Little Bunny

Little Bunny
Originally uploaded by vczdavis

On Wednesday we had our weekly session with Sally. Holly has been disagreeable the last few times and we haven’t had a chance to get much done. On Wednesday morning she woke up early compared to when she has been waking up the last several weeks and Sally called to see if we wanted her to come early. But Holly was ready for a nap and Sally came as Scheduled around 12:30. Holly had been sleeping just over an hour maybe 75 minutes and I woke her for the session. She doesn’t like to be woken up, and doesn’t do this well. It takes her a while to wake up and she doesn’t like people when she is sleepy. It was a good 15 minutes before she warmed up to Sally at all. And she never really warmed up enough to let her do any big gross motor stretches. In Sally’s words, “Holly sure does have a highly attuned ‘Agenda’ radar” and that she certainly does. Many of the stretches and movements we try and get her to do during therapy I see her doing on her own all the time, but when someone tries to passively move her into a position, boy does she take offense to that.

But its not just passive movement. If you are trying to play with her using a specific toy or try and show her how something works she often doesn’t want anything to do with it and will crawl and wonder away, so then if you switch gears and try another activity, she then suddenly shows interest in the toy.

We played with a new very elaborate nesting toy during Sally’s Session, it was a 3 little pigs toy that had 3 brightly colored houses, Blue, yellow, and Green or Red, I forget. The houses had a large front door that you could open and close, and for an older child a keyhole that you have to unlock to open the door. The small one fits into the medium which fits into the largest one. This is a complicated shape to nest. She was however with much determination eventually able to pull the houses out from each other and put them back in.

The largest house also had a chimney and you could drop one of the three little pigs or the big bad wolf down the chimney and then open the door and retrieve it. She loved opening and closing the door over and over and a few time did put the pig “in” the house. She had fun with the new toy.

But in the end we didn’t get to do nearly as much as we hoped because overall she was very uncooperative. Next week I am most likely going to have Sally come later in the day and see if Holly is more agreeable after a “long” nap, lunch, and time to fully wake up before being engaged. This will help me to determine if it is her mood or her temperament. If she lets Sally work with her when she is in a fed, rested, happy mood then we can think about changing her therapy time. But if she is still resistant, then maybe she is just going through a disagreeable phase.. She is as Katie pointed out beginning to show tantrum behavior signs in a very developmentally appropriate way. Since I never have opportunity to really try and get her to do something she doesn’t want to and I let her lead every activity I don’t ever see this display of behavior except for during therapy.

On Wednesday night we had friends over and watched two episodes of Lost which was fun. Holly got presents (Thank You Karel) which included two very cool books, one she can play with now, a jack and the beanstalk board book, and the other one Mommy liked with Fairies and little songs and stories about them, but it was too delicate for her to have on her own. She also got the most adorable bunny hat and mittens.