Progress!

It's been forever since I've blogged (told you I was bad at keeping up with it).  I just wanted to make a short post to talk about James' progress!  He is doing SO wonderfully with the help he gets in the developmental preschool.  He is doing better at communicating verbally and his tantrums (they're more than tantrums--we call them meltdowns), while they still happen frequently, are much easier to calm (most of the time).

James and I had the following conversations (the FIRST conversation we have ever had!) a few weeks ago:

Me:  James, what would you like to eat?
James:  A sandwich.
Me:  A sandwich?  What kind?
James:  A peanut butter sandwich!

I cried.  He has never had a conversation with me before.  In the past he has either just repeated the question or just plain ignored me.  He is getting SO much better verbally.  Even something as simple as answering a question with yes or no instead of repeating the question is a huge deal to us, so you can imagine how ecstatic we were when he answered these questions directly.

The developmental preschool is doing wonderful things for him.  They are not only teaching him and working with him while he is at school, but they also give us ideas and tools to work with him when he's at home, which is an enormous help to us. 

In other James news, he will be starting a special needs t-ball league in a couple weeks!  It is called the Bambino Buddy Baseball League, and the special needs kiddos are the bambinos.  Each bambino has a buddy with him or her to help hit, run the bases, throw the ball in, etc.  The buddy is usually a middle school or high school baseball player.  Bless these players' hearts!  It really humbles me to see older kiddos willing and excited to work with special needs children.  I think this league is going to do great things for James and we will have so much fun as a family doing it!  I can't wait to watch my little man playing t-ball.  Count on more tears.