Steady Progress

Last week, I gave Dominic a word search of the United States to work on.  He knows about 30-35 of the capitals, so when I asked him what the capital of Missouri was and he didn't know, he went into his pile of puzzles (on his own), fished a puzzle of the United States out and said, "Jefferson City!"  This may not sound like a big deal, but I was so excited.  Dominic didn't ask me to give him the answer, but rather found the answer himself!  With Lauren heading to college in about a month, she has been "training" Dominic to take over her dinner "duties." She has set the table and helped me get the plates to the dinner table for as far back as I can remember. When we used to serve Dominic first, he would start digging in and be almost done by the time I sat down to eat.  Since he started helping me about a month ago, he takes his plate to the dinner table last. We are still teaching him how to keep the plate level, because last week when we had spaghetti, some of it almost landed on the kitchen floor. Well, spaghetti noodles are a bit slippery! A few days ago, Dominic brought over his toy telephone and said, "looks like a Wheel of Fortune."

He was pretending that the dial was the spinning wheel, like on the show, Wheel of Fortune (which he watches pretty much every night).  It was pretty awesome that he did this, because this type of "pretend" play has been and continues to be challenging for him.  Since Dominic made his First Holy Communion at the beginning of May, we have worked with him on how to behave inside the church. Each week, we see slow, but steady progress. This past Saturday afternoon, about a 1/2 hour or so before we left to go to Mass, I saw Dominic go into my purse, pull out his "Mass Book" and then sit down and review the prayers before we left.

He did AMAZING at Mass and we continue to be so proud of him. This evening, Dominic and I met with a new speech therapist. She comes extremely highly recommended and I can see why - she was great! She is going to start the first week in August giving him private speech therapy with the hopes of integrating him eventually into one of her "social skills" groups. I am super duper excited about this opportunity for Dominic! Stay tuned for updates :)