School(ish)

Monday was supposed to be another school day for Carson but thanks to Mother Nature, we got the day off.  Baylee on the other hand had to go to school because she is in a different school district and they chose a 2 hour delay over closing since they have already used 2 of their snow days and it's not even winter yet.

So after getting her on the bus at almost 10 am it felt like I had lost the whole day.  Carson and I had breakfast and then played for a while with blocks and a really cool sensory ball that I got him a while ago.  It is small, about the size of a softball, and lights up when it is bounced.  It's cute because he refuses to touch it while the lights are flashing but as soon as they go off he will pick it up and hurl it at me.  We probably played with the ball for close to an hour.  We rolled it to each other on the floor and then across our coffee table.  It was nice to hear him giggling because he was having so much fun.

 

After the ball I pulled out some copies of a connect the dots page that Jen had printed for me and I helped Carson use a marker and trace the numbers.  He did 6 pages in total and came up with a train, seal, pelican, snowman, Santa and sleigh.  Baylee had left out some crayons from her little craft packet she had opened from her countdown to Christmas bag so I had him color the pictures that he had made.  Getting just a few scribbles from him made me pretty happy.

 

I then thought it would be fun for Carson to jump off of the coffee table a few times.  I could get him to bend his knees in preparation for the jump but the little cheater would just slide down off of the table and not jump off.  He was having fun jumping up and down on the floor when I put in a Baby Signing Time DVD for him to watch.  I caught it on video but for some reason I can't post them on here.

He has been more interested in watching the Signing Time videos lately.  He will find them on the shelf and bring them to me.  Baylee helped him learn 'hat' the other day (open hand, pat the top of your head) and we watched him try to sign 'no' (thumb, pointer and middle fingers closing together) following along with the video.  It's cute that he tried even though he doesn't have the fine motor dexterity to do it.  He seems to be picking the signs up much faster now.  I am currently trying to teach him the ASL alphabet.  I sign along while he is listening to Super Why's Alpha Pig sing the alphabet.  I know that he is at least understanding that I am signing the alphabet because he now watches my hand while he is listening and pulls at my hand if I'm not signing.

The last thing I worked on with my little man was a little bit of strength training if you will.  I have a whole box of these tubes.  They extend when you pull them at the ends (and make a pretty cool sound when you're doing it too.)

When they're brand new they are actually really hard to pull.  I make him pull on them until it is fully extended and then push it back together.  I can usually get him to repeat the process a few times before he just starts chewing on it.  I can only get maybe a weeks' worth out of one of these tubes then we have to get out a new one because they are so chewed up.  I buy these at a discount school supply store but I have recently seen them at our local grocery store.  They work great for little fingers.

So that was our day.  It was great.  Now we have 2 weeks off for the holidays.

XX