Numbers! & Shapes! Oh my!

The other night Caleb was in the bathtub and picked up his foam 3 and said "three" so the next morning when his OT was here I was telling her about it and she decided to use his magnad00dle and write numbers... he recognized and verbally said #'s 2-9! He is now saying almost all of the numbers. I cannot believe this! The amount of knowledge this lil boy has had stored away all of this time, is amazing me.

He is starting to point shapes out in the environment. We had lunch at Garfield's on Tuesday and he kept looking at the floor and saying "ref"(which is what he always calls squares...not sure why though?) He finds gurkels(circles), ovals, and gagles(triangles) everywhere we go. He now knows all of his shapes except the difficult ones (trapezoid, octagon, parallelogram)

Word List

Hi
Buh Bye
juice
apple
dadada(banana)
cheese
toast
oval
star
gagle(triangle)
circle
cookie
up
stop
yes
elbow
key
ball
bubble
balloon
glasses
"what's this?"
"ew stinks"

Pretend Play_Mickey Mouse

Caleb has been not feeling up to par...so we didn't venture too far today. We spent the majority of the day at home with Mickey Mouse! We put clothes on him, pushed him around on his motorcycle, he ate dinner with us, we took his temperature and we even put him to bed with a special blanket. After things quieted down and I was done doing most things with Mickey...I was so amazed to look over and see Caleb hugging Mickey and carrying him around..he even helped me put the blanket on him. :)

Recent Pictures

Here are some recent pictures of Caleb. He is turning into a boy, he is no longer a baby... although,he will always be my baby.

Update

So I have decided that I need to get better at posting on here. Things have been crazy, but I am going to try my hardest to post on here more often. I also need a place to document his progress, and share all of our ups and downs. Caleb was diagnosed with Pdd-nos(an autism spectum disorder) on February 3, 2010. He has a significant language delay and has a lot of sensory seeking behaviors. He is still the same wild, funny, sweet little boy we have always known, he just has an official diagnosis now.

Over the past year and a half, he has uttered a couple of words one time, but never again... I was very worried. But in the past month, he has made AMAZING progress. He is now saying, hi and buh bye, as well as waving. He also can identiy and label, star, oval, shoe, ball, cheese, juice, apple, bubble. Lately he has had a big interest in vocabulary books and even points to things and says "what's that" He loves to learn new things. He is not repeating or labeling too many of the things yet, but I know he is holdling them inside and it is just a matter of time until he surprises me by labeling it. Just the other day I was pointing and naming some things in a new book for him, and he started saying "bubble bubble bubble" and there was a bubble on the page that I hadn't seen yet. ::proud mommy moment:: Since his vocabulary and interest in learning new words has greatly increased over the past month, I haven't been using signs with the words. Just the other night he was finished eating his peaches and started signing -more-(first time).

We have a wonderful group of therapists that come into the home and/or daycare and work with Caleb. He has speech therapy, occupational therapy, and special instruction. I'm in the process of trying to get him wraparound services. He will be starting preschool in September, and I'm going soon to observe at a couple of them to decide what would be best fit for him.

Autism awareness is a big thing these days, but I don't think the average person can even recognize autism when they see it. But every one in awhile someone will give me one of those understanding looks; and for that, I am so grateful.