So we finally had our OT eval. It went ok, but not great. Honestly, evals are always hard for me. On the one hand, I feel such pride when Bug shows off his skills. He built a tower using small blocks for the evaluator--something he never does at home--and I just wanted to jump up and dance. On the other hand, it is really, really hard to watch your boy not be able to do things that are age-appropriate. Like play with toys, or scribble on paper. The OT evaluator noted that Bug lacks any purposeful play skills--mostly he just lines his toys up to look at. Hard for me to hear, even though I know it's true. Bug wasn't real cooperative assessing his fine motor skills, the OT said she got him to about 24 months old, which is probably fairly accurate. She did say that she thinks he'll be a "continuous study" kid--he can do a lot it's just he doesn't "test" well. He really enjoyed the gross motor and sensory stuff, especially when she put him on a big swing. Then she got to see his grins :) We are looking forward to starting regular sessions, although I'm not sure when or how often yet.
Speech has gotten kind of interesting. Bug has been rather resistant to going back with Laura. It takes 15 minutes and then you have to kind of force him back. He doesn't seem super upset about it, more of a power-struggle type of thing. At our session on Friday, we came right on time, rather than a couple minutes early, and I walked Bug right back rather than going into the waiting room. He had a bit of a struggle with Laura picking a room, but after that he had a good productive session. So I guess we'll keep doing that until it doesn't work anymore.
We are really starting to hear good communication with Bug. He's pretty consistent with saying hi and bye and waving, which is great. A lot of times he'll correct himself to get longer phrases. "Blueberries. Blueberries. Blueberries. Mommy, I want blueberries." He does more spontaneous phrases too. On Saturday he told me, out of the blue "Put shoes on". :D That was really great to hear. It does take him a bit longer to process and find the right words, but we are all learning patience together.
As I mentioned in the family blog, we have hit a tantrum phase again. Completely developmentally appropriate, and sometimes we expected from time to time (even if we can't predict when). Bug does occasionally swat at us or Laura, but we don't think it's anything too serious. It's hard for him. He has the ideas of a 3-year old and big emotions and really struggles to communicate them with us sometimes. We're hoping that better sleep (we've been having troubles overnight) will help shorten this phase. Not my favorite.
I'm definitely ready to get back into OT and I am really hopeful that we can get some consistent progress from him. The plan is to start big (with sensory and gross motor) and then work on the fine motor stuff. We've got a long slog ahead of us, but I think it'll be so beneficial!
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