Tuesday

To continue yesterday's theme of climbing, this was the first thing Mary did upon waking this morning.

We had success at the grocery store today. For the last month or so, I've been working on teaching John to walk next to me because I anticipate wanting to stop wearing Mary for all grocery trips, as she's now nearing 25 pounds! When John gets to practice walking next to me in the store, we review the rules ahead of time: don't run off and keep your hands to yourself. This was not working well and John spent the times racing away from me and grabbing things off shelves until I told him he'd lost the privilege of walking and had to be in the cart. Today we had new success because I had the idea to give him a prescription, a job to do. I let him push a child-sized cart and we put all the items into it, making it heavy and providing good proprioceptive input. He stayed behind me and felt responsible for his items. Now, to present a realistic picture, the whole trip was a continuous repetition from me, "Walk slow, honey. Don't crash into people. Use your eyes to watch where you're going." But overall, he did great!

John has learned passive speech to avoid taking responsibility. The other day he was throwing toys into the kitchen sink and came to me saying, "The giraffe is in the sink!" I asked how it got there and he said, "It just threw in there!" Then tonight I heard Mary start shrieking so I walked into the den and asked John what happened. He replied, "She bonked her head." I asked, "On what?" He replied, "My hand."