The sandy beach bathroom

We used to call this our pink bathroom, but now it's the sandy beach bathroom in honor of the tile name. After another long day the workers pulled out with just a few odds and ends that will be attended to sometime later this week. By tomorrow everything will be dry enough that we'll be able to let the kids take a bath in the new tub. Since we've been showering them in the "blue" bathroom we've established a routine which will have to be altered once again.

Being Veteran's Day, my husband accompanied us to our regular speech and occupational therapy appointments. Watching the kids allowed me to attend my eldest son's therapy sessions that I might glean from whatever methods his therapists employed. On the whole I'd say I was surprised at the way his posture changed during his sessions. While he's generally cooperative, he seems much more prone to fidgeting during speech. Nothing was beyond his capability, but he seemed bored by the speech activities. You could clearly tell from his body language how engaged in the subject he was. Finally towards the end of speech he began to sit forward more and lean into the subject matter. I noticed a lot was accomplished in a shorter amount of time, than say at home, when he was being engaged with some activity of some sort mixed in with the speech tasks. For example he got to spin the spinner to select the questions. Given the sensory motion of the spinner it seemed to satisfy this need to move something while sitting still.

Occupational therapy is all about moving, and I was surprised to see the amount of movement he craved unleashed upon the giant "cloud" pads, and the bolster swing. Lately, he has been rather sluggish, but this past week he has begun to move again. One morning he woke up early and got a jump start on his chore (emptying the dishwasher). This afternoon he asked his father if he could earn money raking the leaves out of the gutter in front of the house. He pulled the blower out of the shed all on his own, and proceeded to bag almost four bags worth of leaves, until it became too dark outside for my comfort. Later he presented his father with an invoice for the work he'd done along with the request for the pay he was due. So his level of initiative seems to be flowing at the moment after a long spell of ebbing.