Hoppy Bithday

Yesterday was Chris's 27th birthday, Happy Birthday Chris!:) It was pretty lame, as birthdays go! He had to work for 10 hours, then have a regular weeknight with Tucker and me. At least I made him some brownies (he doesn't like cake) and offered to make him a special dinner, but he didn't really care. We watched the Office and I let him play video games, so not too exciting. He is also on-call this week, meaning that he can get called into work anytime this week and weekend, so there are no weekend celebration plans either. He said Tucker made his whole day, though. I had been practicing with Tucker, telling him to say "Happy Birthday." Half the time he would say it, and the other half of the time he would ignore me. I got Chris a card from me and one from Tucker, so I got him to draw Chris a picture on his card (really just scribbling, he can't draw). When Chris came home, Tucker gave him the card. I said, "Tucker, what do we tell Daddy?" He said, "Hoppy Bithday." Chris and I were so excited! He didn't just repeat it, like I expected he would have to; he said it on his own. So we are super excited, and that will be our new birthday gift to everyone, haha, getting Tucker to say "hoppy bithday" to them on their birthdays. Tucker has still been hitting at school, but his teacher called me again this week to tell me how typical his behavior is, and that she expects it to get better as he gets used to school. She said they are pushing him so hard all day, and every once in a while he gets very frustrated and hits. The other day at OT he went up to a kid and hit him several times. At that point, he was hitting the boy to say "hello, I want to play." Once the boy moved over and let him on the OT swing, Tucker was so excited! Then after they were done, he turned around and hit him again with a big smile on his face. His therapist corrected him each time and made him say "hi, I want a turn" and all that, it was like Tucker was too excited to think about what words he needed to say. He loves big kids! And, unfortunately, the big kids he knows are my cousins, who encourage him to play rough....because really they are rough, haha! A few visits ago, the big girls were letting Tucker "push" them, and they really hammed it up, acting like he was knocking them over and he was Mr. Strong. Then a few weeks ago, Tucker went back to Maw Maw's and started randomly pushing people....not good! Tucker doesn't really understand the difference between rough playtime and then when it's time to stop that. So it's really better to have a firm NO roughhousing/NO hitting policy, even when other kids are playfighting. Tucker had taken a 3 week break from therapy because school was just making him exhausted. On Monday he was very excited to go back to OT; I bet he was even happier when he realized we have moved the emphasis from feeding to fine motor skills. We have hit a major roadblock with Tucker on eating, so Terri wants to work on some skills that he may need in school. They started with a test to see his skill level; they worked on things like cutting, writing, stacking small blocks, threading beads, and picking up small items. Terri was so happy with his compliance, she said she could tell that school was already making a big difference. He fought to get out of the chair at first, but after Terri told him he had to sit, he got right to work! He actually did well with the test:) We are so not used to him doing well on any tests, so it was nice that they were impressed with his fine motor skills. He even does circular scribbling, a term I had never heard, but apparently it's a good sign! Tucker's speech has still been improving, and he has a much larger vocabulary. Yesterday he found a vaccuum filter somewhere (he loves the vaccuum cleaner), and told Chris, "put it in the bacoom." We laughed so hard because he knew the words, and because he knew the filter belonged in the vaccuum. Tucker has also been pretty defiant lately. His teacher said that he really wants to win a fight! He has to listen at school, and at home, and at therapy, and he is trying to assert his indepence anywhere he can! So this can get pretty ugly. His new thing is that he hates his tube feedings. And I mean Hates....which is not good since he gets 5 bolus feedings per day. We are dealing with this development, and he still gets all the food he needs. It's funny because Chris and I were always so proud of Tucker for how good he was during tube feeds; then this summer we had a psychology appointment about Tucker, and they mentioned how odd it was that he didn't fight us for feedings and trach care...they said that if he fought us that was actually a sign of developmental growth. So we are seeing this as a positive! Haha.