Nice Day at a Clay Pottery Place

My brother came to visit last week and he and his family are staying with us. It has been really nice for both Jonathan and Vanessa as my 3 year old niece loves to play with them. Jonathan and Illy play really well together. And Vanessa and Illy have become best friends. Really cute. Jonathan tells the girls what to do and they do it. Illy is not as not as defiant as Vanessa can be at times. Vanessa has now the tendency to tell Jonathan that she doesn't love him or ignores him, and that breaks his heart.

Jonathan is very loving lately. Today he told me that he loved me very much and he wanted to give me a hug as soon as he got out of the car. Later he looked at me and told me that my hair looked good and he loved it. Just little things like that that make a huge difference.

My brother gave his wife a Nintendo Wii and Jonathan really likes it. He is getting really good at Tennis and Bowling. He didn't like Baseball and Golf as much. But the games are hard and require good coordination (you play standing up) and concentration. So I am thinking about getting him one for his birthday.

At Tae Kwon Doe he did really really well today. It has been about a month since he started and he already learned all the moves and the names of the moves. And he does everything the instructor says. What I liked seeing is that the instructor would give a 2 to 3 step instruction verbally and he could follow it perfectly without having the instructor repeat himself or even correct him. During concentration time, he can close his eyes and meditate for a couple of minutes. But he does not sit straight. I need to work with him on posture. And when he kicked the instructor's hands (per the exercise), he did not put his hands up properly. I need to work with him on that too. The other thing I noticed is that when he was told to sit down on the side, he did but he rocked himself. And he rocked hard. I need to research why. He has been very hyper lately. He rocked while watching the instructor and paying attention. So it is not as bad as when he did it and sucked his thumb and dove into his world. It is more like an "ADD" type of movement where his body needs constant input to self-regulate. But he is doing it more lately than ever before.

Today we went to a pottery place and he painted a telephone bank. Daddy helped. Jonathan really liked it.

He still has the tendency to say things that have no meaning. He can tell me an entire phrase of actions that have no meaning. Perhaps only to himself. I cannot even tie them back to a movie. And the other thing that is driving me crazy is that he screams when he speaks. He cannot regulate his volume. I fine myself asking him to speak softly every 5 minutes.

I am documenting the items that he still has trouble with so I can look back and compare. But he is truly doing amazingly well. He is talking and playing and fully engaged all the times. He is also making very nice connections in his brain and remembers things that he never cared for in the past. He can tell anyone now what Santa gave him for Christmas. He can tell time better (before, now, later). He asks very good questions. He is starting to ask how things work. How is a complicated type of question. It requires abstract thinking and imagination to understand the answer. And his DAN! said that that is a milestone. We are getting there. He already asks how he can get something done, but how something works requires that the person is analyzing something and using the imagination to try to figure out how something works.

Still taking all his supplements. No changes.

Jonathan and cousin Illy playing

Jonathan and Daddy at the pottery place painting a telephone bank