It was a pretty nice day today and I’ve been feeling kind of bad that we haven’t really gotten Nicholas out anywhere because we’ve been so busy and when we’re not busy, the weather is lousy.  So, I decided to take him to the park for a while today.  Much to my surprise, he started talking to 2 girls there.  It was the first time I ever saw him actually initiate a conversation with another child before, much less one that he did not know.  Awesome!  🙂

Nicholas’s changes continue to be significant – we have a progressively different child from one day to the next since we started mb12 shots. (by we all, I mean parents and all 4 grandparents) We continue to see improvements in his speech every day. Nicholas has been consistently repeating what people were saying all the time, no matter how difficult the word, he attempts to repeat it – and we work on this with him when he shows the interest to learn the right way to say it. He continues to be interested in what other people are doing, such as helping put together furniture, etc. This interest has only come since starting MB-12. He’s now calling me “Mommy” all the time. He seems to be starting to “catch up” and going through stages that he missed along the way. Now he wants people to come and play with him – and is always calling me to come play. He tells people to “sit and play”. We also saw a bit of separation anxiety (with mom and dad) which we never really saw before, Nicholas only used to get upset when the grandparents were leaving. He says “please’ all the time – Iced Tea, please. Pasta, please, etc. He is interacting with kids at school, singing, playing etc – wheras before, he would just play on his own. He has blown his teachers away by coming out with 3 word sentences, “more fishies please”

After Christmas, we took Nicholas to Ohio, which meant dealing with an airport, security and the plane ride itself– he was unbelieveable and that is an understatement – I thought I would be facing a day of tantrums and the like – and what we had was a happy, little boy who rode the people mover so many times he started jumping on and off . You wouldn’t believe we had a 5 hour delay in leaving, leaving us stranded at the airport with few toys, limited food, etc. with the way he acted. Truly a testament that we have a different child from just a few months ago.

Nicholas is now selecting the movies he wants to see on TV – and is even putting the DVD’s in himself and hitting play. He was playing in the living room while I checked email in my office one afternoon and I heard the TV change from Thomas to this Zoo movie he loves – I thought my father changed the DVD, but then I noticed my father was sound asleep – Nicholas did it!

When we got to Ohio, Nicholas was one of the “group” – and jumped on the couch with a bunch of people he had never met before and cuddled and watched tv with them – like Mom and Dad did not exist at all. It was amazing to see.

We brought along a remote control helicopter as a gift and Nicholas flew that thing with no problem. It wasn’t an easy thing to fly – the 8 year old we bought it for was having trouble. Not Nicholas.

Last week – week ½, Nicholas’s appetite has almost doubled.

It seems as though Nicholas has been sick since October. He did start school at the same time, so I attribute his illnesses to all of the germs/bugs flying around the school.

Nicholas continues to show increased awareness to things around him which he never paid much notice to before. The characters printed on his cups and plates – he never saw them before, now he does. He can see from the exit at the school if someone is in the car waiting for him – and before he never cared to look. He spotted grandma and grandpa across a crowded restaurant, which amazed me because I hadn’t even seen them yet.

Before Christmas when we were putting up our tree, we had a bin in the hallway (with 2 bins piled on top) of Geotrax trains that Nicholas really wasn’t into at all. Before we knew it, he had moved the 2 bins and put together this massive layout down the hallway and into his room – he worked on it until 2am without making a peep. Just watching what he was doing was amazing.

His level of awareness continues to reach new levels. On Christmas, he saw the veins in my wrist going up my arm and thought it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. All the time, we see things like this…. things that were right in front of his face all along, but he never saw the “details” – my engagement ring sparkling, earrings in my ears, etc. While driving around this past week, I’ve been stopping to let him see the decorations on people’s houses – he’s actually seeing them. Our neighbor has a grinch blowup that has a tree and a dog – everytime we stop, he says – Dog! Tree! – what more could you ask for!!! Yesterday, I said “nicholas is in heaven with his new geotrax” and he yelled GEOTRAX! He’s been looking at the back of the box – and using it as a guide to put his tracks together — and he’s noticing that he doesn’t have all of the pieces in the picture – yikes – are we really almost to the point where he’s going to ask for a toy….???? Right now, I’d rather buy him something he ASKED for than eat, if that’s what it came down to.

