Sue and Asha reminded me tonight that my blog is getting moldy on page two or three so I thought I'd brush it off and bring it back to page one for a while. Here's what going on in my neck of the mountains:

Patrick began his Rhythm Study- therapy today. His brother took him because I had a meeting at work that I couldn't escape. He came home with homework, which is what he is working on as we speak. I am manning the timer for him.

What this therapy consists of, is a desk-sized poster with numbered circles on it (evenly dispersed on the paper). The name of the game is to touch a pre-determed circle with the beat of an electronic metronome. He does this for 30-60 seconds at a time with a minutes rest between sets. He repeats each set 10 times, then he moves onto a new pattern.

The first two sets, he just htouches the same circle over and over with the beat. The other patterns he goes back and forth between two numbers. The more complicated the pattern, the slower the beat- at least so far.

He will be doing this therapy everyday for the next two weeks. The benefit of this therapy is better accuracy, control and range of motion with his arm and shoulder movements. They say they have had very good results with the therapy so far.

They also gave him a mitt used for constraint-induced therapy, even though he wasn't ready for that study yet. They are simply encouraging him to wear the mitt as much as possible. I am afraid he really isnt ready for it, he tried to wear it while eating today and ended up taking it off so he didn't starve. I know the premise is you wear it and force yourself to use your weak hand, but I really think he needs a bit more control of his hand first. I am afraid this will frustrate him now, so when the time comes he IS ready, he won't be willing to try. We'll see what happens...

I had a good day overall. The boys bought me new picures to hang on the wall of our soon-to-be-ours home. Luckily Patrick and I had already talked about the pictures, which one we both liked, so they did well. We then went to dinner and picked up some dessert to bring home. Since brandon's birthday is Wed, I requested that they PLEASE don't get me a cake for mine today.

Speaking of that, I have to go. Italian lemon cake is calling!

Kristen