Monday, July 18, 2011

Stayin' Cool

As some of you know, here in Oklahoma, it has been hot. I'm from southern Arizona, so I know hot, but this? This is hot. So we've been spending a lot more time indoors, and trying to stay busy.

Stephen has a great fondness for his letters, as most of you know. Each day this week, he has chosen a letter pair to carry around with him - an uppercase letter, and the lowercase. I think in this photo, he was deciding between the U and the O. And check out that pointer! That has been a MAJOR victory of late - Stephen has always gestured at things when he wanted them, or when we asked him to identify something, but isolating that index finger like this has been one of those fine motor skills that he struggled with. He still goes back to his old method sometimes, but does it the right way with a quick reminder.

We've also spent time doing our best impression of Tom Hanks in "Big." This provided a LOT of fun this weekend!


Erik has helped Stephen to begin his baseball card collection...

I'm sorry this photo is blurry, but I wanted to post it, to prove that Stephen actually IS enjoying this new activity with his Dad. They found the card for Erik's favorite Twins player in this pack, too!

And of course, we are using the iPad. Stephen uses it to tell us that he wants to play on the computer (meaning the iPad), and then we exit out of the "talker" for him, and he selects either his Elmo app, or YouTube, which is set to open on the menu with his favorite videos. He's getting pretty adept at using it! The Elmo app is really cool - you have to trace the letters of the alphabet, and then you get to choose between 3 videos to watch that are related to each letter.

And this is today's new activity. Grandma Deb's piano has come to live at our house, and Stephen has been upstairs frequently, playing.

We've also spent a little time in the sprinklers. This was the first time we've tried this, and I think it was a success. It wasn't as fun as swimming, of course, but I think it will probably be a daily activity.
Stay cool!

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