So, we flew to Ohio on Dec 27th, to visit with some friends – and I had alot of trepidation about this trip, mainly because I had visions of Nicholas having one temper tantrum after another and being pretty much uncontrollable. Well, let me outline our trip to Ohio for you – given what we went through, Nicholas was excellent – I couldn’t have asked for a better kid!
We left the house around 4:30 pm for a 6:30 flight. We had to drop off a rental car with Paul’s colleage (and friend), so we got to watch the monorail come and go. Nicholas was loving every minute of it. Pointing up, yelling TRAIN. Saying hi and bye-bye to the train. He was in his glory. Then, guess what, we got to ride the monorail into the terminal. He was loving it. When we got to our terminal, he did not want to get off. Anyway, checking in and getting through security was not fun, but it could have been so much worse. We got to the gate and hung out for a while, got some pizza and just hung around. The flight was delayed several times and we didn’t end up boarding until almost 11pm. Thank goodness that our airport has these people-mover things – we took turns with Nicholas on them for hours. He loved how he was moving and the rest of the floor wasn’t. He was running down them, jumping, you name it. He even grabbed Uncle Mike’s laptop bag and took it with him on his people-mover adventure (and that sucker was heavy!) So, to break up the monotony, Daddy and Uncle Mike decided to head to the bar and get a drink. Nicholas was not having it. So they took him with them. Yep, 3 year old in an airport bar. At this point, who cares – you can’t smoke in the airport anyway, so no big deal. Nicholas finds a pretty girl sitting alone and goes up to her, moves her bag from her chair, climbs up on the chair and sits with her having a lengthy conversation. I wish I had seen it with my own eyes. Then, when he’s done, he gets down and blows her a kiss goodbye. Blows her a kiss?????????? are you kidding me?? we have never seen him do this. Yep, reserved for the pretty young girls he flirts with. Amazing.
So, we finally board the plane – and Nicholas is ready to go. He jumps into his chair and buckles his own seatbelt. Holy cow! He was asleep before the plane took off. He woke up here and there holding his ears and crying, but wouldn’t eat or drink – but we made it through. When we got to Ohio, it was really late and we needed to wait for our baggage. Nicholas got the biggest charge out of watching the bags come down the carousel.
Once we got to Mike’s house, Nicholas was quickly one of the family. He was chilling out on the couch sitting with Mike’s family, whom he had never met before. We were amazed.
While we were there, Nicholas played beautifully with their 8 year old son. Nicholas was great, joined in like he was part of everything that was going on – not just doing his own thing like we had seen so much of in the past. He was in the moment and enjoying himself. Amazing. We brought the son one of those really cool remote control helicopters from the sharper image and he actually handed the remote to Nicholas for him to take a turn flying it. Nicholas not only got it off the ground, but spent quite some time flying it, which is really no easy task. We could not believe it. Nicholas was a talking-machine. He would not let the other son’s girlfriend pluck his eyebrows – he thought she was hurting him. He was so protective of him, it was adorable. He spent quite a while cuddled up on the couch with their 2 sons – very cute.
Every day we feel as though Nicholas is becoming more and more age-appropriate. He’s playing correctly with toys the same way his peers are. He’s participating in circle time in pre-school, singing, dancing, doing hand motions to songs, etc.

Nicholas is a pleasure to be around, most of the time and getting out of the house isn’t such a daunting task as it used to be.

Last two weeks, Nicholas’s appetite has really doubled. He went from eating 4 chicken nuggets to 8 – same goes with his portions of pasta – almost doubled. I almost fell over when he gobbled down garlic bread instead of the plain.

Nicholas has become quite attentive and now wants us to actually play with him. He calls for Me (which he never did) and tells me to sit down and play. If I try to sneak away, he knows instantly. There is no fooling this kid.

His speech improves every single day. Nicholas has been consistently repeating what people were saying all the time, no matter how difficult the word, he attempts to repeat it – and we work on this with him when he shows the interest to learn the right way to say it. He says “please’ all the time – Iced Tea, please. Pasta, please, etc. He is interacting with kids at school, singing, playing etc – wheras before, he would just play on his own. He has blown his teachers away by coming out with 3 word sentences, “more fishies please”

He continues to be interested in what other people are doing, such as helping put together furniture, etc. This interest has only come since starting MB-12.

He’s now calling me “Mommy” all the time.

He seems to be starting to “catch up” and going through stages that he missed along the way. He says “please’ all the time – Iced Tea, please. Pasta, please, etc. He is interacting with kids at school, singing, playing etc – wheras before, he would just play on his own. He has blown his teachers away by coming out with 3 word sentences, “more fishies please”

Nicholas is now selecting the movies he wants to see on TV – and is even putting the DVD’s in himself and hitting play. He was playing in the living room while I checked email in my office one afternoon and I heard the TV change from Thomas to this Zoo movie he loves – I thought my father changed the DVD, but then I noticed my father was sound asleep – Nicholas did it! – Interesting tidbit about the Zoo movie. The whole movie is geared towards cows and milk, which he doesn’t drink. They teach sign language at the end and one of the signs is more milk please. Nicholas now says “more juice please” – he was smart enough to replace milk with juice – knowing he doesn’t drink the milk. Blew me away.

After giving Nicholas a dose of Olive Leaf Extract last night, he’s a different kid today.  By far, a different kid from the one I saw yesterday. 

 I got him to bed with no problem last night – he was out in 10 minutes flat (maybe even 5!) – and this morning woke at an un-characteristically 7:30am instead of 9:30.  He’s napping now, since he was up so early, but it has been a pleasant day so far with him – and I’ve gotta say, the last couple of weeks have really been hell for me with the way he was acting.

He sat on the couch with me and ate an apple, which he loves, but isn’t allowed to have because of the phenol issue – but he wanted one and he loves them, so I caved (and followed it with a no-fenol) – and he was just adorable.  As he was eating his 2nd or 3rd slice, his face under his lips and above his chin started getting red splotches all over it. 

I don’t see any obsessive, repetative behavior so far today, like I was beginning to see.  And, we’ve never really seen it before, so it was starting to freak me out.

 He woke up this morning with a red-eye.  his eyeball wasn’t red, but the skin around his eye was bright red.  It was gone a few hours later, but it was odd.  Like he had a black eye, except replace black with red.

I’ll update more later……..