School Visit

I went to visit Theo's school the other day. First thing in the morning, 8:30, was his occupational therapy session with Karen. Karen is really wonderful with him. You know how I'm always saying how fun his school is and how I wish I could go there? Case in point: this video. Here he is on his airplane swing. There are all kinds of swings that work different parts of his body and his coordination. And he always gets to choose which swing he wants! She told me he chooses different things, which made me happy.

For a while we couldn't tell if he was a lefty or righty, but it's finally starting to show that he's dominant with the left.

After the swing, Theo hung out upside down, then did the spider walk. He likes to do these things at home in our hallway.

After the physical stuff was done, we sat at the table and Theo cut out leaves (I was proud to see him cut curves!) and glued them on a giant tree on the wall.

Back in the classroom, I sat with Theo as he ate breakfast. I noticed most of the kids barely touched their cereal, but not my boy--he finished his, and drank all his milk. And he opens the milk carton by himself! I still can't do that, which is why I buy the gallons with the cap top.

Next, Yushi came to do speech therapy. I told her that when I ask him about what he does at school every day, he just says Grace or names a kid, and it would be helpful if I knew what he did. So now she's been sending home pictures of his activities, which has been incredibly helfpul.

In the computer room, it was so cute to see Theo with an actual mouse. Last time I was there he was using the touch screen. Here he is clicking on bubbles to pop them -- definitely a Theo game. Each kid has a job to do every day, and they rotate. Today was Theo's turn to be calendar leader. Grace, his teacher, went over the day of the week and the date, and Theo got to attach the date to the corresponding number on the calendar. It was cute to see how excited he was to do his job, as all the other kids were with theirs.

After that, they sang a few songs. That's when I left. I gave Theo a hug goodbye and he made a sad face. When I reached the door and turned around to look back at him, I realized he was crying. Which is, you know, both heartbreaking and incredibly satisfying for a mommy.

To be honest, I wrote the good things about the visit. With every visit there are a number of hard things for me to see, like Theo sometimes not being quite with it or on the level of most of his classmates. But it's more fun to write about the cute stuff, and for now it's enough to know he loves school and he's where he needs to be. I can see that the teachers are really prepping him for kindergarten now. They are working on his socialization and sometimes he does his therapy sessions with one or two other kids. And he certainly absorbs everything, even though it doesn't always show at school--it shows at home. Theo's an observer.