Back from Italy

Sorry I haven't blogged for a while. I've been in Italy with Papa for a couple of weeks. I'll upload some pictures soon. Spent last night with mommy and she let me sleep in her bed. I wanted to sleep with all my favourite things, so I took my football, High School Musical dvd cover, upsy daisy, elephant, winnie the pooh and tiger to sleep with me. There wasn't much room in the bed for mommy, but we managed ok.

Went to see my paediatrician today. She didn't do much, just asked how I was doing, listened to my heart & weighed me. She thinks I'm doing pretty well and only need to be seen again in a year, if necessary. :)

The colour blue

One colour at a time. The one I'm focusing on now is blue. Blue for the sky & blue for my eyes. It's also the colour of the inter Milan football shirt.

My new obsession

I'm officially a 'High School Musical' fan. I sing along to all the songs and dance too. I love it so much I even take the dvd cover to bed with me. It's also one of the first things I say when I wake up in the morning, because I dream about it. Aunty Kir bought it for me for my birthday, thanks Kir!

Happy birthday to me !

I turned 4 today, but when you ask me how old I am I say 3, 8 or 9... never 4. I got lots of presents and even got a bike... but think it'll be some time before I learn how to ride it. I wish people wouldn't sing happy birthday to me, it freaks me out... find it too overwhelming. I didn't like it last year either. Thanks to everyone who came, I had lots of fun and loved having an audience when I was breakdancing.

Speech therapy

My therapist comes to see me at nursery school once a week for speech therapy. At the moment we are working on the “voicing” process using a therapy technique called “Metaphon”. This technique starts by teaching the concept of noisy and quiet. We have been talking about noisy and quiet animals, noisy and quiet sounds etc. I'll need to do this at home too. Some things I'll be doing...

Making noisy sounds (banging drums, clapping hands loudly, shaking maracas).

Making quiet sounds (rubbing hands together, softly hitting the drum, blowing air).

Talk about which animals are noisy (lions, elephants, dogs).

Talk about which animals are quiet (fish, snakes, spiders).

If I hear a noisy sound comment on it, and the same for quiet sounds.

The next step in this therapy is to start talking about noisy and quiet speech sounds.

My vision is perfect

I had thorough tests today and have been given the all-clear. They tested my vision first which is perfect. To test if I was colour blind they showed me pages in a book that showed images that were made up of lots of small coloured circles. I had to find a dog, a butterfly, an elephant, a flower, a rabbit etc. I got 8 out of 10 correct which means I'm not colour blind.

My visual perception will more than likely be a cognitive issue so will be working on that more and I'm sure I'll get the gist of it, with a little effort and support.

Speech assessment

I have a new speech therapist and she came to nursery to observe me. The good news is that there is no sign of a 'disorder', only 'delay'. It's just a matter of time before it comes together, I will be having speech therapy in blocks of around 6-8 weeks and should respond very well to this.

I am able to produce all the sounds expected in a child of my age. This shows that I don't have an articulation disorder (inability to say sounds).

I use some delayed phonological processes; therefore I have a mild phonological delay.

I have a good ability to combine sounds in different combinations.

I have a moderate reduction in speech intelligibility (how easy I am to understand). My speech intelligibility is impacted on by reduced speech precision, reduced voice volume, hypo-nasality and reduced intelligibility with increased length of utterance. I appear to have reduced breath control for speech.

Am I colour blind?

I'm being referred back to great ormond street opthalmology for an eye test. I struggle with colours and visual perception so need to find out if i'm colour blind or not. Papa is colour blind, so I could well be.

Swimming with papa

HOT! We need to cool down so papa took me swimming after my hair cut.

Got the chop

Papa took me for a haircut, it's so hot now and my hair was too long. I like it, I feel so much cooler. What do you think?

Italy with papa

The best bit about going to Italy is flying in an aeroplane. When I see one in the sky I always want to fly in it. Anyway, on Friday morning we went out to the centre of Milan to buy books and papa bought some sunglasses. That afternoon I went to the park with papa, nonna and nonno and played football and frisbee and cooled myself down in the fountain.

On Saturday nonno and Elisa took me to the lido, had a swim and played with all the other toddlers. On Monday morning papa and I went for a walk on the navigli and met up with Lorenzo for an icecream. I like Lorenzo, have met him a few times before, hoping to see him in August when I go for my summer holiday.

I ate lots of good food, as usual, my favourite being nonno's home-made pesto pasta.

Challenging times ahead

My visual perception is very, very bad. I may also be colour blind and will need to be tested. Things will be tough for me at school but I'll do my best and will remember to focus on things I love to do, as well as things I can't. I know the school I'm going to uses the phonic system for reading and writing, so that's good. :)

Visual perception is the ability to recognise, interpret and organise visual images.

