Potty Training: Jacob Style

Once again, Jacob has defied my expectations :)

Yesterday, I was going about my business and he came up to me, grunted, and pointed to his pull-ups.

I asked him if he wanted to go to the bathroom, and he nodded. Then he took my hand, and pulled me into the bathroom where we have the potty training toilet.

Now, mind you, I haven't pushed potty training on Jake for the last couple of months because of the chaos of school. I wanted things to settle down before I pushed it on him again.

But once we got into the bathroom, he had me help him take his pants and pull-ups off, and POOPED right in the toilet. 

For any of you that have potty trained before, the potty always come first, and then months down the road, they get the hang of pooping. 

Nope.  Not Jake.  He wants to cut to the chase and master pooping first.  

Needless to say, the next couple of minutes were filled with high-fives, laughs, giggles, and squeals from his mother.  I guess we'll be doing some serious potty training these next couple weeks.  Jacob insists on it!  

Jacob's Annual IEP Meeting

This week was the annual IEP meeting where I sat down with all of Jakes therapists to discuss his progression over the past year and their goals for the next 12 months.

The Occupational Therapist informed me that Jake is at or beyond his age in this department, using his right hand 95%+ of the time, using forks and spoons, doing well with his signs, and using a 4-finger pincher grasp when coloring.  He is drawing, but his goal is to make the plus sign and a complete circle on his own - things that a normal 4 year-old would be attempting to do. She says he does pretty well with the scissors, and LOVES to cut things (so hide the scissors at home!), but he can't quite do a straight line all by himself yet. She said another goal was getting him to button and un-button things.  

The Physical Therapist reported that Jake is quite the runner (bahahahahaha! - ya think?? ) and has escaped from the playground area a few times.  But they're working on getting him to actually listen to instructions and follow them.  She said that he's stopped a couple of times when they called to him, which in my estimation is a HUGE improvement over the last 12 months.  She said that he's only used the toiled 1 time, so there is lots of improvement there.   I explained that Jake does quite well when he's buck nekkid, but the minute you put clothes on him, the reverts.  So, that will be another thing we will continue to work on. 

Speech Therapy was actually better than expected.  He's enunciating several of his vowels, signs several words, and is making slow progress.  I asked if they thought there were issues with his ears, and the ladies all agreed that he listens to instruction.  We decided that his issues are primarily due to stubbornness (go figure!)

Jake is now learning his colors in sign language, follows simple instructions, and they are working on giving him 2 sequential instructions to follow, which he does occasionally.  

He's extremely cognisant of the feelings of others, and will hug anyone who is sad, and try to care for anyone having fits or crying.  

The ladies seem to adore him, which is always a good thing from a mother's perspective. 

All in all, I'm thrilled with his results.  He's at, or above age in everything except for speech, and even in that area progress is occurring.  Yay, Jacob!!