More adventures in Music Therapy - Hurray Progress!

So, I mentioned a few weeks ago that Alex started attending a weekly music therapy session. The kid who loves music, on his own terms - experiences some pretty significant meltdown issues with other people singing and clapping as mentioned here though we have most definitely seen progress that I'd mostly attributed to wii therapy. So, it was Wednesday and off we went to Music Therapy - it's only his 4th time going and he's been pretty consistent about what he will and won't tolerate. We've been bringing his ear-muffler headphones (pass me downs from Daddy going to the shooting range) and if it gets too much for him, he'll put them on. He can still hear with them on, its just muted significantly.

Well, today - mommy moment. I left the headphones back in the car and didn't bring them in to therapy. That sheer fact I forgot them illustrates just how much I wasn't thinking. It had been a crazy but productive day... First day of 2nd grade, getting little sister ready for her first day of pre-k tomorrow, missing glasses, and on top of that a meltdown because I went to "food coop" (food-co-op) pickup while he was school instead of waiting for him to get home. I did that largely due to time constraints and also because it was not far away from my local health food store where I had gone to pick up my order of DariFree Chocolate only to find that it would be in tomorrow due to the holiday. Before I headed out I peeled carrots, potatoes and chopped up celery, carrots, onions and some spinach and tossed it all into my crockpot to simmer all day with seasonings. I picked up some organic turkey and when I got home I sliced that up and tossed it in with some rice and let that simmer all day. I know - soup is kind of off season considering it is over 80 degrees here but Belle's most favorite food is soup (soupies!) and this was a GFCF dinner we all could eat (with a bonus of leftovers!). After getting home from food-coop I washed and bagged up everything in my green bags, blanched some greens and carrots to load up my freezer and then it was time for Alex to get home from school already - the day flew.

Anyways.. back to music therapy and the fact that I was an idiot who forgot ear protection. Alex was cooperative and 'playing along' mostly ignoring the singing while I tried to get him to make eye contact with the instructor and at least humor him and do a couple of the arm movements and move his lips a little. Well, to my surprise he started to actually singalong a little bit. Next came hands-on musical instrument time, usually he does great at this part and he did. Today they played the triangle. At which point I said to myself - where are the headphones... I need them now!! Wow was it noisy in there and I was getting a splitting headache. And then I realized - I didn't have them and Alex wasn't asking for them. He wasn't freaking out - he was fine. He attended for the whole 45 min session without any issue at all about the noise up until the very end. After singing the goodbye song, they cheered and clapped and he cried - it seemed almost phoney baloney but there were real tears. And the real tears watered up his glasses which made him cry some more until he politely asked me for a kleenex. One of the moms had one and he immediately cleaned his glasses and wiped the tear from his cheek and like a switch got flipped he was suddenly back to norm.

So, aside from the minor meltdown at the very end.. Major progress today!

Happy dance time :)