Oh, and another thing...

I was SO excited to take Jonah to speech therapy today. Any time he has a new trick, I can't wait to tell someone. Look! Autistic, but genius! Lately, he has been working with his magnet board, placing letters on it, and (correctly) naming the letters as he goes. Okay, Gabby can't even do that. They're two years old. Awesome, right? Nope.

Now it seems that Jonah might be hyperlexic. Honestly, I'm not even totally sure what it means yet. Something like, he's learning letters almost like he's seeing a picture or a shape, rather than understanding what they are and what they do. Precocious reading is, evidently, not good news.

My reaction? Come ON. Even the things that seem promising to me are in fact things that need to be overcome, minimized. I feel like I can't even trust my own reaction to anything he does without wondering... okay, is he sensory seeking or does he just really like to swing? Every little thing feels tainted. I'm so frustrated and madmadmad. I want to be able to just let him play how he wants to without thinking- okay, time to redirect- where are my flashcards?

I guess my mistake is to have any expectations at all. I keep thinking I know what we're dealing with and then something new comes up. And that, I guess, is autism. And if I'm being totally honest with myself, I guess I haven't given myself over to this "new normal" as completely as I thought.

Speech Fairy

While Elena doesn't know the whole score with Jonah, some differences are obvious to her, and his freakishly full schedule does not go unnoticed. I explained that he is having a little trouble learning to talk, so we are taking him to speech therapy so that a special teacher can help us teach him to talk. Somewhere in this process, she must have spaced out (no, really) or misheard me, but now when we take Jonah for his appointments, Elena says that we are going to the Speech Fairy. Which I refuse to correct because it is both cute and apt.

When we first started speech therapy about 8 months ago, Jonah could say Mama, Daddy and uh-oh and not much else. Now, we can go through whole stacks of flashcards, and he can name every picture I show him. More than that, it's like he was sort of locked inside himself, and Ms. K (the speech fairy) knew just how to turn the key and open him up to us. HE talks to ME. HE tells ME, "I love you" or "sweet dreams". Magic. It's just- she flipped the switch to "ON".

And he gets such a thrill out of this new "Hey, I can control the universe with my words" thing. Like, that's right Mama, I just asked for "more" puzzles like a badass. Probably the thing he says most is "good boy!" which we scream at him every 10 seconds for some reason or another, and he laughs and claps and is just 100% WITH us.

So, thank you, Speech Fairy. You can't imagine how much this means to us.

First Day of Preschool

Jonah was not so much a fan of the backpack. Fair enough. It was pretty heavy with all the first day junk and Gabby took several steps backward, windmilling her arms when I put hers on. Anyway, he quickly recovered and had a great first day. Both of them were all smiles when I went to pick them up, though it was suggested that they were a little troublesome during naptime. You don't say. Anyway, cute pics: