"Who is that?"

"It's William!" was his response when he saw himself in a picture just a few moments ago. Wow.

Test..

Me: "Who is that?"
Will: "It's Mommy."

Wow.

Another test..

Me: "Who is that?"
Will: "It's Sara."

Four years, 10 months, and 19 days to answer a W question. Written words cannot convey the enthusiasm and praise these responses produced. Huge progress this summer. I can't wait to see how he progresses over the upcoming school year.

I see...

The other day Will pulled my glasses off my face and put them on his own. He squinted as he tried to make sense of the altered images now focusing on his own retinas. I couldn't help but wonder if they were helping him. We've already learned his big sister has some visual deficiencies.. so logic would dictate William certainly might as well. But then I got to thinking about how on earth could we ever determine which prescription would be the best ones to correct his vision. It wouldn't be possible to get him to respond to the typical barrage of questions the optometrist would throw at him.. so how indeed?

It occurred to me that he could do it all on his own. He's so capable in so many ways other than verbal communication and it doesn't take him long to pick up on the idea behind a new task. I thought perhaps we could just put him in front of a table with various lenses on it and he'd try them all out, selecting the proper ones.. then properly use the provided tools to assemble them into the frame.. put them on and then walk out the door as if nothing even remotely unusual had just transpired.

Now to find an optometrist willing to give a four year old his tray of lenses to play with.. hmmmm.......

Kiss me....

In his usual fashion, Will came up to me today and shoved against my hip. When I turned to ask him what I could do for him he pulled me down and said "kiss me". So I did. Big smooches right on the cheek. With that he was content and moved on to his next planned activity. Yay for kisses!

Who Let The Dogs Out?

I've never seen Will laugh so hard. It's a good thing he wasn't drinking milk at the time because he would surely have had it coming out of his nose. The kids have been watching Rugrats In Paris.. silly movie but the six year old seems to like it.. and there is tolerance on the part of the other two.. so it gets played at least once a day for the last week, it would seem. Within the movie there are several high energy songs.. somebody obviously spent a considerable effort assembling the soundtrack for this little kids film, and this is a major motivating factor in me putting the movie on. One of the songs is Baha Men's Who Let The Dogs Out. On the DVD they included the video for the song as an extra. So there's been exposure to this song over the last week. No harm done.

Enter youtube. Tonight the kids were browsing for WordGirl and Cyberchase episodes and it occurred to me that the video for Who Let The Dogs Out must be somewhere on youtube.. after all.. just about everything can be found on youtube these days. So I ran the search and sure enough a couple of options came up front and center. One of them was obviously done by someone who doesn't understand what an aspect ratio is and how to set one correctly when producing analog to digital conversions and so I moved on to the other video that was near the top that appeared to fill the screen completely. Little did I realize at the time why the time of the video was less than the other.. but the artisan who produced this video had selectively sped up the audio on select areas of the video. So, unsuspecting, we begin to watch and ignore the horrible video quality.. but the audio plays fine and on it goes. Then the chorus hits and all of a sudden "who let the dogs out" is being questioned by none other than the Chipmunks. I thought it mildly amusing but this little four year old boy laughed harder than I've ever seen him laugh at anything before. We just had to run it a few more times.. but it's easily been an hour since the last play and he's still wandering around the house laughing out loud and giggling about the whole thing.. and singing the chorus on his own between fits of laughter. If you haven't played this for your kid you must try it. They deserve to laugh that hard too. Look for the version published by dohnut10.

The Little Things...

I understood a long time ago that my little wonder boy wasn't going to be developing along "typical" time lines. That's okay.. but it doesn't stop me from having the highest hopes for his happiness. When my little 4.75 year old dragged me to the corner this morning, globe ball in hand, and told me to stay there I was curious as to what was up. He then turned, took 3 steps away from me, turned back to face me and tossed me the ball. I then tossed the ball back to him.. and he caught it! Our little volley lasted no fewer than 10 round trips at which point our little game of catch was disrupted by his big sister. Now this might not seem like an activity worth writing about to most of you.. but to me.. who wondered if the day might ever come.. I am again astounded.

A New Interest

A couple of years ago we got this great little log cabin building set as a gift for Will and, although he enjoyed immensely watching any of the rest of us put it together, he had not yet ventured into actually assembling the cabin himself. We hadn't had it down off the top shelf in quite a while and so when he pulled me to the shelf yesterday and said "log" I thought that was sufficient to reward him with the toy. We set up a spot in the middle of the living room floor where we could work with it. It's cute.. just a little cabin with one door and a window.. and after assembled he will often put various figures in there.. you know.. because they fit. I think our school bus driver from this toy has been in there a lot.. and I'm certain fireman Elmo has also had his share of incarceration play time in the camp. Occasionally various cows and a giraffe will tend watch in the yard outside..

It's really just a 3D puzzle.. and a bit more complex than the jigsaw puzzles he's been so good at doing all on his own for years now. But there is a bit of thinking ahead involved in putting it together. Regardless, he's attached himself to this old toy in a big way and is having a blast putting it together.. and then tearing it down.. and then starting all over again.

Oh.. and I've definitely noticed a reduction in his verbal stims over the last couple of days.. lots going on in that brain of his right now..

Kiss It Better, Mom..

I had my hair pulled this afternoon. Not just your ordinary hair pulling, mind you, this hair pulling had purpose! Never one to shoot down my son's behaviors without an attempt at comprehension I went along with it.. although I do believe a small "ouch" may have been uttered in protest. What followed was astounding. William directed my lips to his finger.. which he had just injured.. albeit very mildly.. and wanted Mommy to kiss it better. Yay for hair pulling!