Will is THREE!

Happy birthday Will!
I'm not sure quite how or when, but this sweet, darling baby
has managed to turn into . . .

this sweet, darling preschooler!

Here's some vital info about our favorite three-year-old:

* Looooves 'collections' of items. For a while it was a group of animals (two hippos, two rhinos, varying numbers of giraffes - see the picture above where he's reading a book to them); currently it's either his group of Woody and Buzzes or a group of vehicles. He totes the entire gaggle of items around the house with him, which is hilarious. The animals were usually just carried around, the various Woodys and Buzzes were pushed around in a box, and the cars/bus/trucks are moved from room to room especially meticulously - two at a time, about a foot at a time. Kept him verrrry busy one evening as he moved all seven or eight of them from the living room to the kitchen!!

*Still loves the alphabet and numbers. He can independently spell Mom/Dad/Clyde/Will and can identify a few other words as well.

*Favorite movies: Toy Story trio, Cars, Robin Hood, Madagascar.

*Favorite 'shows': Handy Manny, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Word World.

*Favorite foods: String cheese, oatmeal, cheese quesedillas, chicken nuggets, sweet and sour meatballs, yogurt, cereal, sandwiches.

*Super cuteness: Will has started saying "Ohh, baaaaby" - in the exact same way I've said it to him his whole life. He usually says this to someone mid-hug. It's insanely adorable. Also, if someone admonishes Will or gives him an answer contrary to what he wanted to hear, he says, "No, no" and then puts his finger to his lips and gently shushes them. Also, he really loves kissing. And he's got style; he usually grabs the person by their neck for maximum hold... we're (honestly) not sure where he picked that up, but it makes us laugh!

*Really into wrestling with Clyde. The other day I watched in a mixture of horror and pride as Will grabbed Clyde off the side of my bed (Clyde was attempting to climb up) with a tricky 'hug from behind' move and took him down to the ground, all in one sweeping motion. Then Will proceeded to sit on Clyde's tummy, bouncing up and down while saying "Bam! Bam! Bam!" Clyde giggled and wiggled free and went after Will for revenge.

*Has made sooo much progress in speech and occupational therapy over the last nine months, and now he will be transitioning to the Preschool program. We are so, so proud of him.

*Minus the few days earlier this month where Will decided to live up to his 'terrible twos' (thankfully it appears to have been a quick phase, knock on wood!), Will is such a delight and joy (and technically, he's still those things in the midst of a meltdown :) ). We consider ourselves very, very blessed to have been selected to be his family. I doubt I would have 'chosen' autism to be a part of our lives, but we recognize the sacred responsibility Heavenly Father has given us to protect and love and raise Will and we're honored to have been deemed worthy for the job. As always, we're grateful to have such great support networks (family, church, friends) that love Will (and us) too.

We sure love our sweet Will! - happy birthday baby boy!

Top o' the evenin' to you!

Remember how it's okay to blog about Christmas well into January? Well, it's also okay to recap St. Patrick's Day happenings a week after the fact! (Especially when the 'happenings' were nice and low-key).

We started our observance of St. Patrick's Day earlier in the week by wearing green to church on Sunday. As we got ready to head out the door, some of us were . . .

Happy!

And some of us were . . .
well, not.

And some of us were . . .
left to photograph ourselves in the bathroom.
(Incidentally, I've been doing this a lot lately... hmm, that sounds super awkward. Anyways, I've been keeping up with my 'goober goal' of wearing different outfits to church every week and I've done pretty well at photographing each outfit. Half the pictures are taken by Clyde, and the other half are self-portraits using the bathroom mirror. No worries, they will be made public at some point).

That evening, we were very lucky to have my dad come over for a visit. We get our Irish-ness from his side, so it was fitting!
Grandpa and Clyde

Grandpa and Will

On Thursday, we started the actual holiday off right with Lucky Charms.
Here's Will picking out the marshmallows :). My poor children are used to limited cereal choices of Cheerios or Life, so this departure was pretty exciting.

We all dressed in green, of course . . .

even Grandma Pam!

And I got to officially debut my super cool Lucky Charms shirt that I found at D.I. for a dollar.

Unfortunately, we had to sport all of our green attire at St. Luke's, where Clyde was getting an abdominal x-ray. We recently had an appointment with the pediatric surgeon for a check-up on Clyde's Hirschsprung's Disease, and they wanted a better look at Clyde's large intestine. Clyde was very brave, thanks in part to the new Star Wars book that Grandma Pam greeted him with!

That evening I had planned to decorate some cookies for our very nice neighbors. And then I got nervous about my powdered sugar frosting (I may have poured waaay too much milk in) so I switched to cupcakes. And then I got nervous about the fact that I was probably going to eat like half of them so I decided to take some to another neighbor too. And then I got nervous that St. Patrick's Day was going to slip away into the night before I had a chance to frost/decorate/arrange/deliver said cookies and cupcakes. . .

and then a super cute leprechaun knocked on my door:
Nicole, yay! She and Brinley came over for a visit, and I promptly put her in charge of frosting/decorating/arranging all of the treats. I put myself in charge of making a cute little card for each plate.

