Mo

Mr N's therapist has been trying for days to get him to say "mo". She got him to say "ma" a few times, the goal is to just improve his vocabulary even with small imitations. Today just minutes before she left she gave it one last try even though he was walking out of the room and had been a stinker for the last 30ish minutes. He said "mo" for her, she was so excited. I love that she gets genuinely excited when he does a task she requests. I think a lot of therapists would just write it down and move onto the next task.

Mr N hasn't been super cooperative this week, hasn't been doing his work very well when his therapist has been here, but when she is not here I work with him on various things, he says more and more words for me each day. I don't think the stinker has ever done touch head for his therapist but he does it for me several times a day along with touch nose and is now doing touch mouth, too. I'm hoping he gets some rest this weekend and is ready to start next week off with some good work. I love hearing when the therapist says he's gotten intro mastery on a program, that makes me a proud mama.

My precious Mr N loves the outdoors. We spend a good part of our day outside. We typically have breakfast outside or eat it then head outside. The kids play for a couple of hours while Mommy works, then they have lunch and sometimes watch part of a movie, then we head back outside until his therapist arrives. Even during therapy we spend time outside doing various activities. His therapist has geared a lot of stuff towards the outdoors since he loves being outside. The last two days we took a walk during therapy, yesterday we collected bugs and Mr N said "bug" for the first time. After the therapist left today we went for another walk and he said "bug" again unprompted. This evening we were outside for a bit after Daddy got home and the deer were in the yard and Mr N pointed and said deer. I love when he shows off his blossoming vocabulary for Daddy.

This morning we went to the hardware store for wire so I could finish building the fence around my garden. Mr N loves going to the hardware store because they have two fountains at the front of the store with rocks in them. He loves moving the rocks back and forth from fountain to fountain and playing in the water. The people there are so friendly, if the fountains aren't on when we get there they turn them on for Mr N. A lot of times when we go to the hardware store Mr N will stay at the front with the fountains and the owner or Dan watches him while I get the stuff we need, but today the doors were open and there was a new kid working the counter so he had to stay with me while we shopped. He did say hi and bye to the new kid.

After lunch Mr N wanted a popsicle and while I was opening it he started hand flapping in excitement. It was such a poignant reminder of his autism. Sometimes I still try to convince myself that he isn't autistic. Then there are the painful reminders like hand flapping. He doesn't do it super often, certainly not every day. He also had a rough wake up from his nap today, it wasn't as bad as it used to be, but he still woke up crying and was hard to comfort and settle down. He wanted to go sit in the car and get buckled, he sat there for a few minutes while he calmed down.

It really is days like today that hurt my heart, especially after he's had a string of good days, days with his autism not showing as much. Today it was more obvious. Now he's sleeping peacefully, my sweet, beautiful baby boy.