Thamma and Dadu

July 19th was a very big day. It was the day Oliver's grandparents arrived from India for an extended visit. Oliver's grandfather (his Dadu) hadn't seen Oliver since they visited us in Sydney when Oliver was a baby, less than a week out of the NICU. Oliver's grandmother (his Thamma) came to Sydney by herself in September of 2008 to mark Oliver's 1st birthday with us. For both of them it had been a very, very long time since they'd seen Oliver - or us for that matter!

Through the magic of video chat, Oliver has been able to see his Thamma and Dadu from time to time over this past year. It is hard to know exactly what he comprehends, and what he remembers, but it was clear that the moment he saw them arrive at our door he knew they were special. He felt comfortable with them right away and was all smiles. Their friendship has grown more and more each day. Ollie, with his love of words and silliness, loves it when they talk to him in Bengali. He laughs hysterically, especially when his Dadu throws in some arm movements! It has been wonderful to have them here, and it just breaks our hearts that they don't live closer. They will stay until mid September, through Ollie's 3rd birthday, and the start of school for Ollie. The time will fly by.

July Jots

Summer arrived in July, with hot humid weather in all its glory. It felt good to me, although I was thankful for the luxury of indoor air conditioning. AC is crucial for Oliver as he runs hot, and develops quite a sweat even when it is only mildly warm.

The Fourth
July started off with a bang. The 4th of July may be our country's birthday, but it is also Oliver's cousin Mariah's birthday - a much bigger deal! This year she turned six. My sister Caitlin had a big birthday gathering for her, and Ollie seemed to enjoy the ruckus. And as you can tell from the photos, Ollie's pumpkin chair has been extremely useful. He sat it in for books with his grandfather, he sat in it for the gift opening, he even sat in it in the sandbox out back!

It was great to be able to plop the chair in the sandbox and let Oliver experience the sand on his feet (and down his pants!) It was his first time experiencing sand like this, and it was interesting to see how serious he was about it, taking in the feeling and sensations of the sand quite intently.

Sapsucker Woods
Shami and I have always liked to go for walks together. While we were dating we would hike the many trails around Ithaca. We still try to get out every once in a while with Oliver, to the more tame wheel-friendly trails nearby. One evening we decided to walk some of the wooded trails in Sapsucker Woods. The bugs made it a bit difficult, but it was a lovely walk nonetheless. It has been years since Shami and I had been on this trail, and we were excited to stumble upon an Andy Goldsworthy sculpture. He is one of my all-time favorite artists, and it was a thrill to quite unexpectedly find this treasure!

Swimming
This summer we have had a handful of Oliver's PT session in a pool. Ollie is still not particularly happy to go in the water. He gets quite tense and nervous about it. But I think each time he loosened up a little bit, and the last time we went he actually relaxed for some portions of his session. I hope that one day he will enjoy the water, and be able to relax and splash and have fun in a pool, aside from the PT aspect of it. Ollie's favorite part of his pool sessions was reading how deep the water was!

Ollie goes to college

Ollie went to college this summer! He was the youngest participant in a 6 week long Speech Clinic at Ithaca College. They had room for him to go twice a week, and we jumped at the chance to help Ollie work with his new communication device, a DynaVox. So every Monday and Wednesday for a month and a half we drove up to South Hill, and Ollie got to play one-on-one with the speech therapist Tina and her grad student Katrina. How lucky was Ollie to get speech therapists with names that rhyme? He loved that!

Ollie enjoyed going to "college" and had a lot of fun with the activities they prepared for him each week. It was a very positive experience for him. He blew them away with his intelligence and his ability to read. He is held back only by his incredibly limited motor skills which make it too difficult to use the device yet with any accuracy. But we'll keep working on it.

If we can find the time we'll try do do a post on Ollie's communication, and our acquisition of this DynaVox V5 device. Our venture into the world of AAC is just beginning, and all I can say is that I hope the technology hurries up and improves. We're not particularly thrilled with our options for Oliver right now. That said, the DynaVox is a start and a big help in giving him a voice.

