As I said in my previous post, Austin has been considered a nonverbal child. He might have said one word a month, if that. We have improvements in the last month. He says go, go, go consistently. He says mama fairly often. He has said other words one time; mine, touch, yummy, vacuum, ha ha, get ya!, no, puh for pull. There's usually a good story when he does say something.
One of the best stories is when he said touch. My sister was watching him at her house and he was in a bad mood so she took him outside to play in the rocks because he loooooves that. He was playing with them and then tried to sit on the step in the deep end of the pool. She didn't let him because he was in his clothes and didn't have his floatie on. He took of running to the steps of the shallow end and went into the pool! Kristi went in after him to get him, but his head went under for a second before she got to him. She showed him how he can touch in each step and then where he can't touch anymore. After this he said....t-u-ch, touch.
Yummy story - My friend Mandy was babysitting him and gave him some cheesy bread. He asked him if it was yummy. He said u-m-y, ummy.
I am sooo thrilled with his progress in speech. I am excited to see it continue. One of the other major changes we see is his interaction with his brother. Austin has paid very little attention to Bryant up until now. Now he wants to interact/play with Bryant but just isn't sure how to yet, so he goes and rolls on him. We have to watch this pretty closely, but Bryant isn't a little guy anymore so that helps. Sometimes when Bryant is crying Austin will go and get him a toy and lay it beside him. He has even taken a toy and put it to Bryant's mouth. Bryant is teething and chewing in everything right now. Pretty impressive Austin even noticed that! Austin is also very aware now of when Bryant is playing and has a toy. Austin gets jealous and likes to go take it away from him and then just lay it down. Not one of the improvements Im as excited about, but at least he's noticing more!
Before school started I met with the director of his preschool to see about him going more hours. She was so great and helped us a lot. Austin now receives an hour of one on one therapy before his regular school day starts. He used to go at 11:15 and now he gets to go at 10:15 for more theraoy. He gets out at 1:30. I am working on getting him an aba therapist that will do approximately 20 hours of therapy with him a week. Hopefully this works out soon. The company I am working with is interviewing an applicant this week!
Those are the main highlights of our last (just over) a month since stem cells. I can't wait to see what the next month holds. Such an exciting time!
Here's the first picture I have taken with both my boys in the same picture and smiling.
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