Meetings, Walker, and a New Trick

Meetings
Our meeting with Birth To Three: we set new goals and discussed the need for an educator to start coming in from Ohio County Schools when Caleb is of pre-school age and transitions out of Birth To Three. First the goals were reviewed as this is a main part of Birth to Three. The therapists set goals with the parents of what you hope can be covered over a certain amount of time. Ours didn't change much, but there were slight improvements. We did make some strides since our last set of goals. He now tolerates a plate of food in his area and he is now crawling! So those milestones may seem small but they are big strides for him. Some of our new goals were: 1. to get Caleb to willingly accept food and drink in his mouth. 2. to be able to communicate better-continue to build his verbal and nonverbal communication skills 3. to try to get Caleb to go up and down steps 4. to try to get Caleb to walk, using whatever equipment (i.e. a walker) that is necessary. The goals are there fore the parents to, if needed, ask the therapists what they suggest to do to try to achieve those goals. So I pray that we can do what we can to get him to start achieve if not achieve those goals.
Our meeting with Make a Wish Foundation: Unfortunately, this meeting had to be re-scheduled. We were really bummed! The representative called about an hour before the meeting and said she had to re-schedule. So we are now on for the 23rd. I did research the possibility of a sensory room for Caleb. It does seem like a great idea for kiddos with sensory issues. But I think, and Caleb's therapist also agree, that this would be way to much for Caleb and scary for him as his sensory issues are pretty bad. So I think we are going to, thanks to a lot of our friends encouraging us to try, ask to see if they would be willing to tear down the foreclosed house next door. We do not have much of a yard and since Caleb is not able to leave the home due to his isolation precautions, we though the yard would be the best thing for him. He could get outside and do different activities. Our goal would be to put sensory 'stations' in our yard. I would also like to see if we could get the yard fenced in as we live on a very busy street and Caleb is deaf in one ear and has significant hearing loss in the other ear. So for safety reasons, that would be awesome. I am not sure if they will go for this or not, but it is so worth a shot. This would be awesome for him if we could get him out of this house when the weather is warmer and get him to play, but be doing therapy at the same time. We will see! I am really really praying they grant that as his wish!
Walker
Caleb's PT was able to come yesterday and he modified Caleb's walker. Caleb seemed to be a little more accepting of the modifications and not so scared of it from a sensory perspective. But as we have seen before, he can become scared very quickly. So I am trying to think of ways to decorate the walker to make it less 'scary' from a sensory perspective for him. I hope to updating soon that he is using it and loving it. Fingers crossed! We still also aren't sure if this is the best walker for Caleb! There are many walkers, so we are going to try this one a little longer and if it doesn't work, we will try a different one.
New Trick:
We put Caleb on the stairs yesterday to see what he would do. Well, for those of you who saw the post regarding the big boy bed, one of his MANY sensory issues effected his 'touching' the bed. Same happened with the stairs. We placed him on the steps to see if he would crawl up the steps. He could not stand his belly touching the stairs. He flipped! He shut his eyes and cried. So we turned him around and let him sit on the step. Then we helped him go into a standing position a few times from the sitting position as we are trying to teach Caleb how to squat also and this exercise will build those muscles. He did great, he required little help to get to the standing position. Then later on that day, I was so excited, I took him back to the steps to see if he would do it again and he did. Then....he was getting so excited about it...he did it on his own! It was awesome!

Thank you all for checking in on us again!!

God Bless you all!!

God Bless Caleb!!