Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Catching Up

Some days it's hard to figure out if Michael is progressing. Kinda of like- you can't see the forest for the trees. Today wasn't one of those days.

We missed last Friday's chelation session because of an ice storm. So, today I took Michael swimming at the gym. We used to go once a week before he started chelating. We haven't gone since August and that was his birthday party.

The pool is very big with 4 lanes. Many people do laps. Sometimes it's a challenge because Michael thinks it funny to go into other people's lanes. Of course today there was an aquafit class. Usually about 5-6 older, less active women jump around the pool with an instructor. In the past, Michael would distrupt the class- screaming and yelling. You won't believe what he did today.

Michael joined the class, followed the instructor and even counted down the exercises...5, 4, 3, 2, 1. When the girl said "keep going", Michael would yell "keep going". Everyone laughed. He did this for about 10 minutes. I just sat back and watched.

Then Michael comes over to me and wants me to do some laps. Ok. So I do some laps. Then he starts swimming (with a lifevest) next to me, in the next lane. We are having a race. And another. And another. We raced for about 30 minutes. He has NEVER wanted to race before. I can't believe we did it for so long. I talked him through it. "Michael is leading, Mommy is trying harder. Michael touched the blue first- he wins. Good job. Michael is in 1st. Mommy is 2nd. Michael is the winner."

I let him win a lot of times- trying to build his confidence. But, I also let him lose- so he learns to be a good loser. Or at least to not have a melt-down when you lose.

Then Michael started narrating for me. "Mommy is catching up!". It was so cute. One time we reached the wall and I won. I said "who's the winner?" and he said "Michael". I couldn't disagree with him. He is the winner- always!!!!

Oh another thing I noticed- he didn't run when out of the pool, he only tried to play with my hair once and he only tried to stim off the water drips once. He used to do those stims (hair and water drips) for most of the time he was in the pool.