Mands: 16

Today was brisk. Tony and I went for a walk in the morning. At first he was content just to play in the front yard. I had him mand for ‘jump’ when it was clear he wanted me to pick him up and carry him over the top of the fence. After doing this three times, he was ready to move on. Much to his chagrin we took a 180 when he headed for the pond. He quickly recovered from his dissapointment as I shuffled through the leaves and then started running while I was holding him. He said “all done,” and “down,” so I let him down. We went over to a bench and he climbed onto it, saying “thinking chair. Soon Tony was finished with the bench and we headed for the basketball court. Along the way he picked up some sticks and rocks and was sure to check each drain for water content. When he found that they were dry he didn’t seem upset, just uninterested.

We got to the basketball court with some rocks still in tow – he is very good with the word ‘rock,’ so good in fact that I tried to get him to echo “rock on with your bad self” no luck. There were two chairs on the basketball court and one of them was on its back. Tony walked up to the prostrate chair, put his rocks down on the court, and said “uh-oh.” I said “do you want help?” Then I put his hands on the seat and helped him pull the chair to an upright position, saying “pull” and having him say it also. He turned his attention to the rocks and first arranged them in a straight line with all the rocks parallel to eachother, next in a v-formation. Back to the chairs – Tony spent a long time pushing the standing-up chair around the court, pushing it down, saying “uh-oh”, having me help him pull it back up, and then saying “yeah!” When he returned to the rocks he wanted to put them in the basketball hoop. I decided we should just bring the rocks home when I saw that the basketball hoop was only hanging onto the backboard by a small strip of rubber! This thing is about ten pounds of metal waiting to fall on some unsuspecting child’s head! Dangerous.

Upon our return to the house we found a sparkling clean Tony’s room and the scent of peppermint in the air! Yes, apparently spring cleaning fever is in the air and both Whitney and Marlaina have quite a case. Much organizing and scrubbing has been going down. A highlight of this cleaning spree happened after Jill arrived and brought Tony into his room for some speech therapy. Whitney was outside cleaning off a set of plastic drawers. She had finished scrubbing and was ready to rinse, what she didn’t remember was that she had already asked me to screw in the new sprinkler. As you may have guessed, she turned the valve for the hose and was surprised by the sprinkler coming on! While the cars were getting watered, she shrieked and almost tried to climb through the window to escape a soaking. Marlaina, Anton and I were amused.

When Jill and Tony were finished, I took him into his room. We colored a little, but he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. I tried introducing some dolls, but he pushed them away. He was not interested in motor imitation at all, but I was able to go over colors with him when he decided to play with the pegs. We also went over his intraverbals and I think he is getting pretty good at them, he is just in such a rush to answer that he doen’t listen all the time and sometimes mixes them up. Soon Tony tired of all the work and was more interested in getting out the door than anything in the room.