Summer Update

Tucker's birthday party went pretty well.  He was super excited to go to Jump N Jive, and he was even more excited when he saw his friends there.

By about half an hour into the party, the Jive room was packed full of people.  I meant to bring extra chairs, but we forgot.  There are several benches along the wall, but he had a ton of adults, and not enough seating.  Tucker jumped right into the inflatable Gladiator-type jumper, where one person is supposed to stand in the middle while other people knock you off of the pedestal with big foam mallets.  Tucker loves craziness, so he had a blast with Gina, Dylan, and Tyler jumping all around.  The kids all took turns going down the big inflatable slide, even Kinley!  Chris has now introduced her to the pool and the inflatable slide, I think he is going to either be her very fun uncle, or the scary uncle, depending on her personality :)

For the price of the party, we got private use of the room for 1 hour and a half, then 30 minutes in the party room for cake and pizza.  So after one hour, the party coaches blew up the inflatable party chair and tried to get Tucker to open his gifts.  Tucker's party was firetruck themed, but I had told everyone not to get him any firetrucks.....he already has about 12!  His friend Wes was mad at his mom Lauren when she got Tucker an aquadoodle instead of a firetruck, he said firetrucks are Tucker's favorite.  Well, Tucker's friend Daniel really wanted to get Tucker a firetruck, so his mom let him ;) That was one of the first gifts Tucker opened, and that was it!  He was ready to jump some more.  I was fine with that, as we had 30 minutes left that we paid for to jump.  So we let all the kids go back to jumping, and packed the gifts into the car.

When it was time to go to the party room, Tucker was pretty upset and it took us a while to convince him to sit with Chris in the big chair and lick the pizza.  We had pizza and two sandwich trays, and after all of the jumping, all of the kids and adults were pretty hungry. 

The party room was packed with all of our friends and family, and everyone was talking and eating. When it was time to sing Happy Birthday, the party coach turned the lights off. Tucker was in shock, I think, but when it was time to blow out his big "5" candle, he knew exactly what to do and blew it right out.  I was so proud of him, as we worked all year on blowing whistles as part of OT.

My parents got Tucker a new tricycle (Chris rolled over the old one with his truck!), and it has a bar on the back that we can push and steer.  Tucker rode out of the party on his bike, it was so cute. 

Once we got home, Tucker was all about the presents!  He got a lot of stuff, and he was so excited.  He got a cowboy hat and Elmo Country song movie from Molli & Addi, and a Mickey and Yogi Bear movie and a bag of Cheetos from Sarah & Brad.  He got a set of luggage from Justin & Jackie, which must sound crazy for a 5 year old, but he really needs it!  We have several overnight trips planned for the summer, and he needs his own suitcases to put things in.  He got a big water play table from the Christian family, which he will love once we put it together.  Last night he was trying to pour water out of his cup into his bowl....not allowed inside....but perfectly acceptable at the water table.  He of course still loves the firetruck, and Daniel & Julia also got him a bear shaped pillow with a sleeping bag attached. My parents actually got him another one, so he will have an extra.  My mom also recorded herself reading a storybook to Tucker.  It is a Hallmark book, I think, and it is of course about two bears.  When Tucker opened it, I told him it was a Nana Bear and a Tucker Bear.  So now he "reads" it by himself by turning the pages and pointing out Nana Bear and Tucker Bear on every page, it is so cute!  My grandparents gave me money to pick out a gift for Tucker, and I chose a pair of training skates. Everyone told me that was crazy, that he was going to end up in the Emergency Room....well, he loves them! He called them trucks at first, now he asks for his skates.  And yes, he falls a lot, but he falls a lot walking, too.  We have found that he pays more attention to his balance when he is on the skates, so maybe they will help him with that. 

I had to work on Saturday :( As I will have to several times this summer and fall, as this is the busy time for my job.  On Sunday, we all went to eat Hibachi for Mrs. Mia's and Mr. Ricky's birthdays, which are right behind Tucker's.  Since Tucker has been born, the other May and June birthdays have kind of fell on the back burner, so it was nice to celebrate.   Anyways, it was a very nice lunch, Tucker behaved very well and licked all of his Fritos.  I gave him the menu and asked him to look at the pictures to choose something, he looked at it and said "hamburger."  Haha, not quite.  He licked the Edamame, but was not impressed.
Tucker started a two-week session of swimming lessons this week. It is at the therapy pool, with a one-on-one special needs swimming instructor.  He is doing very well, they mainly work on putting his whole face underwater.  Chris is taking him today, so we'll see how that goes.  Chris has been encouraging Tucker to put his face underwater in the bathtub, and he was SOOO proud when Tucker did it.  Tucker also got a baseball tee and bat from my co-worker and her family at the party, so Chris is having fun trying to get Tucker to concentrate enough to hit the ball, not the tee!

So far the summer is way too hot.  We have been in record highs this week, at 100 degrees before considering the heat index.  So Tucker has been skating and playing baseball inside the house lately. 

As far as therapy goes, Tucker had about a week off in between school and therapy, and he has been pretty bored. He starts three half-days preschool next week, and he will also starte OT feeding therapy twice a week.  The ABA therapists we thought we had hired for the summer have fallen through, so we are now scraping by with the two or so hours of ABA at night that Chris and I try to implement after working all day :/ It is going much better that we thought, which gives us hope that once we find some therapists Tucker will make huge progress.  The BCBA consultant who designs and runs Tucker's program will come over next Friday (while I will be getting ready for Jessica's wedding), and hopefully give us an update soon on finding therapists. The goal is to have 15-20 hours of ABA per week; right now we are at about zero!

Please pray that we get Tucker's ABA program up and running soon. We are working on waiting. Tucker went from waiting 3 seconds to now being able to wait for 30 seconds....we need to be up to 20 minutes before we can start potty training, so wish us luck.