Waited FOUR YEARS for this!!!!!!!!!

"I Love You" as recorded on 1/27/2008


Trey started saying "I Love You" this week, and its been so precious!!! We had to call Dorothy for him to tell her and she cried. :-)

UPDATE:
Here is a 2nd one - Trey saying his name, "Trey Boone". (He's said this for a month or two, I just hadn't gotten a recording.)

Trey and Meg

This was taken a couple days ago, its Megan in the new sweater I made her and Trey being goofy.

Crappy Photos

These were taken with my cell-phone, I couldn't find batteries for my camera... But - we had Trey's little bday tonight and it was lots of fun. The cake sorta sucked but Trey didn't care and that's all that matters.

The big fireball you see in the last pic is obviously his cake lol - it really wasn't that great of a show as it appears, the lack of lighting just got my phone camera all wacky. :-)

Trey's emotions during this whole cake was just fun. He was so overcome with emotion he at one point had to put his head in his hands and just stare at the candles. It was so cute.

Trey's Evaluation

Well, all went well at the evaluation today. Everyone was very nice and they went on and on about how much they really enjoyed having Trey visit them - but hey, we all knew that he's a sweetheart, didn't we??? :-)

They affirmed what we've known all along - he has excellent receptive skills - which means he understands everything that you say to him. His problem is apparently all articulation - the forming of sounds.

We talked to the psychologist about how she felt about Trey being on the Autism Spectrum, and she said that when she first met him, she immediately noticed that he had a melodic self-soothing sort of noise he was making when he was still nervous, but she also noticed this went away immediately. She went on about how he made good eye contact, had good imaginative play, interacted with the other kids, etc. She said that it's POSSIBLE, but at this time she says it isn't a concern to her, and if we still notice things at home (lining up toys, routines, etc.) we should have him re-evaluated in about 2 years - before he starts K or 1st grade. And as much as her reassurance should have been a relief, I still feel in my heart that he fits on the spectrum somewhere, even though I do believe its very mild. BUT - everything in my mind might change once he starts verbalizing more, too...

We have been working with Trey quite a bit one word at a time the past few weeks, and he spontaneously used the word CAR today - which was a HUGE breakthrough. His word for car is "blumb". He's used this word for probably a year. We started slowly, encouraging him to try to say "car" each time we heard "blumb". At first he was VERY resistant... And he would use the word each time we corrected him, but never spontaneously. Well, today, we were driving along the interstate and he said "dun car" (which means "lots of cars") and I was so excited. LOL

Although he's still working on "car", he's getting it, so we chose another word today to work on - "train". He can't say it yet, but he's at least willing to TRY to verbalize something other than "choo choo" which is HUGE!!! :-)

All in all, it was a good day - well, as far as Trey is concerned - the rest of the day was a total disaster, but that's a whole OTHER story...

Wearable ID

I had no idea it would be so difficult to find a good wearable ID for a child. We need to get Trey an ID that he won't remove and that's nearly impossible. The best things I can find on the places I've looked so far are Velcro. Most Autism sites recommend these, so they must be good. It's just recently come to our attention that he REALLY needs a way to get across who he is in an emergency. I thought about a med-alert bracelet, but I'm afraid they won't be small enough, his little wrist is only 4" around. So, I think I'm going to order a couple of these because they fit tiny wrists (2"-7") and don't have a med-alert symbol on them. I realize that he can take them off, but hopefully when (if?) he gets used to wearing it, it won't be an issue.

Having Trey has opened my eyes to so many things I never thought I would have to even think about. Honestly, its a whole new set of worries I'd never even dreamed of.