Life is too short to stay clean! |
Will is finishing up his first year of preschool, and he has made tremendous strides in his class. We recently had his IEP (Individual Education Plan) meeting, and it was a great meeting. He has some awesome teachers who raved about all of the things that he is now able to do and all of the progress that he has made. The goals that we set for the next year were such a far cry from the goals we set at his first IEP meeting last year.
DQ and a yellow shirt - life is good! |
To add to his list of milestones, Will is now able to skip! It is really cute to watch. He is also stringing words together into 6 or more word sentences, which is a miracle to see. He knows his name and loves to call others by their name too. He will repeat almost anything we say to him, although some of it is mumbled, it's so incredibly awesome to hear!
When he is unhappy, he definitely lets us know about it, by stringing together a bunch of words, some of which we can make out and others we cannot. He sometimes sounds like an angry person yelling at us in some foreign language, not caring if we know what he's saying because he just has to get it out. It's hard not to laugh at this.
Will still has plenty of things that he doesn't like to do, like eat food that we want him to eat, come inside from playing in the yard, share, or get haircuts (even if we bribe him with many lollipops).
The biggest challenge we are facing with Will right now is his rage when he gets angry. He used to only occasionally hit or throw things when he got upset, but it has become more and more regular. In a strange way, this is a good thing because it shows that he is aware of his own wants and needs enough to feel frustration when he doesn't get his way, something he could have never done before. However, he is not far enough along cognitively that we can talk reasonably with him. There is no saying "You can have the piece of candy you want right after you eat your dinner", as he is not able to understand "if-then" concepts in the way that a typical child would. We are hopeful that his bursts of rage are in large part a side effect of the current anti-seizure maintenance medication (Keppra) that we need to keep him on for at least another four months. After that, we might be able to decrease the drug or stop it altogether. We really hope that we can find a way to channel his anger, as it will be a major problem when he gets bigger if we cannot.
We have lots of exciting things happening for our family this fall. First, we are going to be having a baby, due in November! We feel so grateful to have reached a feeling of normalcy in our lives that we were able to think about expanding our family. Another exciting thing is that the boys have chosen to take a trip to Disney for Will's Make a Wish grant, and we will be going in September. We really wanted to choose something that money alone could not buy, and that would be for no other purpose but to put a smile on our kids faces - this trip will definitely fit the bill!
A few more good things - Will hasn't had to set foot in a doctor's office in over 2 months, and...still no hint of seizures!