Stewart Park

Our days are usually crammed with therapy. Ollie has occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech therapy three times a week each, and Special Instruction twice a week. It is extremely rare for Ollie to have a weekday morning without a therapy session or appointment of some sort. So when such a day occurs, and especially when it coincides with beautiful weather, it is nice to be able to take advantage of it. On this particular day we decided to go to Stewart Park to explore and feed the ducks. Well, instead of ducks we found lots of Canada geese, and they were not shy! It was a little scary really, and I actually got nipped on my hand protecting Oliver's yummy fingers and toes from hungry goslings. Next time we'll try to avoid the geese and look a little harder for the ducks!

Stewart park is a beautiful park on the southern tip of Cayuga Lake. I have a lot of fond memories of it from my previous life: swing dances in the pavilion, long runs with my Wednesday evening running group, picnics with friends, and lazy days at the annual Ithaca Festival. Those days are long gone, and the park looks different to me now. It looks more challenging.

The park was buzzing with kids Oliver's age running, laughing, and playing while their moms socialized and picnicked. I did my best to stay on task and concentrate on making it a fun outing for Oliver. I wanted to enable him to experience an assortment of activities at the park to the best of our abilities. He was skeptical about much of it, especially going down the slide and getting wet in the sprinklers. Of course there was nothing that was handicap accessible! Not even a single swing. So I held him on my lap and he enjoyed swinging that way for a while. Later on he indicated he wanted to go on the toddler swings that he saw the other children on. These had no back or head support, so I had to hold him steady which didn't make for good swinging action (and nearly threw my back out), but at least he got to do it. He also rode a little pony merry-go-round, and even the T-Rex. These were hard for him because he is unable to use his arms to hold on, and his legs cannot open that wide. He also thrusts backwards, which makes holding him steady even more difficult. But we did our best. Hopefully one day we can be there while the Carousel is running. I wonder if Ollie would find a real merry-go-round fun or frightening.

While we didn't have the relaxed carefree morning at Stewart park that the others were enjoying, we had a good time in our own way. And we made it home in time for Ollie's nap so he'd be rested and ready to go for his afternoon therapy!

Tadpoles

Ollie loves long silly words. They make him giggle. There is a Sesame Street episode where the word of the day is "metamorphosis" and for a while it was his favorite one to watch (Elmo and Abby participate in a game show called "Find That Amphibian" hosted by Anne Phibian!) He thought the word "Metamorphosis" was hilarious, and it helped him learn about the transformation of caterpillars to butterflies, and tadpoles to frogs. One day his nurse Jo asked if she could bring us some tadpoles from her pond, and I said "sure!" The next day she arrived with 4 tiny black tadpoles, with their hind legs just barely showing. I went out and bought a little plastic aquarium, and searched the internet to read up on their delicate care.

Within a week, one of the tadpoles sprouted front legs, and then crawled out of the water, eventually absorbing its entire tail. It was truly incredible to watch it transform so quickly. Unfortunately the remaining four didn't last very long - two died as tadpoles, and one died as a froglet, but the first little guy has flourished and is still with us, hopping around and feasting on fruit flies in his little aquarium. I believe he turned out to be a toad, and not a frog, because he spends very little time in the water, but really I have no idea. He sure is cute though, if you go for that type!

May miscellany

Still playing catch-up, so here are some snippets from May. Ollie went to the dentist for the first time this May. There wasn't much good news from the visit, but Dr. Joe was very nice, even making special accommodations to see us off-hours. Ollie produced the expected wailing, gagging and retching, but miraculously he didn't actually vomit on the guy! Pretty much the only fun part of that visit was seeing this cute calf. Dr. Joe grew up on a dairy farm, and raises orphaned calves as a hobby. We got to meet this little girl, who was only weeks old.

