This past weekend, we saw another set of changes in Nicholas – they seemed to all happen practically overnight.

– He’s now into watching Toot & Puddle and when he asks to watch it – he sings it like the intro to the show.
– He woke me up this morning by knocking on his bedroom door. When I knocked back, he said “come in” He proceeded to come downstairs into the livingroom and hop onto the couch and I headed to the kitchen to make his concoction – he starts talking to me – “mommy, what are you doing?” “Mommy’s making your juice” “Juice please mommy” “Yeah, Nicholas I am working on it.” “Thank you Mommy” A few minutes later, I hand him his stuff to drink. “Thank you mommy” “Get dressed?” “Yeah, let’s get dressed” “Need pants and shirt and socks and shoes” “Yes, let’s go pick some out” He follows me up to his room to get the clothes. We come back downstairs and I told him to get undressed – he did with practically no help. I put his shirt over his head and he did the rest. I put his feet in his pants and he did the rest. The whole time he is telling me about what is on TV. Toot did this, etc. The whole exchange lasted over 30 minutes – I have to admit I felt like I was in the middle of a dream. Nicholas’s speech has really been taking off – but this kind of exchange just was not yet happening.
– He regularly asks, “what are you doing?” and then will join into the activity. He helps clean (see males can actually do it! LOL), he loves to help wash dishes, he helps hang clothes and do laundry, he helps carry stuff (even the heavy stuff I try to have him not do, he does!) and there’s more that I can’t think of at the moment.
– When he gets off the bus, he immediately has to show me what is in his bookbag. He starts telling me about how he painted/colored whatever is in the bag and what colors he used.
– When I ask him what he did at school, he tells me which teacher/aide played with him and what they did.
– This past week, one night, he was really upset – he was yelling at his father. Yelling. All of it completely crystal clear. It was that tantrumy kind of upset yelling, but he told him exactly why he was upset.
– He sat with this therapist for over an hour doing one activity after another – no need for him to get up, play with something else – she was astonished at his speaking.
– He answers yes/no questions extremely well. I have not noticed a gap between me asking and him answering. He’s now answering “yes” questions with “sure”
– He is not interested in having the TV constantly on even if he is not watching it.
– If I ask him if he wants to do something or wants something and the answer is no, he is saying “no thanks mommy”
– If I say Thank You, he says “your welcome”
– He has started to tickle instead of being the one being tickled

Sometimes I look at Nicholas and just get the overwhelming feeling of he’s different again, not anything I can even describe – but when my husband comes in and says things like “he’s different again” – I know I am not imagining things.

Nicholas has been doing really well the past several days. He has replaced “uh-huh” with “sure” – which is very cute. He has been saying “that’s better” when finishing something that was missing a piece. When daddy came home the other day, he addressed him by name (we cracked up) instead of saying Hi daddy.
Today, I started cleaning out my closet – and he hung out with me for a few hours – just talking to me while I was working, asking me what I was doing – no TV or DVD in sight. Then he was watching Daddy play his Star Wars Wii game.
Over the past few days, he was content just sitting and watching a movie with us – not any of his shows, movies for us.
His receptive language has gotten much better.
His obsession with playing in the sink has greatly reduced to once a day, if that. (Evidence that there is a god. 🙂 )
He called Grandpa yesterday, asked him what he was doing and then told him he was helping mommy with the garbage.
He wants to know what everything is. “What’s this?” “what’s that?” and when I label the item, he repeats the word.
He wants to know what I am doing all the time – “Mommy, what are you doing?” – and then will want to help me do whatever it is I am doing.
His asking for a new diaper is getting more consistent. I really wanted to work on potty training during this holiday break, but I just never got to it.
Having little conversations consisting of “hi, how are you?” “I’m good”
Starting to answer “what’s your name?” with “my name is nicholas”
When playing with his new kitchen, he tells me it’s lunchtime and he’s making lunch.

I’ll update this post as I remember more.