Friday Fun: One Productive Day

Amy dropped by this morning for The Princess's in-home OT session, which went pretty well (all considered).  We swung for a while, then had a battle of wills when the grown-ups wanted The Princess to say or sign "more".  It progressed something like this...

a) I looked at The Princess and signed "more swing", phrasing it as a question -- Princess want more swing?
b) The Princess looked at me with what we like to call Omen Eyes - you know, eyebrows down, staring directly into your soul, like that little kid from the Omen movie??
c) I signed "more" as a question -- Princess want more?
d) The Princess ran over to the couch and buried her head in the cushion.

This went on for a while until The Princess looked directly at me, removed her thumb from her mouth, and said "MOE."

Close enough for me!  More swinging followed, but for a shorter amount of time.  When I asked The Princess if she wanted "more swing" this time, she pushed my hands away and moved on to another toy.

Amy provided the first draft of our new sensory diet, which I'll be working to implement along with a visual schedule over the next couple of weeks.  Here's an abbreviated version of the diet, in case you're not familiar with what one looks like:

Morning
Give The Princess a bear hug right away in the morning
Massage her feet and back using deep pressure
Have her put on hand lotion
Brush her teeth with a vibrating toothbrush (gonna have to purchase one of these bad boys)
Let her help making breakfast/snack - crunchy foods such as cereal or apples
Jumping on trampoline (we don't have one, so we'll improvise until the goodwill has one we can afford)

Afternoon
Help vacuum or push laundry basket with heavy objects in it
Games on trampoline
Play with play-dough
Squish her between cushions or large heavy pillows
Chewy or crunchy snack - let her help prepare
Pulling on a rope

Evening
Bath tub games
Helping to make dinner - touching raw meat, mashing potatoes
Bear hugs
Pull on stretchy lycra-like material (finally, a use for the Pilates bands I never took out of the package!!)

We'll start out with three visual schedules - separate for morning, afternoon and evening.  And they'll be as simple as possible...probably not including everything at first, but just the basics.  We'll be using photographs to start with, then transitioning to clip art, and finally to words.  I envision this taking a long time.

But it's a start.

Not an hour after Amy left, I took off for my English composition class.  The instructor is cool - she reminds me a bit of Cyndi Lauper, which entertains me to no end - and I think I'm really going to enjoy the class.

After class let out (early!!), I headed to town with the intention of getting an errand or two out of the way.  On my way to the bank I decided to hit the local goodwill store, and found some cute new clothes for my little princess.

Four shirts, three pairs of jeans, and a pair of shoes...not bad for $12, eh?

From there I headed to the bank to make a deposit, cruised across the street to get the car washed, ordered dinner while sitting in the car wash, ran into Wal Mart for a few essentials, picked up dinner and came home.

Where I proceeded to hang out with my family quite happily for the remainder of the evening. 

Now, however, I need to get myself and my little princess to bed.  Why, you may ask?  Someone had the bright idea of taking a 3-hour psychology class on Saturday mornings.  Silly girl.