Hodge Podge of Goodness

It has been a little while since I have had a deep, insightful, well-articulated post full of inspiration, or outrage, or quiet contemplation. 

And it is gonna be a while longer, because that ain't for today.

Today is a Brag Fest, an opportunity for me to just go on and on about how excited and proud I am of my J-man.  To tell you all the little things that he is doing that, when added together, feel like really big things.

Books

I'll start with books.  As you may remember from eons past, I have been woeful of J-man's complete lack of interest in anything book-like.  Not only does reading books with your child promote literacy and a love of learning, it also is an excellent joint attention and social communication event, and the fact that J-man had zero interest in it made me sad.

And dare I say it.... I think those days are gone.  Dare I dream?

It started about a month ago. With Christmas a mere 5 months away, we started receiving toy catalogs in the mail. I handed one of them to J-man and pointed out the toys.  Toys... his interest was peaked.  Pretty soon we were sitting down, looking at the catalog together and he was pointing to the pictures and I was labeling.  Then, he started to imitate my words.  Then, I could point to a picture and he would tell me what it was. 

We have now, offically branched out to real, honest to goodness books.  They are simple stories like the series by Leslie Patricelli, with lots of opportunity for improv, emotion, and engagement.  He now anticipates what the next word is.  He is "acting out" scenes.  He points to words and says them (in his "apraxic-Martian" way).  And most importantly, he wants to read books with me!

Games

He is starting to play games with us.  Simple games like catch and stop-go-race.  But today.... ah, today... I witnessed a game-miracle.  Today at speech, we played Cariboo.

Twice.

There were an awful lot of J-man 'my turns' and prompts to let us be involved, but he did it.  Twice.  He said words for each door, followed simple directions, and did some very basic turn-taking. 

Pretend Play

With Halloween merely days away, I bought J-man a Superman costume.  He adores it.  Adores!!  He insisted on wearing it all the time.  He 'flew' around the living room, holding the cape out to make it "blow in the breeze".

It was hard to get a picture because
he is faster that the speed of light!

So then I went back to the center of the universe (Target), and bought him a Spiderman pajama set.  It also has "wings" (I didn't think that Spiderman flew, but whatever), and he 'flies'.  He also makes his Spiderman doll fly as well.  And Ironman.  And Buzz Lightyear.  He has a thing about flying....

And he refuses to take this one off either.



Off to Speech. 
This would look weird if it wasn't Halloween

What makes all of this so very very grand is that he wants to do each and every one of these activities with us and he makes tons and tons of 'social sounding' or word attempts all the time.  We still have miles to go, but the road seems to have gotten a little less uphill.