After five days of hotel livin’, the place is still standing!
As soon as we arrived we did some Rhema-proofing:
-Removed all the wall hangings
-Removed the lamps
-Removed the phone
-Put child safety locks on the doors
-Installed a video monitor in her room
-Removed the swivel chair (after she spun herself silly all night long)
-Removed the clock radio (after she jammed to hard rock at 2 am)
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Rhema’s teacher Courtney created a “Portable Picture Activity Schedule” for us. It consists of a large bin containing five shoes boxes with some of her favorite activities – books, puzzles, legos, etc. The outside of each shoe box is labeled with an icon for a particular activity. Rhema has a binder that has a matching icon for each activity. She has learned to take the icon from her book, match it to the icon on the shoe box, and then open the box and play with the contents. Most of the activities are close-ended so that she knows when the activity is complete (for e.g., once she’s assembled a puzzle she knows she’s done and needs to clean up ). After she cleans up, she returns the icon to her book and moves on to the next activity.
I’m enthralled watching Rhema go through her Picture Activity Schedule. She can do this independently. She rarely needs any prompting from me, and she is so focused and purposeful as she works her way through the schedule. I can sense that she’s proud of herself as she does it, and she appreciates the order and predictability. I’m grateful to her teachers for patiently teaching her how to follow a schedule because there was a time when Rhema did not know what to do with herself at home. Anything she did required my supervision and direction which I just could not always give. The lack of structure at home resulted in a lot of stimming and a lot of messes.
We have big plans for capitalizing on activity schedules and helping her become more independent. We’re thinking of an activity schedule for the morning routine that includes brushing her teeth and dressing herself. Yeah, BIG plans. It may take a while, but I’m confident that she can learn to do it. This girl is always surprising me…
Speaking of surprises, we found one in the hotel pool the other day…
I’m not naming any names. But I should have been prepared after reading JoyMama‘s post about the all-natural, super-power, no-fail laxative a few weeks ago… and what my friend Carrie refers to as “laxa-swim.”
It seemed like all of the hotel guests were out at the pool that afternoon. Kids played water games and beamed each other with Nerf balls. The old folks conversed with one another in their lounge chairs. Others quietly sipped iced tea and lemonade in the hot sun.
Then Hope announced dryly,
“Mommy, there’s poop in the pool.”
I laughed self-consciously and dismissed her. Rhema and Hope take baths together and poor Hope has grown quite used to the fudge in the tub. Now the poor child thinks every brown thing she sees is the evil, smelly stuff.
“Surely,” I said loudly, “there’s just some debris in the pool.”
“Nope. It’s poop,” she said matter-of-factly.
I waded over to where Hope was pointing for a closer look.
Hhhhhmmmm…
