Smurfy's Blog

We are halfway through the 6 weeks course of ‘It takes Two to Talk’. After the 6th class, Nathan will officially begin his speech therapy session with Cathy and of course Nelson and I will continue this speech session at home with Nathan and apply techniques we are learning from class.

Today we talked more about language facilitation such as:
Expand child’s utterances = If Nathan says bus on the freeway, the parents should expand ‘bus’ a little more like ‘yellow bus’. Then move on to saying ‘yellow bus is moving’.

Be animated = Showing some animation by smiling, touching or swinging of the arms makes the conversation more interesting to a child. If you jump up and down like a ball, then the child will do the same. Or if you start running around, then the child will run around. This is communication. The child sees what you do and the child responds back by doing the same.

Increase number of turns in conversation = Parents always end up doing most of the talking when they are teaching their child how to communicate. This is what we have to watch out for. When we talk to our child, we think that our son is learning. But we really don’t know if he is actually learning because we don’t give him time or a chance to respond or communicate back to us. So this is when we have to remember to use the OWL (observe, wait and listen).

Signal verbally and non-verbally = Signal verbally would be like the photobook example I mentioned earlier in another blog date. I point to the picture and tell him what I am pointing at such as a car or a ball. Non-verbally is just the opposite. I have to have Nathan fill in the blanks instead of me telling him of what I am pointing at. Today, Nathan ate some apples. Instead of pointing to the apples and saying apples to him, I just pointed to his apples inside his bowl and I just waited for him to say ‘apples’ himself.

We did more role playing where this time Nelson played the role of Nathan. Cathy took out some toys and asked Nelson to pretend he is Nathan. So Nelson started playing with the cars and said vroom vroom. Then Cathy imitated what Nelson did. After doing some role play, Cathy discussed what we can do to facilitate communication with Nathan when he does certain things with his toys.

Another parent did role play with Cathy. This parent brought her son to the day care for the first time. When I met her son Wil who is almost 3 years old, I noticed that he didn’t want to play with Nathan. Nathan was following Wil a lot at the day care but Wil kept walking away. Wil was quiet and didn’t want to interact or socialize with Nathan. At first I thought Wil was too shy or just wanted to play by himself. But when the mother did the role play with Cathy, I was getting the impression that her son Wil has autism. When the mother pretended to be her son Wil and Cathy was playing with her, the mother showed how he would act at home when his family members are trying to play with him. He would always not want to talk or interact with anyone even with his family. He kept to himself a lot. When the family wants to interact with him by playing with him, he would walk away and do things by himself or get angry when someone tries to communicate with him. His mother said that Wil just always want to be in his own world and keeps to himself a lot.

When class was over, we went back to the day care and I saw Wil and Nathan playing with toys. I think that having a child close to Nathan’s age and Wil’s age opens up more communication. Wil has an older sister who also attended the class. But since Wil has no siblings close to his age, facilitating communication with him may be a little tougher because most people at his home are all adults. For Nathan, he is open and friendly to anyone. Since Nathan is more open and expressive, Wil kinda opened up to him easily than adults. Nathan doesn’t have to say anything to Wil. But I am sure that kids will copy other kids. If Nathan played with toys a certain way, Wil will play his toys that way too. Back at the day care, I showed Nathan a train. When you press the button on the train, the train makes a choo choo sound. When Nathan kept pressing the choo choo train button, Wil walked up to Nathan and did the same. So this is why I feel that it is really important to have other children with same age play with Nathan and Wil to help them with communication and interaction.

Since Nathan is in this speech program, he can attend this children/parent activity at the day care on Thurs. But we have to wait until our class is over on Nov 16 because of work. So once we finish the class, I would like to take him to that children/parent activity one of these days especially since Nathan is still on the waiting list for the Pixar Day Care. It would be nice to have him go to a place where he can begin to interact with other kids his age now instead of waiting until he can enroll at the Pixar Day Care.

Oh also, my friend pointed out to me today’s date 2011/1102… a mirror image of the year and month/day. I asked her if this is good luck or bad luck? She said it is just an interesting date like people getting married on 10.10.10 because it is considered good luck. I told her that Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries should have waited to get married until 11.11.11 because few days ago Kim Kardashian filed for divorce after being married to Kris Humphries only for 72 Days! Was this marriage just a publicity stunt to make more money? Is Kim Kardashian really a good business woman? She really made a lot of money for getting married. Until now, her wedding is still showing on TV (Kim’s Fairytale Wedding/a Kardashian event).

