"So what high school do you go to?"-pssssh I sometimes wish I were back to my high school days with no worries.
"So what do you do?"- explain that I am a grown up with all my grown up responsibilities. :)
"So you work every weekend? That must be tough"- my response explained how early we had little man and that this schedule works out best for him and his therapies. Then the words came out, "he has autism".
I was kinda shocked at how easily I said those words to a stranger that I was just getting to know. Several seconds after I said the words, I felt my heart flutter. I am not sure if the flutter was from me still adapting to speaking those words about my own child aloud or if it came from all my worries over the last several months. Either way, it was my reminder that "WE GOT THIS" and we will do the best we can just like we have done the last 2.5 years.
* My new autism puzzle piece awareness necklace *
I could focus on all the lining stuffed animals up over and over preventing him from going to sleep, repeatitvely walking or crawling a particular pattern while clicking his tongue, obsessing over all things Elmo, routinely stacking the same 3 colors of blocks in the same order, putting the animals inside and then outside the barn over and over, obsessively opening and closing the doors, etc but I choose to focus on the positives. For example, we heard those 3 beautiful words "I love you" for the first time before he went to bed the other night and he is consistently saying it every night! Those words trump all of the behaviors we see and deal with daily! I tear up every time I hear those words coming from his sweet voice. His language is starting to bloom and we are ecstatic about it! The other day he was sitting in the backseat babbling away to himself and then just started laughing! Laughter heals all, and listening to his adorable laugh makes my heart so happy. Another positive is that he is continuing to improve with his eating! He is steadily gaining weight while he still receives 2 gtube feeds/day. We are hoping to cut another gtube feed within the next few weeks, assuming he continues on this path.
*Lined all of his things up then pretended to nap*
* Snacking on some yummy apples in North Carolina*
Connor's ABA therapy is twice a week right now for 3 hours at a time, we are hoping to increase to more hours soon. Feeding therapy is going well even though the little booger barely touches his food when we are there. Speech therapy is also improving, he consistently named every animal presented to him this week! He actually let his occupational therapist do hand over hand with the scissors to cut a piece of paper today! Most of the time he gets defensive when trying to do hand over hand, so that was a big deal. Connor continues to be very active during Early Intervention so I just recently changed his schedule to hopefully improve those therapy sessions. Whew, I think that is all the therapy updates for now :)
*CHEESE....in Connor's world this must mean stick your tongue out!*
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