Guess who?

Guess who has been holding his breath to put his face in the water at the pool?

Yep - THIS guy! He did it once at swim lessons last Thursday, and his teacher was very proud of him, and then we went swimming again on Sunday, and he did it about half a dozen more times. We are very excited!!
In other exciting news, Stephen has made some huge progress in the speech department! Now, I don't know what he is doing at school in Speech, but at home, we are hearing a lot more spontaneous verbalizing, and twice, he has called me Mama, with no prompts. In fact today, I was telling him our plans to go run an errand, and he said, very clearly, "Mama Mama Mama!" When I asked him who Mama was, he rolled his eyes (yes, the almost-five year old attitude is very much present in our house!), and pointed at me, and I could almost hear him thinking, "Jeez woman, YOU are my mother - I KNOW that!" He has also been making motor noises when playing with his cars, and when we took the wagon out for a long walk yesterday. Awesome.

Stephen has always shown such an interest in reading and letters, but I was having trouble engaging him with flash cards (but I know we'll use those again down the road), so I found a free Sight Word App for the iPad. He is doing really well with that! Given the choice of two different words, he will select the correct word about 90% of the time. I'm not sure if he really recognizes the word, or if he puts it together based on the beginning sounds, but either way, it's wonderful!