I love watching the TV reality show Kardashians. But some people dislike them. I watch the Kardashians TV reality show because these women are powerful and entrepreneurs. They have their TV reality show, their own business, they are models, etc. So more power to the women! 🙂

Since it is Halloween, I bought a chocolate cake from Safeway which was on sale for $5. When time came to have some cake, Nathan didn’t want to eat even the smallest piece. So we gave him apple instead and he really loves apples. He would prefer to eat apples than french fries.

But today on Halloween, it will be a quiet night for us. We won’t do any trick or treat and dress in costumes… well except Nathan. He will probably want to put on his Cars McQueen costume. We will take Nathan out for trick/treat when he is a bit older. I just don’t want to overexpose him to lots of candies right now.

I think the best movies to watch on Halloween are zombie movies. Forget vampires, wolves, boogeyman and Dancing With The Stars 🙂 … I think zombies are the most scariest things. There is this TV show that I like watching called The Walking Dead. On West coast, it shows on Sundays. Yesterday, I watched this documentary called Zombie: A Living History. This documentary even shows different ways on how to kill zombies. Other than using combat to kill zombies, you gotta follow these rules of survival from the movie Zombieland:
1. Cardio
2. Double tap
3. Beware of bathrooms
4. Wear seatbelts
5. Cast iron skillet
6. Travel light
7. Get a kickass partner
8. Bounty paper towels
9. Bowling Ball
10. Don’t be a hero
11. Limber up
12. Avoid strip clubs
13. When in doubt, know your way out
14. The buddy system
15. Check the back seat
16. Enjoy the little things
17. Swiss army knife
18. Clean socks
19. Hygiene
20. Always have backup

Around 6pm, there were a lot of families walking around our neighborhood. Our neighborhood across the street usually decorates their front lawn with Halloween decoration. This year, their front lawn wasn’t in Halloween decoration. I guess they didn’t feel like decorating. They still passed out candies though. Normally, I see young kids dressed in costumes. I was surprised to see the parents dressed in costumes as well. One of them was dress like a doctor. Even the family’s dog was dressed in costume. If my husband would have wanted to dress in costumes and go trick/treat, I probably dress like Wonder Woman. 🙂 She is my favorite super hero.

Here is Nathan wearing his Cars McQueen suit again

It has been a few days since I had two wisdom teeth removed. My cheek is still swollen. My right chin and right bottom teeth still numb. My bottom cheek is really bruised. My healing after the oral surgery is very slow. But I feel no pain though. Just occasional minor aches but no pain. I have been putting on an ice pack on my cheek to relieve swelling but only helps for few minutes.

My husband’s sister and her family came over to our house. My husband got them a season pass to Marine World as well. While they took my nieces and son to Marine World, I stayed home. I really needed to rest without worrying about Nathan. I couldn’t rest on Friday because I had to work and took care of Nathan by myself. This past Saturday, I tried resting but each time I close my eyes, my son kept waking me up. So today was the only day I really got some rest after my oral surgery.

The painkiller prescription I got from the oral surgeon makes me so sleepy and drowsy. I talked about my condition with my sister-in-law since she is a doctor/pharmacist. Since I feel no pain around my mouth, she recommended for me to take Motrin to relieve swelling. I hope Motrin will help since my face has been swollen for few days now.

When my almost 2 yr old niece was at our house, Nathan’s energy had shot up! He looked like he took some steroids because he was so pumped up! He kept running, screaming and swinging his body all over the place. We had to tell him to calm down a bit because he was going over the top! After they came back from Marine World around 8pm, my son still had lots of energy. Having a playmate really causes him to go very crazy! 🙂

Today, I had my last two wisdom teeth removed. One wisdom tooth on top right and second one located bottom right. Good thing both wisdom teeth were on same side so I can use my other side of the mouth to eat after surgery.

I am actually impressed with this new oral surgeon’s office. This office is so high-tech. Everything is done electronically. Before my consultation appt with my new oral surgeon on Oct 24, I filled out a patient form online then submitted it electronically. When I met with the office for the first time on Oct 24, they had all of my patient information into their database. There were some other documents I needed to sign and I had signed those documents electronically as well by using an on-screen signature pad.

In my former oral surgeon’s office where I had my bottom left wisdom tooth removed years ago, I remember seeing stacks and stacks of patient file folders and signing all kinds of paperwork manually.

On my consultation appt day Oct 24 at my new surgeon’s office, I noticed that their patient rooms are named after Bay Area bridges. I sat in the Carquinez Bridge room. Each patient room has a fancy frosted glass sliding doors. Inside the patient room, it has a 30″ flat screen TV where they showed a video of the procedure and risks of wisdom teeth removal. Also, I got to see a detailed panoramic x-ray of my teeth.

