Coffee

I feel like such a drama queen now. Zach appears to be back to his jovial self. Of course I left him in a heap on the ground with tears streaming down his face and something that sort of sounded like Momma coming from his mouth this morning. (No working Mom guilt there, eh?)

Therapist L. called to tell me he had a good session and that as she was exiting, he even said "coffee" as clear as day. Totally non-functional - but he was listening to the conversation between the sitter and the therapist about coffee and he chimed in. I love it.

Tomorrow was supposed to be his meeting with the school district to discuss what is to come, but with the stomach bug going around, I decided to cancel the meeting rather than wait and see how we are doing tomorrow. (I believe there will be several parties present, and I really don't want to cancel last minute with so many people involved. Just play it safe. ) This is probably a good thing, since I have done little in the way of preparation for the meeting.

Damned stomach bug is hitting me pretty hard. No more fever - but cannot tolerate much in the way of food. I basically want fruit all the time. Weird. Steve thinks he had the bug 2 weeks ago, and Sophie started running a fever again yesterday. What is with that? Zachie is better and that makes me feel good.

In an effort to give feedback, I decided to send a note to the county on Zach's progress. Here is how it read:

After all the work everyone did to get ABA in place for us, I thought I would send along an update on how Zach is doing. The "team" officially kicked off March 2, and there were some tears about all the new people coming and going. Nothing too bad that the therapists couldn't handle. After getting to know Zach, H. and I talked about what we would like to see Zach work on. We have been trying since July of 2008 to get him to point, and he did it with Steve when looking at a few books, but never any other time. We decided to start here.

Well, as of March 14, Zach began to independently point! We were shocked. I don't think we expected this so fast, likely since we had been working on it since July. H. and L. gave us and all the people who work with Zach (including 2 of our babysitters) instructions on how to carry out their plan - and it worked. I haven't seen my husband smile like that in a very long time; it was wonderful. He has been ill this past week, and fairly cranky (he had flu like symptoms on top of an ear infection) yet he has maintained the point. Sometimes he needs a little prompting, but he appears to be getting better at it everyday.

12 days to get something that we had been working on for 8 months. I am more confident then ever that Zach is getting the approach he needs and will continue to surprise us. We are so grateful to H. and L. that words cannot express. I think our OT para was even surprised. Our new SLP is open to seeing what this is all about, and we appreciate her attitude.

Please share our story with others (especially anyone who helped get us this team) that we have already seen progress and are very happy. If you ever need a parent representative, feel free to contact me.

-Leanne Morphet
very happy momma to beautiful Zachary