Leaps and Bounds

With all the real estate stuff taking up valuable space in my brain of late I've not updated about my little mate for a bit.

The school holidays have been a blessing and a curse for him. He adores his siblings but needs space from them as well, so has spent a fair bit of time locked away in the big boy's room by himself just stimming.

His biggest stimmy thing at the moment is extremely cute though... He's become obsessed with guitars and has a toy one, but even when he's not holding it he does the flappy hand actions in approximately the right positions and shakes his head and jumps. It makes him so happy!

The big news is that he has had a huge leap verbally of late! We've not been to speech over the hols and I've cancelled it until we move as I think the changes and stresses of the next few months will be more than enough for both of us to deal with.

But we have sentences!

First thing each day he walks around saying 'Goot Mording (insert name here)'. It is very formal and sweet. If he doesn't get the correct response he repeats until he does.

He was stung by a bee last week on his neck which has exacerbated his fear of flying things, but he's verbalising that too now: 'I heard a fly!'.

I'm understanding more than I'm not at the moment, and it is wonderful! He's also demonstrated some turn taking and interactive play skills very recently and it just fills my heart to bursting.

Oh and the awesome one... My sister bought him an abacus for Christmas with all the letters and numbers to ten on it. Today when I pointed at random letters he named every single one correctly. I've never sat and 'taught' him anything like that. My big kids couldn't do that at this age! His letter and number obsession is a little Rain Man-esque and may be a quirk rather than indicative of anything else, but gosh I am feeling very proud and hopeful right now!

The downside of all these leaps is that his sleep has deteriorated from bad to horrific, but I have a good coffee machine and will wear the eternal bags under my eyes with pride because he is making such great strides!

So so proud of my boy <3