At my former oral surgeon’s office, their patient room has a wooden door that looked like it was made in the 1970s. Inside the patient room, they still used a VHS video machine and a tube TV to show the procedure and risks of wisdom teeth removal. At this office, I never got to see an x-ray of my mouth.

After talking to my new oral surgeon, I made an appt with them to have my two wisdom teeth removed on Thurs Oct 27. About 8 hrs before my surgery, I had to take two tablets of decadron (to treat swelling). Two hours before my surgery, I took one tablet of robinul. My oral surgery was at 8:30am. That morning, I was not supposed to drink or have anything to eat. While my husband was having his Starbucks drink and donuts that morning, I was getting very hungry!

At 8:30am, they took me back to the Carquinez Bridge room. There was a table inside the room which had all the instruments they needed to use for surgery. When I sat down on the chair, the dental assistant took my blood pressure, placed some electrode patch thing on my chest and put this temperature indicator sticker on top of my forehead. Also, this fingertip pulse monitor device was placed on my right index finger.

After being prepped by the dental assistant, the oral surgeon came in and put this oxygen mask onto my nose. Next, he needed to insert a needle into my arm to administer the general anesthesia. Since my vein is not close to the surface, the surgeon took 15 mins to find a vein in both of my arms! He kept poking and poking. About 15 mins later, he finally got the needle inserted into my vein on my right arm. There were three people inside the room with me. The third person sat behind me looking at the flat screen monitor above me. I can see her typing notes of what time the oxygen mask was put on me and other medical procedures. The surgeon told me it may take about 1 min or two for the anesthesia to take affect. But I think I was knocked out already in matter of seconds!

When I woke up, I woke up outside of the patient room near the end of the hallway next to the exit door. There was a wheelchair next to the bed where I was laying down. The dental assistant was telling me something but I was still trying to wake up. Then my husband came in with our son Nathan. When I was a little more awake, I got off the bed and sat on the wheelchair. Gee I can’t even remember getting into the car. I didn’t even realized when we got home! I guess I must have fallen asleep in the car.

After surgery, my oral surgeon saved my wisdom teeth which were kept inside this small white container. One of them is still intact while the other one is broken into three pieces. At my former surgeon’s office, I couldn’t even keep my wisdom tooth. Not sure why.

Not only my mouth was soar from the surgery, my arms were soar as well after being poked with the needle numerous times. I couldn’t even carry my son!

Today, Cathy (speech therapist) showed us a video of a mom communicating in different ways with her toddler. While watching the video, we had a group discussion about the communication between the mom and her child. After watching the video, Cathy explained the following:
1. Be repetitive (repeat the same words to your child so the child can get an idea of what you mean. for instance, if he takes a toy out of his bucket, say the word ‘out’. if he takes another toy out of the bucket, say the same word ‘out’)
2. Be consistent (if he takes the toy out of the bucket, don’t say remove, away or off otherwise the child will get confused learning too many different words. just continue to say ‘out’)
3. Be referential (you can use body language when communicating with your child. if your child wants to drink, pretend your hand is a cup and show him ‘drink’ with your hand)
4. Talk to your child at a physical level (don’t communicate with your child while your child looks up at you. go down to their eye level and engage in communication there. for instance, if your child is sitting, sit down with your child and communicate)
5. Talk to your child at a expressive level (if your child is clapping or waving or shows a surprise look on their face, you should do the same in order to engage in some type of communication. for instance, if your child is dancing, you dance as well and say the word ‘dance’)
6. Be at your child’s cognitive level (use simple words. the vocabulary of a 2 yr old is obviously not yet sophisticated. so instead of saying ‘remove’ or ‘twist’ to open something, just use something simple such as ‘open’)

I tried some of these at home with Nathan. I sat down on the floor with him while he was holding his bucket of toys. When I saw him taking his toys out, I imitated him by taking one of his toys out of the bucket. When I take the toy out of the bucket, I said ‘out’. After saying ‘out’ over and over again, he said ‘out’.

So far, whatever Cathy is teaching us is working.

Nelson and I decided to get a season pass to Discovery Kingdom for 2012 (http://www.sixflags.com/discoveryKingdom/index.aspx). It is our first season pass. Last time we were at Discovery Kingdom was over 15 years ago and it was called Marine World that time. Since Nelson had to work during the day, we got to Discovery Kingdom around 7pm. Even though we bought the 2012 season pass, we can use our pass for the remainder of 2011.

Today, the park closes at 10pm. Even though we didn’t have much time at the park today, we can go to the park anytime we want since we have the season pass.

