huge steps forward

The last several months have been very busy for our family. Lots of adjustments and changes happening, especially for Marshmallow. He has been in the full swing of many things now for a few months and has been making amazing progress with his goals.

Marshmallow has been doing ABA therapy with Kay for about a month now, as far as the program actually being implemented during the sessions. Kay spends about 4-5 hours five days a week at our home working with Marshmallow. He has been doing amazing with her and really been growing. He is already breezing through some of the initial goals that were set for him, and starting on some new ones. The biggest change for him lately has been how aware he is in his surroundings. He now will identify things in his environment and verbalize them to us. Where before he would only identify for needs or wants. But now he gets excited about seeing butterflies in our backyard or the cow as we drive by or a tree along a walk. He is discovering the world around him and it is amazing to see. He is constantly building his vocabulary and learning new words. He also now can identify his shapes, among other things.

Marshmallow is still going to speech once a week and he has been making huge steps in therapy there as well. They are working on him saying 2+ word sentences. The main phrase right now is "I want ______" and just getting him to verbalize that in a sentence verses just one word statements. They have also been focusing on him saying multiple syllable words and saying each part of the word. As he cuts syllables out from words or does not finish words. So we focus a lot of our daily communication on him getting each part of a word, instead of just the approximations he normally does. Marshmallows speech has really been growing. He is also now "singing" along with us during his bedtime routine and will request things during the songs. He gets much more specific now when talking and using more words. It has been truly amazing to watch over the last couple months. Today he came up stairs to get me because the doorbell rang. He told me "mommy, come down." Then when I got to him, he told me "Doorbell, open door." He will also now say "thank you" all by himself with no prompting when he gets something he asked for or you help him. Such huge strides from a year ago, where he was still barely saying words!

Preschool has been going great as well. The school year is now over and his teacher had all good to share about him always. He is now in a summer program at a daycare/preschool and going 2 mornings a week. He is in a younger class for now, until we can get him fully potty trained. As to move up he needs to be potty trained, which they are hoping to move him up next week! So that has been a huge focus in our home over the last couple months. He actually has only had one accident since he started here in May. Now our focus, will be on getting him to initiate asking to go. He will go if taken, but still will not initiate 80% of the time. We just need him potty trained by end of July so he can start at his new preschool for the new school year. Marshmallow seems to really enjoy school and has certainly learned a lot by going. His new teachers are very impressed with him and constantly tell me what a good listener he is and how he is very well behaved. I am very grateful to have such great feedback and no issues have come up yet. We were nervous how he would do in a typical class verses the special needs class. This has definitely reinforced our decision to pull Marshmallow from the developmental delay public school program and put him in a typical preschool for next year instead. I think he will do just fine next year, he will just be behind his peers with certain things. But that is okay. We are looking at having Kay go to school with him a couple days a week as well, to help him in the classroom and to help him with interactions and social norms. Still trying to figure out how to get that approved to happen.

Thanks to my mom coming out and being the Grammy to the rescue. Marshmallow is finally sleeping in his room. With no issues at all. He has only had one bad night since this transition almost 2 months ago. We now have a set routine for our evenings and his bedtime. That has helped a lot. He knows exactly what to expect and has helped limit some of the night time meltdowns. We just have to stick to the routine and most of the time all goes well, with a few hiccups from time to time. Grammy really helped with a lot of our hard transitions for him. She was a huge help in getting the potty training ball rolling and dumping the diapers. I am very blessed to have such an amazing mom who was willing to really help with some of these tough battles for us and fight them for us.

Marshmallow has also become a great helper. He absolutely loves to help me cook and bake. So I try to do something with him every few days that he can help with in the kitchen. He now also will help with the dishes, rinse them off and put them in the dishwasher. Anything he sees us really doing, he also wants to do. So helps with a ton of things. I use the term help loosely, as I have to redo things after him. But I am very happy with him helping even if sometimes makes it a little bit longer of a process for me. He is learning and growing. I only want to encourage that and certainly not hinder any of his learning. It is so great to see him wanting to be involved with us and be independent. It really has been like the shades are lifting and he is so much more aware of everything around him.

On top of all those, Marshmallow is now a BIG BROTHER. Marshmallow has been handling that change very well. He is slowly warming up to the fact he is a big brother. We think he is understanding a bit better about who Skywalker is in our family. He is starting to get a little more interested in Skywalker and will get a little closer to him now. He will kiss Skywalker on his head at bedtime and tell him "night night." So that is still an adjustment, but is going very well so far. We have gotten Marshmallow to actually hold Skywalker once. Hopefully, he will want to do that more and interact with him more. I know it will just take time, as with everything else.

Basically, Marshmallow has been amazing us over these last several months. All the therapy, along with preschool, has really been helping and we have been seeing Marshmallow make amazing strides in his development. Seeing all the improvement just reinforces that everything we are doing is exactly the right things for Marshmallow. All the struggles to get to this place has been worth each and every battle. I am very excited to continue to see him progress in the coming months!