I Love My Lips!

There's a Veggie Tales song that Larry the Cucumber sings called, "I Love My Lips!" Rather than a detailed explanation on Veggie Tales and singing cucumbers, let's just go with it's a Christian-based series for children that included movies, books and more. (And I was into Veggie Tales when I was in a high school ... guess I never discovered it as a child and just liked it when I did.)

Anyways, that's a pretty accurate description of Teddy's last two days. At OT yesterday, he was poking his index finger into peanut butter and then sucking it off. The idea was to focus on isolating and strengthening his index finger while keeping him motivated with food. (He's my child. He loves peanut butter.) Well, he got a glob of peanut butter on his upper lip, and he actually noticed it. He tried to figure out what was there using his tongue, and once his OT showed him a mirror, he was able to lick off the peanut butter.

Now, I get it's not remarkable for most people to lick food off their lips. But this was the first time I could recall Teddy noticing the feeling of having food on his lips and then maneuvering his tongue to get it off. For him, that's quite the accomplishment of cognition, motor planning and muscle coordination.

Don't get me wrong, the kid licks and sucks everything. Handle on the shopping cart. Yep. Doorknob. Yep. Heating duct in our basement? He even convinced his older brother to try that one. But to stick out his tongue to retrieve food from his lips was a first.

Then tonight during his bath, AJ was blowing bubbles in the water, and Teddy joined right in. His swim teachers have said he's blown bubbles a few times, but to be honest, I thought they were exaggerating what was really his attempts to see how much of the pool he could drink. But tonight was parent-verified bubble blowing.

It still feels weird to be excited about licking peanut butter off his lips or blowing bubbles in the bathtub, but I'm OK with weird.