Ainsley Plays With Giraffe Toy & Cool Beans

Putting blocks into the giraffe.


Playing with beans. Makin' a mess for mama.


Using her pincer grasp!

Today was a great day for Ainsley. She surprised me by making a huge developmental gain. I put her in the Bumbo chair and put the giraffe toy between her legs and a bucket of blocks next to her. I'd tried this with her in the past with much less success. This time she was able to lean over, pick up the blocks from the bucket and reach over and put them in the giraffe all by herself! She did one after another and then even reached into the giraffe to pull them back out. I'm sure it sounds simple and it is. But it requires understanding of what has to happen, a desire to want it to happen, the motor skills to execute it and the patience to persist when it doesn't come easily. Really Steve and I couldn't be more proud!

Earlier today I had her in the highchair playing with her tub of pinto beans while I was gathering pictures for Ann for the trach forum conference slide show. This is an activity that was recommended by her therapists (I did not come up with it on my own so don't sass me about making problems for myself.). The idea is to get her to immerse her hands in the beans to reduce tactile defensiveness. We have some animals that we hide in them (yes that's a pig butt you see) to try to encourage her to put her hands down inside. I have questioned the wisdom of giving an entire tub of thousands of beans to a 1 1/2 year old. Steve can barely stand it. It's kind of funny, actually. She usually just likes to swish her hands in the beans and send them flying, inspect the beans (using a pincer grasp, that's new too, yea!) occasionally pulling out an animal but today we moved on to DUMP the beans. Luckily I was right there and she's a little slow so I was able to stop her before the entire contents spilled to the floor, instead it was only about half. Still it's a job sweeping up hundreds of beans, but I do love that it keeps her happily busy for quite awhile (the fact that it counts as a therapy activity is a bonus). I'm not sure if this dumping skill is something she's going to start trying with other stuff. I'm going to have to keep a close eye on her.