The season pass is about $50 each. Included with the season pass is free parking and each season pass cards you get comes with one complimentary admission that you can use from 11/25/11 to 01/1/12.

Season Pass

Complimentary general admission (I had my cat smeagol hold it for me).

Because of Halloween, Discovery Kingdom has this fright fest event where the park is decorated with scary stuff and have a haunted house set up for people brave enough to walk inside. I wanted to go inside the haunted house but our 2 year old son was with us though. Going inside the haunted house wouldn’t be good for him. 🙂 Last time we walked inside a haunted place was few years ago in Las Vegas inside the Madame Tussauds museum where it was filled with zombies and such.

Halloween decoration at Discovery Kingdom

Nathan enjoyed watching Shouka the whale.

Since I went into the office today, my inlaws took care of my son. After work, we headed to my inlaws house. Before and after dinner, we decided to play mahjong (MJ). My inlaws has this folding MJ table that is at least 20 years old! Each side of the table even has a small compartment to store money or poker chips. But since we only played for fun, we used my husband’s customized poker chips which were made in Las Vegas many years ago.

Tonight we decided to only use the $5 and $100 poker chips. It may be hard to see but each poker chip has SIU on it in the background (translucent gray color).

The hardest part of playing MJ for me is remembering the numbers in Chinese characters. I can only remember if I think of them as objects. For instance the number 6 in Chinese characters looks like a person 🙂

It has been years since I played MJ. I lost most of the time. But again, since it is only for fun, I didn’t mind losing all of my poker chips. Each player started off with $100 worth of poker chips. On the last MJ game, I was like in the negative(-) $165! Yes I am that bad at MJ.

Earlier, I took a video of Selena and Nathan playing with bubbles

Nelson and I had our second session of ‘It takes Two to Talk’ class. The class was more interesting today than the first session… at least I didn’t fall asleep. We did some role play today. Our speech therapist Cathy volunteered me to go in the front room with her while everyone else looked. She told me to pretend I am Nathan and show her what Nathan does with his toys. So I did some role play by playing with cars, throwing the toys, etc. Then Cathy showed us how we can facilitate communication with our child verbally and non-verbally while our child is playing.

The topic of today was OWL (Observe, Wait and Listen). We need to observe our child’s action. If Nathan is playing with his car, I should not only say the word ‘car’ but also mimic what he is doing to facilitate communication. At times if I just say the word car, Nathan won’t say anything back to me. There is no two way communication. But if I copy him by playing one of his cars and saying vroom vroom while playing with it, Nathan will likely say vroom vroom. If I crash the toy cars together and say ‘bang’, he will likely repeat after me and try to say ‘bang’. So I did exactly that and he did say vroom vroom and bang. This is one way to facilitate communication.

Communication should always be two ways. If I want to facilitate communication with my son, I shouldn’t do most of the talking. I should wait and listen and follow his lead. For instance, if we are looking at his book with pictures, I shouldn’t describe every picture he points at. When I describe every picture he points at, I am the one doing most of the talking. Nathan has this book called Blankie where the book actually has a cloth attach to it. Instead of having me tell him that he is pointing to a cloth, I have him feel the cloth that is attached to the book. So when we both feel the texture of the cloth, he giggles because it feels funny to him. Then he babbles about something like ‘wa, wa, eh, aa’. Our speech therapist says even if the word isn’t clear like if the child says ‘eh’ or ‘mm’, that is still communication. Since my son is only 2 years old, babbling ‘wa, wa, eh, aa’ is one way of him describing how he felt about touching the cloth.

While in class, our son was in day care. This day care isn’t for the public. It is only available for families who are in the speech therapy program.

Here is Nathan at the day care

Nathan was the only child in the day care today. There was another child at the day care earlier but she kept crying. So her mom had to bring her to our class. Her daughter was crying in class too but after giving her something to play with, her daughter stopped crying. There is another child that Nathan played with last week but he is out of town this week. Hopefully next week, Nathan will have playmates. But I am sure Nathan didn’t mind having all that space to play. I think the woman working at the day care likes Nathan because he doesn’t cry at all when we leave him and Nathan can pretty much play by himself. So her job of taking care of him is pretty easy going.

Our next door neighbor has different families living in there. They have a total of 6 or 7 cars for that ONE household! Few years ago, they didn’t have that many cars. Nowadays, they seem to add a new car each year. The new people I see staying in that house don’t look like their kids. Perhaps some relatives are living with them. With these new people in that house, they bring their own cars. It is a public street. They can park wherever they want. But if they partially block our driveway, that ISN’T COOl!

Do we block their driveway? NO. I have been meaning to ask them not to block our driveway, but my husband told me not to.

