What all we've been up to

Wow! The last couple of weeks have just been jam-packed with activity! Stephen continues to do really well with swimming, and Erik and I have been taking him to the pool on Sundays to practice his moves - and it has been paying off! Our biggest challenge continues to be getting him to close his mouth in the pool. He is just so excited and happy, that the big grin is constantly plastered to his face when he's in the water - the perfect size for letting in a good bit of pool water! He has been doing really well with his kicking and paddling, though, and just this weekend, we were able to convince him to relax enough to get in to the floating position. While my parents were here, we built a train table for Stephen. I'd seen many online and in stores, but none were quite the right size for Stephen's train set. He will also be able to use this for Legos, cars... whatever he wants! The really big and exciting thing that we have been working on lately has been communication with the iPad. We started out using one program for about 2 weeks, but it became to difficult to program, so we switched to a program called Proloquo2go. Here's what the screen he uses looks like:

He is doing very well with it, but is better so far at tapping than swiping, so I have to make sure he has the correct options available whenever we are using it to talk to each other. Today, in fact, he did a little bit of spontaneous "talking" with it. He hadn't wanted to eat the oatmeal I made him for breakfast, so I asked him if he watned something else, and he used the iPad to say "I want something to eat." I asked him if he wanted a Nutrigrain bar, and he answered, "yes, yes, yes." We are primarily using it so that he can answer questions right now, and he's really starting to get the hang of it!

Stephen continues to be more and more independent. He has taken to going to the pantry when he wants something to eat (usually Teddy Grahams or Vanilla Wafers). He opens the doors, gets what he wants, closes the doors, and brings me his "prize."

Last Friday, we went to the zoo with some new friends to see the new Elephant exhibit. I'll get pictures of that next time, but it was QUITE impressive!

Stephen was very engaged with the animals during this visit. Usually, he'll go see them for a few seconds, and then he's ready to move on. This time, however, he really wanted to watch the animals - especially his favorites, the gorillas!

His new friend is a little girl named Audrey. If you can believe it, she is actually THREE, but she is very tiny. I'm not used to seeing Stephen tower over another child to that extent...

I loved this picture, because both kids were so focused on their drinks, and completely oblivious to the otter doing water acrobatics next to them! Stephen and Audrey really hit it off, and Stephen even tried holding her hand a couple of times.

So it's been a fun, and busy couple of weeks around here! I don't anticipate it being any less busy any time soon, but I'll try to be better about updating.