Then we quickly grabbed our wee ones away from the open Lucky Charms box in the pantry and stuck them in strollers, balanced six (seven?) plates of treats and went out on an hour-long walking tour of our neighborhood. Granted, it was a little chilly but we had lots of fun spreading a bit o' (whiskey-free) Irish joy!

A Sunday promenade

A couple of Sundays ago, we took advantage of the (relatively-speaking) beautiful weather and went for a family walk. . . . er, run.

It was a very fun adventure: we heard airplanes and birds,

we threw rocks into the water,

and then threw some more rocks into the water,

did some synchronized running,

took time out for a hug,

found a stick,

knocked on random garages repeatedly,

had our walking privileges temporarily revoked,

and peacefully protested via a 'sit-out' when it was time to go back home.

Personally, my favorite part of the family walk was that it marked the last appearance of Chuck's latest beard. He shaved that night and I said good-bye to Mr. Edwards from Little House on the Prairie and hello to my cute husband, hooray!

Cute boys, cute stories

Time for a round-up of random cute stories courtesy of my sweet little boys, along with random cute pictures of them lately.

But first, a shout-out to my beloved Savers, for these cute matching plaid shorts. I bought the first pair a year ago and then found the second pair a couple of weeks ago. I really love Savers.


* First story is from Will. More and more we're noticing Will's dependency on routine; it was a question that came up a lot during his various evaluations last year, and now we know why. He gets verrry agitated if things aren't how he thinks they should be - and since he isn't able to communicate the exact problem, I end up doing a lot of guessing until he calms down (i.e. one time I was feeding him his cereal with my left hand, and he freaked out until I switched to my normally-used right hand).

Anyways, one morning I was feeding him his oatmeal and we got two or three bites in when suddenly he refused to eat any more. I was prepared for another round of trial and error to figure out what the problem was, but instead he calmly took the bowl from my hands and set it down on the table. He then took my hands and placed them together, palms touching, and then folded his arms and bowed his little head. Yep, I had forgotten to say a prayer before he started eating! I quickly rectified the situation and then Will happily continued eating :).


* Now a Clyde story. Clyde is very aware that Will's brain works differently and that he can't often tell us what he wants or is thinking, and Clyde does an excellent job of protecting and helping Will (i.e. if we take something away from Will, Clyde protests as well, that 'Will wanted that! He wanted that!')

So the other day, Clyde wandered in eating the crackers that I had just recently given to Will. I raised my eyebrows a bit, prompting Clyde to explain, "Will just said he wants to share his animal crackers with me . . . in his head!"

Soooo glad my children have this telepathic connection, should make life easier in the future :). Oh, and I let Clyde continue eating them since Will's not a huge cracker fan in the first place, and Clyde definitely is.


* Which leads us to our next story, which actually lends some credence to Clyde's claims of Will wanting to share the crackers.
(I think Will has seen Toy Story too many times - doesn't this remind you of the toys hiding under the traffic cones to navigate their way across the street?)

Last Tuesday afternoon Clyde was taking a nap while Will had speech therapy. In an effort to prompt Will to say 'open', Cheryl put two Cheez-it crackers in a closed container. After Will (finally) said "Open, please!" and was granted access to the crackers, he carefully picked them both up and took them to his and Clyde's bedroom, where he carefully laid them next to Clyde's sleeping head. The two speech therapists and I almost melted, it was sooo sweet :). Of course, then Cheryl switched to fruit snacks, which Will definitely ate himself!



* For the next Clyde story, we'll return to the subject of prayer. First of all, Clyde's prayers are mostly focused on 'thank yous', which is great . . . except that instead of asking for things, he just expresses gratitude for them, thereby assuming he'll get them. He also has a pretty standard prayer, so lately I've been encouraging him to really think beforehand and include new things, so one night he added, "Thank you that we can visit the Smithses every week . . . well, every three weeks" and then the next night it was "Thank you that we can visit Elko every three weeks." Luckily, his concept of time is still a little fuzzy, so for all he knows only three weeks will have elapsed between our road trip last month and our upcoming one!


* Finally, Will absolutely floored both me and his occupational therapist, Gretchen, last week when as we were working on horizontal and vertical lines, he selected a black crayon and did the following at the bottom of the page:

It's a little hard to decipher, but luckily for us he narrated what he was doing . . .

"W . . . I . . . L . . L . . Will!" I was in shock - he has never attempted to write a letter before, let alone his name! He was so deliberate, and has now recreated it a couple of times, always making the 'W' by drawing three lines next to each other with a funny half circle either underneath or to the side :). It's obviously pretty difficult to have an almost three-year-old child who is fairly non-verbal, so we love seeing these insights into his mind and knowing that these amazing abilities exist inside him.

And that's how my boys have been entertaining/amazing me for the last month or so while we suffered through a cold February, hooray for March!

P.S. Later that day I realized something crazy: Will did this four and a half weeks before his third birthday. Clyde did the same thing two and a half weeks before his third birthday. Let's hear it for consistency! (Also, let's pity any possible future children for the expectations
they will have to attempt to live up to . . . )