October

We've had a pretty busy month here.  Stephen's grandparents were here visiting, helping out while I was very busy with school stuff, and occasionally leaving to do a little traveling on their own.  While they were here, Stephen's school had a day to kick of their "Read At Home" campaign, and the kids were supposed to dress as their favorite book character.  I don't know if any other kids in Stephen's class dressed up, but Stephen made an appearance as Captain Underpants!

We also had our annual class trip to the pumpkin patch/farm.  I love this picture because Stephen is just so short compared to his classmates.  They were looking at some pigs and piglets here...

We also spent some quality time at the amusement park, especially on the teacup ride, which is still Stephen's favorite.

This past Monday, we took Stephen in for another sleep study to see if we can get to the bottom of his early waking issues.  He managed pretty well until they had to put splints on his arms to keep him from taking off his breathing monitor - Stephen continues to hate having stuff on his face, so this was really hard on him.  It took him about 2 hours of crying "Bi-eeee" to fall asleep after that.  He wanted to be able to put "bitey" in his mouth to calm down, but he couldn't bend his elbows.  Apparently Mommy wasn't doing this well enough for him, bu I tried.  We did get enough information from the times that he was asleep, and should know in another 10 days or so what the results are.  In the meantime, we are going to visit with a sleep psychologist to see if he has any suggestions.

More stuff

We had Stephen's first Parent-Teacher conference 2 weeks ago, and he is doing really well - better than we were anticipating, actually!  As expected, it is hard to determine what Stephen is actually retaining due to his expressive language delays, but he has made a ton of progress already, especially in areas that we know he is struggling with.  His coloring and drawing are really coming along, and we brainstormed some ideas to make holding the writing utensils a little easier for him, as well as how to get him to work on tracing his letters (which he will do at home, but not at school).  His social skills have progressed the most (more on that in a minute), but the biggest surprise for us has to do with math.  Stephen has been working on drawing shapes (a math skill), and can correctly identify numbers 1-100 (!!!!) with about 45% accuracy.  Stephen is one of 3 kids (out of 8) in his class that are working on 1-100 vs. 1-20.  We are EXTREMELY proud, especially considering that Stephen has previously shown very little interest in his numbers.

Now, about those social skills.  We have always worried about how Stephen is going to develop and maintain good friendships without the ability to really speak to other children.  He is learning to use the iPad program more and more at school, but we still have a long way to go with it.  Well, it appears that we don't have to worry about it.  Stephen frequently seeks out 2 specific boys and one little girl to play with at recess. He LOVES to play chase, and is very good at taking turns being the chaser and the chasee.  His teacher was surprised that Stephen doesn't play with these children outside of school since he seeks them out to play with them so frequently.  We are very excited to watch out little guy grow.

Swimming continues to go well, as you can see.  Sorry about the blur!  He was using the noodle to give him a little extra support as he came up for breaths, since that's still an occasional struggle for him, particularly when he's tired.