Pupils who have difficulties in this area may have:
* a poor sense of direction
* difficulties with organisational skills
* reverse words in both reading and spelling (eg. saw for was)
* difficulty understanding abstract maths concepts, paticularly in the areas of shape, space and measure
* problems with comparative language (eg. taller than, shorter than, longer than)
* difficulty completing jigsaw puzzles
* problems with copying from the board
* problems with interpreting and organising diagrams, charts, graphs, maps and other * visual methods of recording
* difficulties judging speed and distance
* difficulty with letter and number orientation
* difficulty with structuring and organising written work
* strengths in logic, verbal and non-verbal reasoning
* enjoyment in using multisensory strategies when learning
* a preference for a phonic approach to learning to read
* a preference to use audio methods of recording information.

Prefer to see Lazytown on the telly

I went to watch Lazytown live today. No thanks. It was way too noisy and they were right there, alive in front of me. I just wanted to go home. Sportacus came on about 10 minutes into the show, was great to see him and I was very excited, but then the audience shouted too loudly and I just had to leave. Maybe I'll prefer it when I'm older. I did get some great Lazytown goodies though, activity book and a microphone that flashes which is great for my rock'n rolling.

Made mummy & I lunch today

Pizza.. yummy!

Educational psychologist report

It arrived in the post today. My statementing process has started and I have a copy of the first report, supporting my need for extra help at school.

My strengths...

I am active and curious about the world around me and keen to engage with my surroundings. I am a sociable child and interact well with both adults and children. I am particularly interested in physical activities and really enjoy the opportunity to play outside. I respond very well to songs and am enthusiastic to learn the actions to them. I like story time and enjoy looking at picture books.

I don't have weaknesses so won't write anything for there, instead areas to focus on when I go to school are...

build on my expressive language and language comprehension skills

improve on my attention, waiting, listening skills in group settings, such as story time and develop my social interaction skills with peers

develop an acceptance of clear boundaries set by adults, and develop positive behaviour through redirection, and making choices

build on my gross and fine motor skills so I improve my pencil grip and manual dexterity and work on my visual perceptual skills so I can copy designs and letter formation and improve my drawing skills

develop self care skills, including dressing, undressing and using the toilet independently

access a broad and balanced curriculum, including the National Curriculum, in a mainstream school setting, so I can acquire early literacy skills, such as letter recognition and phonic skills, and develop an understanding of mathematical concepts.

So, all in all I've got quite a bit to learn but there's plenty of time for that. For now, I'm just going to enjoy being the little boy that I am.

More good news

I've been accepted into my first choice of school. It's very close to home and the staff are lovely. They wanted me to go there, even though I'll need extra support. Some heads are funny like that, they don't want to provide the extra help because of funding issues. The school is in a lovely, old building, only one class per year and the afternoon clubs are brilliant. I'll have the opportunity to play sport, learn any musical instrument I like... and even swing on a trapeze. They already have 5 statemented children there so they're pretty clued up already.

Good news

Went for my testes check up today. Both are still descended and I have to go back in a year. They're a little small but that doesn't matter. I'm relieved I won't need them doing again, I've had more than enough general anaesthetics. :)

Developmental assessment

This was done to prepare my statement for school, to give the local authority an idea of what i'll need support with. I'm doing better in verbal than non-verbal. I need to focus more on my shapes, colours, numbers and visual perception. Some questions were silly. There was a book open with pictures of 4 different houses, i was asked 'which one is the posh house?' The POSH house? I think my homes are pretty cool (I have 2!), but have never referred to either of them as 'posh', or small, or big for that matter. These assessments are good because I now know what to focus on more, but they're always to be taken with a pinch of salt.

IEP

Papa went to nursery today to meet with the SENCO and the educational psychologist. I have new goals now but overall I'm doing very well.

My speech is coming along great, I have 'classes' every day for 15 mins where the focus is purely on language. I'm to make more animal sounds to encourage more words.

Time also to focus on toilet training. I'll be nappy free for an hour both at nursery and at home. I'm quite aware now so it should work out.

My concentration has improved a lot, I engage in all activities at nursery for over 10 minutes at a time. I love cooking and playdough the most. My fine motor skills need a little more work, I need to learn to draw a full circle and an 'L' for Luca. I love drawing and painting so don't think those targets will be too hard to meet.

I have my developmental assessment tomorrow, to prepare my statement for when I go to school... so watch this space!

Celebrating food, because I can

I started eating orally in October 2006. I've just had a meal so thought I'd celebrate food, it's still such a novelty. For the first 15 months of my life I didn't eat or drink. I had breast milk but never tasted it, it went straight to my tummy via my nose.. avoiding all taste buds. You wouldn't believe it if you saw me today. You wouldn't believe I was once tube fed. I love raw broccoli. I love tomatoes. I love chicken. I love weetabix. I love liver. I love pasta with cheese. I love spinach. I love lamb. I drink water and milk. I use a fork and feed myself, I drink from a cup. I love the texture of food and I love the taste. I'll try everything once and so far there's nothing I haven't tried twice. I love sucking on lemons. Thanks to www.notube.at.