Week 2 of CIMT

Connor is doing AMAZING!  I knew he would I just didn't know what results we would see.  Connor has a lot of function in his right arm and hand to begin with.  We have been working so hard for months with the serial casting and OT and PT and everything else.  I was always afraid to keep the cast on him for more than an hour and I always felt like I had to constantly entertain him while he was in the cast.  Connor is doing so great he just goes off and plays by himself with hardly any help.  I caught him playing with the shape sorter bucket this morning.  He was able to get all the shapes into the holes with no problem.  He takes the shapes out of a Melissa and Doug clock and puts them in a Little Tikes Mailbox I put up on the train table to make him have to reach for it.  He is constantly picking toys up and putting them in buckets containers.  He pick up cones and puts them all over the house. He is on the floor playing with Thomas doing trains. 

He has gained strength in his hand as well. He carries buckets of magnet letters from one room to another.  We have these accordion plastic tubes and him and Thomas play firehouse with them.  Connor is able to hold on pretty well.  And all the things we have been doing for strength he has gotten even better with.  The pegs in the play dough, pulling Velcro fruit off the Velcro catch mitts. He is an ace! 

Then there is the spoon and his pincer grasp.  Last night we went to dinner with friends and he was grabbing quasadillas out of our friends hand pretty high up with just his two fingers.  Totally correct position too.  Goldfish and other small items, no problem.  As for the utensils, there is still work to be done but he is a determined little guy.

This is Connor and his friend sharing some dinner.

We tried out that pincer grasp with Raspberry picking this weekend.  It would have been a great activity if not for the thorns.  Oh well. T.J. and I picked and the kids would run bucket so of the fruit back and forth between me and T.J. to fill up our buckets.  Connor was eating them by picking them up with pinchy from our palms.  What a mess he was by the end.  Thomas was much more excited about the apple picking.