said "He has Autism". She got this shocked look on her face and ran off to find us a private room and talk to the dentist. It was nice to know it isn't obvious, even to someone who works with special needs kids all the time. After Cooper was done with his exam she told me that he handled it just as well as most of the typical three year olds do. That was nice to hear, although when I thought about it later I realized if she had said it about Quinn it probably would have pissed me off.
I am taking Cooper to the dentist for the first time tommorow. Wish me luck! This time I am bringing Matt with me (he was out of town for Quinn's appointment). I have no idea what to expect from Cooper, Quinn's experience at the dentist taught me to expect the unexpected, who would have thought he would be so good? Cooper has no problem letting me brush his teeth, but what will he do when the dentist tries to take a look? I hope he doesn't have any cavities, the kid does eat an awful lot of sugar!
We spent Sunday and Monday at the Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg, VA and all of the kids had a great time. We went with my parents and my niece and nephew. All five of the kids thought the indoor waterpark was the greatest thing ever (yes five, I am including my husband in that count). The big kids loved the waterslides, especially the scary ones. Cooper stuck to the way less scary kiddie waterslide but that is only because he isn't tall enough for the big ones yet. He loved the wave pool and has absolutely no fear of the water! Great Wolf had these awesome lifejackets that really kept his head above the water, so he was practically swimming on his own! Quinn liked the wave pool too, he stuck to standing on the side and using the wall to support himself as the waves knocked him back and forth. They both really liked the kiddie pool/play area and the lazy river too. It was perfect for everyone! Both Quinn and Cooper were perfectly behaved the whole trip and I was really proud of them. Quinn did stay up until 1 AM, but that was partly my fault. He got overexcited and I forgot to feed him his nightly cereal, which really seems to help him sleep. Oh well. We will definately be going back to Great Wolf someday, it was a great little vacation!
Today me and the boys took the day off to recover. We were all glad to be home. Cooper let me work with him a little on therapy stuff. I was really impressed that he worked so well with me, he really prefers a therapist to his mommy. We worked on learning the remaining family member photos. It is a little confusing since they are all name Grandma or Grandpa. So we are going mainly with first names for now. He will call Grandma Berta "Grandma" because he sees her everyday. He will call the other grandmas "Donna" and "Jan", Granpop Bill will be "Bill", and Grandpa Don has to be "Grandpa" because the whole Donna/Don thing was really confusing him! He did great saying all those names and should be indentifying them on his own soon. We seem to have some issues tranfering it from pictures to people, but baby steps are good...as long as we keep moving forward! Then we moved onto a pack of alphabet flash cards. He made the sound of every letter, some with help some on his own. Then he repeated or tried to repeat the words when I labled each picture for him, for example for the "Z" card he made the ""z" sound and then repeated "zebra". The pack actually had two sets of alphabet cards so he said almost 52 words today! I didn't ask him the hard ones like "xylophone":) Plus, the "P" cards were missing! I wonder if he hid them since he has a hard time making that sound!
Today Cooper had his follow up testing at Kennedy Kreiger from the program he finished this summer. He will likely have to go back every 6 months maybe for the rest of his life because they want to follow him. That is fine by me, he doesn't mind it much and they have done so much for us! So this testing was supposed to happen about a month ago but I had a conflict so we had to push it back. I am so glad we did because he wasn't talking a month ago!!!
He was on a roll today! Even when they wanted him to point he would just say the word instead. I was so excited that he showed off his new talking skills and I can't wait to see what his new expressive language score is! I know it will be better than the "9 month old level" he got 3 months ago! The funniest thing that happened in testing is that the girl brought out a stuffed Cookie Monster and asked "Who is this?", without even hesitating Cooper said "Quinn!" I burst out laughing of course, why would he think that was Quinn? They do both shake their heads a lot but come on. Poor Cooper had a long day with 2.5 hours of therapy in the morning and then 3 hours of testing in the afternoon. He handled it pretty well though, just a little whining.
He said a ton of words this morning too. He went downstairs to the playroom and Quinn was in the swing. Cooper really wanted to be in the swing but instead of crying he said "Swing!", then he signed "swing", then he pointed to Quinn and said "No, no, swing!" It was such great communicating his therapist and I were both blown away. Then I had to take Quinn out of the swing, which made me feel like a bad mommy but Cooper deserved it. Also, he has to learn that when he asks for something with words like that he gets it.
Since Cooper was so good and I was so tired, we got pizza for dinner. During the meal Cooper asked repeatedly for either "pizza" or "coke", how's that for functional communication???!!
Here is a video of Cooper identifying his family members from pictures. We still need to bribe him with M&Ms but he is still pretty new to this whole talking thing...
Well, Cooper said so many words today I can't even list them all! His private speech therapist came and she had flash cards with pictures on them. Basically every card she held up and said the word, Cooper was able to repeat it! These were totally random things like "hat", "mirror", "brush", etc. She only comes once every two weeks and last time she was here he wasn't saying anything! She was really blown away, we all were! Some other things he said today without prompting were "toothbrush", "button" and "Chhh" to ask for chips. I know there are more, I should have written everything down. This is going to be a great year for Cooper, I can feel it!
I know I haven't written much about Quinn lately. Yes, he is being a little overshadowed by Cooper's developmental spurt. Quinn just isn't doing much right now, but I expect that to improve when school starts again and he goes full time. He is still a happy wonderful little boy and I love him to death. What more is there to say?
For the last 3 years Quinn and Cooper have basically been ignoring each other. But, recently they have taken more of an interest in each other. Quinn enjoys messing with Cooper's stuff because he knows it drives him crazy. Cooper is showing more interest in Quinn too. In my last post I said how he was trying to say his name. Well today he said it, multiple times! This morning his ABA therapist was showing him pictures of the family. She asked him to point to Quinn and he did, he also surprised her by saying perfectly "Quinn"! He also identified verbally the dog "Doggy" and me "Mama"! He won't say "mama" in front of me though :(
This afternoon I was working on something in my office and then went upstairs to check on the boys. When I walked into the room it was obvious that one of them had a dirty diaper. So I said "Which one of you has a poopy diaper? Is it you Quinn?" Then came Cooper's cute little voice clear as day "Quinn!". Yeah, it was definately Quinn :) I thought it was so great that Cooper was answering my question, that never happens around here!
Cooper also said "go" multiple times during horseback riding to make the horse go. He is doing so awesome!
Today Cooper said:
I am so happy he is starting to talk I can't even stand it!!!!
Here is a video of Cooper enjoying his birthday present. In the second half of the video he got back in the trampoline and started saying "three" perfectly. I turned the camera back on and tried to get him to say it again, of course he said almost every number EXCEPT three! That's my Cooper.
