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| Potty training on the big boy potty |
On Monday, I took the boys to a camp at the Denver Botanic Gardens. I had a few hours before I had to drop Henry off at preschool so we explored the gardens for awhile. Henry was fixated, like many children,, on the wading stream. Considering he was so interested in the stream, we had to go in. So, I rolled up my and Henry's pant legs and went into the water. Henry enjoyed the water and after watching him splash and helping him go to different areas, I started to observe everyone else. This was a bit of a mistake. Every mother with children who experience difficulties have this moment: the moment when you think to yourself, I would give anything to have my child (fill in the blank)... For me it is for Henry to wander freely and play with other children. I'm always happy to see so much joy from other children but it is also bittersweet. I no longer care about the looks from other parents or children or their questions at this point about Henry. Since Henry is my last child, I mourn the loss of these little boy moments of testing limits and exploring and coming running back. For much the same reason, I get irritated when parents start to chastise their children for their natural, joyful, playful behavior.
Luckily for Henry, I stayed for about an hour with all this jangling around inside my head. It was a gorgeous day and the stream is a child's dream. I wish I didn't have so many issues.
Some weeks, I feel like I haven't quite hit the bottom of these emotions as much as I am bumping along at the bottom, wishing for better days.
I say this because we had a week for Henry at school with a lot of feedback about his performance. To their credit, they want to assure that Henry is in the right environment to learn what he needs to learn. However, I spent part of a school day assuring the speech therapist that Henry does indeed talk and assisting Henry in demonstrating this skill.
I do not wish to discredit this speech therapist as she never had heard Henry verbalize before that point, but I was reminded of all of those times that we were told that Henry probably would never walk. We've also been told by many well-intentioned individuals Henry might never talk. I won't ever believe it. Ever. Not for one minute. No one will ever be able to tell me what any of my children can't do. In fact, Henry does so much verbalizing and screaming and fighting with his brothers at home, I can't imagine how he won't progress.
I also wish I could express how much therapy we do at home and have others believe it. The one bright point, and this is an extremely bright point, is the help of hippotherapy. All of the new skills since starting hippotherapy three weeks ago... bending down to pick up toys, walking up and down steps (not completely independently but very stable), pedaling his tricycle, starting to run, STARTING TO HOP!!! It was when we were talking to the special education teacher the other day about his drooling that Henry was hopping all over the place.
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| Henry in his Halloween/ outfit for wedding receptions in TX outfit |
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