Author: Mashawna Thompson

More Books and Toys

Here are some of our latest favorites for books and toys.

The first two pictures are of the Fisher Price Laugh & Learn Magnetic Cookie Puzzle. That name is entirely too long. 😛
Anyway, this is a really great SIMPLE puzzle with a fun musical reward.

puzzle toy2

Fisher Price Cookie Puzzle

Puzzle toy

This picture is of the Playskool Old McDonald Tractor toy. This is really good for eye-hand coordination practice. It plays music too…which is always a plus. 🙂

Tractor Toy

These first two books are touch and feel books. These two have a variety of “feels.” I’ve seen some touch and feel books that basically have the same fabric/material on every page, just making them different colors. Our copies also include braille text.

Baby Animal Kisses
Baby Animal Kisses book

That’s Not My Dinosaur
That’s Not My Dinosaur book

These next two are full of big bright bold pictures. The pages are simple and not too cluttered.

Brown Bear book

I Like it When book


Creative Commons License

This
work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

More Dumb Things People Say

lyra bw

I was at my dentist’s office making a payment with Lyra a while back, and there was an older woman finishing up about the same time as us. She had been staring and making baby talk/saying Hi to Lyra for a few minutes. As we were walking out, me pushing Lyra in her stroller, the lady followed outside. Once outside I bent over to fix Lyra’s sun hat. The lady bent over to talk to Lyra and in her best baby-talk voice, said “What are you?” EXCUSE ME… At first I thought I MUST have misunderstood her, but then she said it again, “What are you?”…and AGAIN 2 or 3 more times! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!! SHE’S A BABY, YOU IDIOT! WHAT THE HECK KIND OF QUESTION IS THAT!?!

Anyway, I was SO STUNNED after hearing these words come out of this woman’s mouth, that I just stood there…speechless…and then walked away. I was really kicking myself later that day for not saying anything. I should have at least given her one of Lyra’s cards.

There’s always something new. 🙂

Feel free to add more “Dumb things people say” in the comment section if you like.


Creative Commons License

This
work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Glasses…Finally

cleanglasses1bwsmaller.jpg

Lyra finally has her glasses. The first time we put them on, they were off in less than 30 seconds. Every time we tried to put them back on her, she would shake her head “no” and scream.

Now, 2 weeks later, she’s kept them on for up to 20 minutes at a time and she LETS us put them back on her. I’ve noticed they start to slide off her nose after a while, giving her the NERD look. I’m going to take them in to be adjusted to fit better. They also have to order new lenses, because these were supposed to be transition lenses…which we paid for…but they’re not.
I can’t decide if she looks cuter with them on or off.

I think they’re helping her see better, but it’s hard to tell. She seems to have more precision with fine motor skills when she is wearing them…putting a small ball in a cup, putting puzzle pieces in, reaching for objects. So the glasses are improving her close/near vision, but what if it screws up her distance vision? I guess my glasses for nearsightedness don’t screw up my close-up vision. These are the kinds of stupid things I worry about.

Her prescription isn’t very strong…+2.5 in one eye and +2.75 in the other eye, but when I look through them, they look really wacky. She’s leaving them on longer, so it can’t look too wacky from her perspective.

She has her next appointment with her pediatric ophthalmologist on Dec. 5th.

It’s going to be a long month and a half for impatient mommy.

Poor Dominick is so sad…he’s the only one in our family who “doesn’t get to have glasses”…other than the dog. 🙂Glasses2


Creative Commons License

This
work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Getting Her Point Across

In the span of one day, without any coaching or prompting, Lyra has figured out how to:

1. Take her pants off…followed by her diaper(before today, had only taken her diaper off).

2. Take everything out of a laundry basket, flip it over, and then climb on top of it and stand up….and then fall off.

3. Climb out of her pack-n-play bed (first ever attempt)

…but she still can’t point at anything.

This is one of the few fine motor skills Lyra has not been able to master. She is supposed to be able to point at pictures in a book, and point to something she wants, and point to her body parts upon request. I’ve been really creative in my ideas to try and get her to point or poke at things. We read “The Grouchy Ladybug” and tried to get her to poke her finger in the holes. I bought one of those old fashion toy telephones that you have to actually put your finger in to “dial” the numbers. I even dropped cheerios inside of a “pop bead” so she’d stick her finger in it to get it out. Nothing has worked. She doesn’t point at things, she just pats. I haven’t been this frustrated and stressed out about a milestone since the fisher price star stackers. I thought she would never be able to put the star stacker rings on the stand. It seemed like it took forever.

As far as pointing to things she needs…well that is NOT a need as far as SHE is concerned. Lyra has figured out all sorts of ways to get what she wants, or in some cases, what she DEMANDS. She grunts or screams when she wants us to give her something. Then she shakes her head “no” while we play a guessing game trying to find out what she wants. Other times she just takes the “I’ll do it myself” approach. If she can’t reach a toy in her toy box, she’ll just climb in or if we won’t lift her up over the gate into the kitchen, she’ll just bust THROUGH the gate. When we used to have a gate at the bottom of our stairs, and Lyra learned how to just open the gate.

Maybe we just need better gates.

Obviously her gross motor skills are not a problem. She’s a pretty smart little turkey. I just don’t understand, considering her creativity and all of the things she’s managed to figure out, why she can’t just POINT her finger. I don’t even care if she points AT anything. I’d be happy if she just held one finger up in the air. She just needs to get that one finger isolated…preferably her index finger…not her middle finger. Big Smile

Maybe I’ll just teach her to pick her nose…kind of hard to do that without isolating one finger…Ha Ha Stick out tongue


Creative Commons License

This
work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Lyra’s IFSP

Here is Lyra’s IFSP. She was 4 months old when it was written. We are just beginning her annual review to update all of her goals. I hope this is helpful to other parents.

Lyra’s IFSP

Lyra’s “Present Level of Development” -This is actually included with Lyra’s IFSP. It was written before the actual IFSP to basically get a baseline of Lyra’s abilities.

en_USEnglish
en_USEnglish