It may seem silly, but one of the best things to happen this May was getting this new Childrite seat for Ollie. I was at my wits end and finally found this chair on-line, and bought it on a whim. It has been wonderful. No, it doesn't hold Oliver in the best position for his spine, hips or neck, and he pushes back in it with his feet, but he loves it, and so do I. We use it every day. I don't need to worry about straps and adjustments, I can just plop him in. Here he is in his new "Pumpkin Chair" as we call it, enjoying a book with his grandmother.

May is birthday season in my family, with Shannon, Shami, Jamie, Sean and me all having birthdays. This year we added one more when Jeanine and Sean had their second child, a little boy named Finnegan, on May 5th, sharing a birthday with Shami. Sigh. I don't much care for my birthdays anymore, but at least I get to make a wish… if only one day something would come of them.

Shami's birthday cake, and Ollie meeting Finnegan for the first time.

Lots of other things kept us busy in May, including doctors visits, more meetings with the school district, and sessions with Ollie's OT and PT looking at and trying out old dusty equipment that he might use in school next year. But we also had some fun, including visits from friends, a pleasant walk in the Cornell Gardens, a morning at the Farmer's Market, and a stop at this old train downtown, owned by a local bank. I think Ollie rather enjoyed seeing a train up close, and stepping up onto it with his dad.

I also took Ollie to the local science museum for the first time. It is an amazing place, and I looked around and absorbed all the incredible things there were for able-bodied children to do. I watched the enthusiastic kids running around, and eyed the parents busy attending to their kids and socializing with one another. I listened to all the chatter and excitement. Ollie and I would have had fun there, if our lives were different. But there were few options for Oliver to enjoy. Even most of the table-top activities were set-up in a way that wasn't wheelchair (or stroller) accessible. We did find this "Invisible Orchestra" where a camera would catch Ollie's movement and play music when he moved his arms or legs across a virtual keyboard. I took him out of his stroller, and laid him right on the mat, and let him wiggle around. I think it was fun for him to get that musical feedback from his movements.

April happenings

April was full of small happenings, including Nainai's birthday, a baby shower for Sean and Jeanine, an open house at the vet school, and more. And we had the occasional visit from Mariah, who walked down the street to play with Ollie. But it was a special treat when Kieran stopped by one day, and read a book to Oliver and Mariah.

In April the Cornell vet school had their annual open house. Ollie got to see all sorts of animals, big and small, scaly and furry. Don't miss the photo of Ollie Oinker and his dad ShaMoooo!

My friend Alex visited us for a weekend. Oliver loves her because she is really good at singing the A-B-C song! We had a nice stroll through the Cornell flower gardens with her. That was also the weekend we threw a baby shower for Sean and Jeanine.

We also celebrated my mom's birthday in April. Would you ever guess this birthday girl turned 81? She was hitting the balls out of the park!


Here she is getting ready to blow out the candles, and here is Ollie chillin' with his grandfather, since neither of them wanted any cake...

Finally, here's Ollie spending some quality time with Elmo, Grover, and his doll Davy.

Easter 2010

In April Oliver's Uncle Ian, and his cousins Eamonn and Molly drove down from Canada for Easter. Easter weekend was unusually warm, and we all spent a lot of time outside enjoying the mild weather. This was one of the first times Ollie had been on the swing since the snow melted, and he was loving it. Higher! Faster! More!

We had a belated birthday celebration for Molly, who turned six in March. Here she is with cousin Mariah. And here are a few Easter eggs I decorated.

On Easter Sunday there were several egg hunts. First we had one for the kids at Caitlin and Jamie's house. Then the kids had fun hiding eggs for the adults. And finally we "hid" eggs at our house especially for Eliza and Oliver. We put Ollie in his gait trainer, and we even got him to hold on to his Easter basket just long enough for me to snap a couple of cute pictures.

Oliver's uncle Sean is very much a tech gadget early-adopter kind of guy. He had pre-ordered an Apple iPad and was one of the first to get his hands on one. Here he is showing it off… and I have to admit, it was a beautiful thing to hold and use. We think we want to get one for Oliver, and are thinking of buying this one off of him when he upgrades - any day now!