As you all know, Rex has been gluten-free, dairy-free for well over three months now and is still going strong. He hasn't really expanded his food repertoire any further, but we are pretty happy with where he is. Sure, I'd like to see him eat more fresh fruits and veggies, but I am kind of over the whole food struggle thing and try to let him lead the way. We get his probiotics and multi-vitamin into him most days and he drinks plenty of fluids, so the bases are covered.
About six weeks ago, Rex also started therapeutic listening under the careful watch of his OT. A fellow adoptive mom explained what it is here, so check it out if you want. Rex had an extremely strong reaction to the therapy in the beginning with his energy levels dropping down very low for weeks. He even fell asleep sitting up in one of his 1:1 sessions at school once. We called the specialists at Vital Links and asked them if this was common and they said that each child responds differently. They suspect that Rex's brain is expanding its spectrum of arousal to encompass a calmer state that was previously rare for our high energy boy. They told us that eventually this would balance out and hopefully they are correct. It does seem like his energy is in an upswing again now, so fingers crossed. If nothing else comes out of this, Rex has learned to wear headphones to enjoy all of his music, not just the modulated selections, which is a great blessing for parental sanity.
Like Emilia, Rex also started Prompt speech therapy. Since he has a host of issues affecting his speech development, we don't expect to see the quick progress that Emilia is making, but we still believe it can help him. Hopefully I will have more to report on that front in the next update.
In school, Rex has mastered a few more of his goals. He can now match ten different objects to their partners in an array of five and is working on matching objects to pictures. He has also mastered receptively identifying ten different objects in a field of two and is in process of growing that number to 25. He can label five body parts, so he's half way there on his way to ten. He has also learned to identify Daddy, Emi and Mama in pictures. That said, his rate of acquisition at school has slowed to a certain extent which his therapists believe is due to all of the changes he has had to process so far in 2013. They fully expect that later this year he will pick up the pace again.
Both at home and at school Rex's play skills have improved and he is working on gross motor stuff again. Most noticeably, he has become quite a climber and likes to hurdle over the furniture just for fun. Rex has also discovered how easy it is to climb from his own bed into Mama and Daddy's which means some nights we suddenly have a lovey little intruder slipping under the covers with us and then sleeping very calmly, snug as a bug in a rug, in-between us. There's something else about Rex that seems to be changing, too, but I can't quite put my finger on it yet. It's like my mommy radar is picking up a slight difference somehow without quite knowing what it is at this time.
Oh and Rex understands the meaning of I love you. The way he has recently responded to being told so has shown us that he knows. We couldn't be more thankful that his heart is right there with ours, full of love for our family and our life.
It's interesting. We've had some increased struggles with Chelsea over the past several months. It started before Joshua ever came home, so we cannot attribute it to that. Her therapists have almost referred to this as a "regression", which is sad. Yet she continues to make some progress. We received some information about therapeutic listening and are considering it. Sadly, it's expensive...and not covered by insurance! Joshua continues to improve but his speech progress is painfully slow. We have had to hire an advocate to help us develop a proper learning plan for him, as the professionals seem to want to dismiss him as "not being home long enough". We patently reject this.
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