Toilet water
As I write this, I am absolutely furious with Zoë. She has a new "trick" and it's driving me mad. She goes into the toilet and plays in the toilet water, making a horrible mess, but more to the point, it's unsanitary! Yuck!
THREE times today she has done this. She goes in as if she's just going to the toilet, and she plays in the water. This last time, I actually caught her in the act. I resorted to something I've had to do in the past (when she would go to the toilet and rub poo on the walls or herself, YUCK!), which is make her take a cold shower (not freezing cold, but a lot colder than she'd like; it's a tip I picked up in a book on dealing with autistic and developmentally delayed children).
I don't know how else to make her stop this, other than keep the toilets under lock and key and make her ask to go potty, but I don't know if she would ask (she's not big on talking, even now). I can't even just watch her when she goes in there because she goes out of the room and I get up to follow, and by the time I get in there, she's already been playing in the water!
She did eventually get it through her head not to handle poo (or rub it on the walls, ugh), but it took a while for her to get it. I just hope this doesn't take very long. It took ages to get her toilet trained, I hate the thought of a setback because she can't understand not to play with the toilet water...
Good day
Zoë had a really good session at early intervention playgroup today. She's really taken to one of the therapists there. I think maybe the lady reminds Zoë of her Nanna, as the therapist has a similar build and accent, similar way of moving, and blonde hair cut the same way Nanna wears hers. It's not a strong thing, but I see it, and I think maybe Zoë does, too. But, whatever it is, Zoë really likes Joyce and seems to have found a connection there.
Anyway, playgroup was good. Zoë was fairly cooperative and consented to do a few things she normally doesn't bother with (such as playing with the play-dough). She spoke fairly willingly when it was required, too. She asked for "chips" at snack time, and asked for "more chips" (at least, it certainly sounded like "more chips"), and then asked for a "bikkie". She stayed in her chair the whole time and was, overall, quite good about things.
There are three goals to work on with her.
1) Get her to cooperate with doing things she's not particularly motivated to do
2) Play turn-taking games with other children
3) Increase vocabulary and get her to use the words she does know more often
So, this seems pretty good so far. She's making good and steady progress in all areas, and that's about the best we can ask.
Tantrums and Queen Songs
We went out today and Zoë got a little difficult. I ended up holding her on my lap, which is normally impossible when she's having a tantrum, because she head-butts, she thrashes around, she kicks, etc. Today, though, I held her and although she was very difficult, she was actually controllable, to some extent.
Later, she managed to calm down fairly well. When we ended up going into the bookstore, she played a little in the children's department, and when we went to get coffee (at the in-store café), she was reasonably well behaved. She did eventually start to get restless, but she was actually pretty good.
This is good because she's learning how to manage herself, how to handle it when she's very frustrated and angry. Rather than just scream and act poorly, she's learning how to control it a little better.
On a far more amusing and less serious note, today in the shopping centre Zoë was singing. And what was she singing?
We will, we will, rock you... We will, we will, rock you...
She did learn this from a television commercial that's currently in rotation, but still, it's Queen. Uncle Greg will be so pleased...
Egg!
We had French toast and bacon for dinner (mostly because we had leftover bread that I thought would make good French toast). Andrew was cooking the bacon, but he stepped out of the kitchen briefly, leaving the bacon cooking in the pan on the stove.
When he returned to the kitchen, he said, in a very puzzeld and amazed voice, "Zoë? What did you do?" Naturally, I asked what was wrong. Zoë just looked at her dad and didn't say anything and didn't seem hurt or anything, but I was a little worried.
Said Andrew, "Zoë, why is there an egg in the pan?"
While he was out of the kitchen, she had very, very quietly pulled up a toy car (the kind toddlers can ride on), egg in hand, and she cracked the egg on the side of the pan and emptied the contents in with the cooking bacon, something she's observed on her language videos (one of the demonstrations of the word "egg" is someone cracking an egg into a frying pan).
Andrew turned the egg over and cooked it through and gave it to Zoë along with some bacon, and she ate all of it.
