Strengths

Jillian has always had strong visual perceptual skills. I think she knows this because she is completely drawn to creating and constructing things. Early on, she was great with puzzles. In fact, I was pretty surprised that at 2 1/2, she could whip out a 48 piece puzzle like it was nothing. She clearly gets this skill from Matt, because I cannot do a puzzle to save my life. Not my strong suit whatsoever (and really what in the world was I doing working on such skills with kids in my former life as an OT???). A couple months ago she got what we refer to as "candy legos" on our trip to LARK Toys. This is a cute little construction set that looks like various pieces of candy (licorice, peppermints, chocolate bars, etc). It came with a little instruction book with sample creations, many of which are complicated. Jillian effortlessly made every creation in that book exactly as it was shown. Lately she has been really excited by tape. Yes, I mean regular old scotch tape. Over the summer she would spend her daily rest time in her room with a pair of scissors, gobs of paper, and tape (I think it's pretty good that we only had one incident of cutting something other than paper--and thankfully it was just a princess pony that "needed a tail cut"). She made a miniature "stage" and a picnic set and tons of other things. I always have to be careful that I don't accidentally throw any of these treasures away, because you can bet she knows every creation and can tell if something is missing. So, that is a long back story to share a cute little ditty from today. Jillian's class is studying occupations this month, and the teacher invited parents to share about their jobs if they wanted to volunteer to do so. Jillian begged Matt to work out a way to visit her class and talk about radiology. Luckily, he was off today after returning home from another trip (more on that in another post) and he made it to school for a little presentation. One of the props he brought with him was his little skeleton "Bones". Bones has been around since Matt was young (I think he said his dad got it for him in Jr High) and has always been a fixture in any office space of ours. It was a fun tool to use to show the kids bones in the human body as he explained what can be seen via various imaging techniques (and then he showed them pictures of those). After he got home, Jillian really wanted to play with Bones. Bones is getting old (like the rest of us) and Matt told Jillian she could only  look at him and not play with him. So what did she do? Well, she created her own Bones, of course. She walked around the house collecting items to use, got a roll of tape, and sat down to create her masterpiece. It was touch and go with the tape for awhile (read she is short on patience, like her mom), but she was finally happy with the result and proudly presented this creation to us. Super cool, Jillian. I love this strength of yours.

It's hard to see everything, but one of my favorite features is a toy plastic bandaid cuff that she used for the rib cage.

Straws for arms. Oh, and in case you were wondering, a girl is most inspired when wearing a (torn at the hip) princess dress

Mr Potato Head earring for the pelvis, and toy corn on the cob and a plastic toy knife for legs. It's hard to see in the pictures, but there is a spoon to represent the head and neck. 

The inspiration for the creation