It's still hard to believe we're in January already. Today Carson went to school for the first time in a month. I honestly almost forgot what time we were supposed to be there. I made sure that he was fed and medicated about an hour before we were supposed to be there that way I could check his sugar at the end of the class and see if he needed to eat before we got Baylee off the bus.
When I pulled into the parking lot Patty was getting something out of her car. She met me at my parking space and immediately hugged me. I guess all of the teachers had been texting back and forth during our hospital stay keeping everyone up to date with what was going on with Carson.
She told me that she had a student that would be working with her and wondered how Carson would do with her. I told her after what he had gone through in the hospital I thought as long as she didn't come at him with a needle he'd probably be okay. We signed in and got to work. Patty had Carson start out on the stairs. She had beanie babies at the top and the student (I can't remember her name!) stood at the bottom with a bag to put them in. He did great. A few times he got a little over-zealous and would take two at a time but other than that he did so good. He was reciprocal on the way up and started out with two feet on each step on the way down but once he warmed up a bit he didn't seem to have any trouble going down. Patty stayed next to him in case he lost his balance. I bet he did this 10 or so times before you could see that he needed a break. He was constantly looking for me to make sure that I hadn't left him but once I would reassure him he would go right back to climbing.
His black eye was a good conversation starter with everyone. They all joked with me that I had sucker punched him in the eye but they all knew that I really had nothing to do with it. It made me feel better seeing the sense of humor about the whole situation considering how bad I still felt about the fact that I wasn't fast enough to catch him in the first place.
After the stairs we went to Amber's classroom and she was so happy to see him up and happy. The last time she had seen him was in the hospital when she and Amy came to visit. Carson was still pretty out of it at that point and he didn't look good at all. At least now (if you could look past the eye) he looked like himself again. When Jen came in she scooped him up into her arms and just hugged him. I think he was as happy to see her as she was to see him.
The school part went better than I could've ever expected. Carson sat on his little red bean ball and paid attention the whole time. He would look over every so often to see if I was still in my chair but he was really into it. I've noticed over the past few days that he is really interested in the ASL alphabet. When they sang the days of the week song (to the Adam's Family theme song) they also signed the days. He picked up on the fact that each day was just the corresponding letter of the alphabet in sign language. His little eyes lit up and he was making little noises as he looked at me and was flicking a little finger towards Amber in the front of the class. He didn't even really seem to mind that the student was right behind him holding the ball. He was able to tell them that it was rainy today when she asked about the weather (he pulled the rainy picture off of a picture board) and even showed Amber that the weather panda needed a rain coat and shoes. MY Carson was back.
LaQuita read a story about winter clothes and he was engaged in the story the whole time. He kind-of meandered around the mat where all the teachers were but he paid attention. He even went up to the book and pointed along with the words that she was reading. It was interesting watching Amber look at Carson and study him as he was bouncing on his ball and squealing and overall having a great time. I don't know if it was relief or if she was just paying attention to him to gauge how he was feeling but it was a good feeling for me to see that she really cares. Carson kept reaching over to the other little boy in the class to try to kiss him on the forehead. The little guy was pretty creeped out by it and would move a little out of Carson's reach. It was funny and sad at the same time.
After the book the boys split up and Carson went with Patty and the new girl and the other little boy went to speech. I honestly didn't pay too close of attention to what they were doing because I was talking to Jen about the ordeal and how we ended up at the hospital. When I showed her the picture of Carson at his worst I thought she was going to cry. I know that it is a shocking photo to begin with but again it's one of those things when you actually see how much these girls care about him.
After jumping off the stool a few times he came to Jen and they worked on cutting with scissors and connecting dots to make squares. He would do it but he really had his own agenda. She was telling him to connect the dots (1,2,3,4) and showing him which dots to connect. He then drew:
1 2
3 4
It was hilarious. It was what she had told him. He even wrote the numbers exactly where she had pointed to on the paper just instead of connecting the dots he made his own with the numbers.
He went back to Patty and I showed Jen what he had been working on while we were out of school for so long. His newest iPad app: itrace. It's hard. Honestly, even I have trouble doing it. Luckily it had a glossary of all the previous work he had done and even broke it down by skill level and date. She was stunned. It's words like barnyard and yacht etc. (Yacht is his new handle that he goes by now on all of his apps that require a profile to play them). She then posed a question. Do we really CARE that he doesn't hold a pen the correct way to write considering the technological age we are in and he can type and write with his fingertips? The short answer? NO. Even Amber agreed. Her next question was: Is there ever going to come a time in his lifetime where using scissors is going to make or break him? Our combined answer? NO. Those were his IEP goals for OT. Jen told us that if those aren't his goals anymore we needed to change them so that she could continue to work with him. I pondered for a second and we both came up with his new OT goal at the same time. Getting dressed. He can't button or zip / unzip anything. She said that she would amend the IEP and I could sign off on it next week and that is what we will start working on. Something that WILL help him in the long run. It's a shame that it came to us with only 4 months left but hey, it's better than nothing. (During this conversation Carson was bowling).
LaQuita was almost done with the other little boy in the class so to kill a few extra minutes Jen pulled Carson over to the huge easel with paper as big as me. She handed him a marker and let him go to town. He wrote all over the paper. She told him she was glad that he was feeling better and he wrote 'glad' on the paper. I asked him what his name was this week and he wrote 'yacht'. He's such a crack-up. He then went back to the table and wanted to play with this letter play-doh. It has a very rubbery feeling to it that usually makes him gag but for some reason he was really into playing with it.
When it was LaQuita's turn with Carson Jen stayed to help. They had him match pictures that had been cut out to their counterparts on the page in front of him. 'What cuts your grass?" lawnmower. "Who gives you milk?" cow. He did great. He honestly did better that what I thought he would. They worked on the iPad for a bit and then it was time to go.
This past Monday was a holiday so we didn't have school and this coming Monday the teachers have a class to attend so we may not go then either. Amber did invite us to group physical therapy on Wednesday at 9 so we may go to that next week. Carson has two doctor's appointments tomorrow morning so we won't be able to go then.
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