So now, at least, we know how to get her to eat eggs. Just let her cook them, herself!
(And yes, we are fully aware of how dangerous the stunt was, and have taken note of it for future reference and we'll certainly be taking precautions so she doesn't hurt herself, but honestly, he only stepped out of the kitchen for a moment and who would have expected her to climb up with an egg?! We're a combination of amazed, shocked, and relieved.)
Good girl
Zoë is doing extremely well with the toilet training. At home, she goes to the toilet without prompting, all by herself, and she hasn't had an accident for more than a week.
Yesterday we went out for the day and Zoë was dry all day long. She used the potty when we took her, and she was very good about all of it.
The next step is going to have to be taking her to preschool with panties instead of a Pull-Up. She does seem to understand not to go in panties, so hopefully if she's wearing panties, she'll just hold it (although, of course, they do have toilets there; I'm not sure she'd ask for help but she might go by herself).
She's also doing very well with the lanuage use. Saturday evening, Andrew put some ice in a drink. Zoë was very interested in this, and so he showed her the ice and let her put some into the glass. He taught her the word, "ice".
Sunday, when we were having lunch, she saw a clear jug full of icewater, and she said, "Ice!" It was quite unexpected and perfectly in context.
This is good. She's making excellent progress.
Potty!
Zoë has been going to the toilet by herself! She just seemed to have decided that she didn't need to ask for help or wait for us, and she's started going on her own. She does need help washing her hands and wiping her bottom, but she's just doing brilliantly now. I don't know exactly what happened in her little brain, but she's finally, finally got it. Whew.
Good day after a bad start
Zoë had a very bad morning. She was quite out of sorts. Refused a shower (and I do mean refused), got very angry and upset when her dad poured the cereal into the bowl (she's supposed to do that!), she then spilled her cereal and milk and proceeded to slip and fall smack on her back, and basically, she was just terribly unhappy about everything possible. I put her back to bed. I've learned that when she's having a "difficult" day, there's no point sending her to pre-school. She gets nothing out of it, and they have extra work.
Happily, she was in much better form after a couple hours' more sleep. She had speech therapy in the afternoon and had a really good session. She engaged in some meaningful conversation, she had some really good quality play with turn-taking and eye contact and verbal communication. It was really good.
Then, just now after dinner, she went into the toilet and pulled down her own pants and got on the potty all by herself! She didn't ask or anything, she just went in and got on the potty and did a wee! Hooray!
Tomorrow's intervention playgroup, so we'll see how she goes with that. She loved it last week. Hopefully, she'll be as excited about it this week, as well.
Lots to catch up on...
Our server was down for more than a week due to a combination of hacking and our service provider totally messing up what should have been a very simple bandwidth upgrade. It looks like stuff is mostly back to normal now, so I'll take this opportunity to catch up a little.
Tuesday was the first day of pre-school for Zoë. It was actually an orientation day, and she only got to stay for an hour, which got her nose out of joint.
Wednesday was her first day of early intervention playgroup. There are two other children in the group, both boys. Zoë had a splendid time! The interaction with the therapists is quite one-on-one, and they switch back and forth and move around the room to do different activities. There's an indoor "gym" type room with lots of climbing and crawling and such, an outdoor play area (where educational toys can be taken out), and an actual playground (although we didn't use it Wednesday).
After playgroup, the girls and I went for a bit of a shopping expedition and had lunch out as a special treat.
The day was a little too much for Zoë, especially after going back to preschool on Tuesday, and she was miserable cranky all evening and most of Thursday. Today, though, she seems to be in pretty good spirits.
She's also doing fairly well with the toilet training. She was dry all day yesterday except for a very small accident (I suspect she started to go, realized she shouldn't, and then held it, yay!). She's been dry all day today, too, and now asks to go to the potty fairly regularly. I think it will just be a matter of time before she gets into good habits in this respect.
And now I'm off to do a backup of this journal. The recent rigamarole with the server has reminded me to do that sort of thing a little more often...
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