So here is one of their cars partially blocking our driveway. The truck is parked past the flat part of the curb. That flat curb is our driveway! When my husband drove his car out of our garage to drive to work, he had to turn the car in a slant position so he doesn’t hit the guy’s truck.

Look at all that space in the front of the truck! Our neighbor could have moved his car forward more! Not sure why our neighbor always partially block our driveway. We don’t live in a big city like SF where parking spaces are scarce.

In afternoon, I decided to clean our garage. When I opened the garage, I was surprised to see that the truck was gone. To clean my garage, I moved my SUV out of the garage and parked it in front of my house where the neighbor’s truck was parked earlier. While cleaning the garage, our neighbor came back home. Since he saw my SUV parked in front of my own house, he parked his car at the other side of the curb that is shared by my house and his house. After I finished cleaning the garage, I parked the SUV back into the garage.

Not to my surprised, our neighbor, for some pathetic reason, moved his car and parked back in front of my house! OMG! Did he just wait for me until I moved my car into the garage so he can park his truck back in front of my house? Our street has other plenty of parking spaces during the day!

Now look at his side of the street! There are no cars! There are a lot of parking spaces! Since his family members are at work or school, he could have parked his car on his side of the curb or even on his driveway!

I went to a new dental office today because the one I used to go to sucks. The new dental office is where my husband has been going to for years.

First thing I noticed when I came into the dental office is seeing one of the receptionist feeding a big spider with flies! The spider is dangling outside the opened office window. What if the spider climbs down its web and crawls into the opened office window? Don’t they think about that? I am not afraid of spiders. But if you are running a professional business such as a dental office and not a pet store, you wouldn’t keep a spider as a pet and help catch flies for its meal! So while I was taking care of some paperwork, the receptionist was telling my husband about the flies she caught for the spider to eat on!!

The big spider dangling on the window.

My appt was 2:30pm and my husband’s appt was at 3:30pm. Since our appt is 1 hr apart, Nelson can watch our son while I go to my appt. Whenever I am done with my appt, I can watch Nathan.

However, my husband couldn’t watch my son while I was in my appt. While I was sitting down with my new dentist, my husband’s dentist came out of nowhere and asked me where my husband is. She told me that he needs to be in the office right now. I was confused. My husband’s appt is not until 3:30pm. So I told her that my husband is with our 2 year old and if he goes to the appt now, there will be no one to watch Nathan.

But this woman was relentless. She wanted my husband to begin his appt now. I wonder if she has kids of her own. She just didn’t understand when I told her there would be NO ONE to watch my 2 year old son! This is the reason why we made separate appt times for our check-up.

So I text my husband to have him come back to the office. Since we thought his appt would not be until 3:30pm, my husband took our son for a stroll. While my own dentist was taking x-rays of my teeth, I heard my husband come in and talked to his dentist. But I didn’t hear Nathan. After I had my x-rays done, I got up to find my son. I was very pist to find my son Nathan sitting in his stroller in the receptionist area by himself! His stroller was even next to the opened window where their pet spider was hanging from! Even though there was a receptionist at the front desk, I noticed that she would leave her desk from time to time to take care of work.

There is no way I would leave my son by himself in the reception area. What if someone walks in and takes him?! So I decided to bring my son with me back into my dentist’s office. It was tight inside the office but I managed to fit Nathan’s stroller at the corner.

I can hear the conversation between my husband and his relentless dentist since the office I was sitting at was just next door. While my own dentist resumed her work on my teeth, my husband’s dentist was making jokes and giggling and stuff like that. She sounded like a freaking chatty kathy doll! I mean seriously, this woman desperately wanted my husband to start his appt an 1 hr early and have my my son wait by HIMSELF in the reception area so she can tell my husband her jokes of the day???!!! Who the heck are you? What kind of office is this? I mean they keep big spiders as friends and even catch flies for its food and they suggest to have my son stay by HIMSELF in the reception area??!! Not sure why husband’s dentist just couldn’t keep my husband’s original 3:30pm appt so that my husband can watch our son while I was in for my check-up.

My original appt was at 3:30pm because I work until 2pm. But since I am a new patient at that office, my dentist needed more time with me. As for my husband, he has been with this office for years. Since his appt is only for a general check-up and cleaning, there was no need for extra time for him. Not to my surprised, my appt with my dentist actually finished earlier than my husband! Since my husband’s dentist spent too much time as chatty kathy, his appt with his dentist took a long while.

After the appt, I told my husband that his dentist talked too much!

After our dental appts, we decided to have early dinner at Mels, The Original.