Nate at 5

- Such a sweet, wonderful boy.  He loves to give hugs and cuddles.
- Loves playing with friends. He's asked for his buddy Zeno from preschool a few times over the summer.

- His favorite place is the playground.  This kid loves to be outside.
- Still in love with Thomas the Train.  He's branched out a little to Chuggington as well.

- He loves his daddy!  He's so happy when he gets to spend time with dad at the end of the day. He especially loves sitting with his dad at the computer and playing what Nate calls, "Cars and Trains."
- He loves letters and numbers.  He's got such a great memory for those things.  He's even learning some sight words for kindergarten.

- Such a great helper.  We made chore charts and Nate loves to get his finished.  He likes to help empty the dishwasher, sweep the floor, and vacuum.
- He's not so much a picky eater as much as he just doesn't eat hardly a thing.  There are a few things you can get him to request seconds of though.  Spaghetti, pizza, and popcorn are his favorite foods.

- He's always been funny and he still makes us laugh so much!
- He got a scooter from Grandma for his birthday and he loves it.  He goes so fast!  I'm glad I bought him a helmet!

- He's doing so great with all of his therapy.  He's worked really hard this summer to get ready for kindergarten!  He's been doing 1 hr of OT, 1 hr of speech, and 6 hrs of ABA. And then he's been going to preschool on top of that!
- I finally finished making his weighted blanket and Nate loves it.  The first time I tried it Nate was having a meltdown.  Once I laid the blanket on his lap Nate immediately stopped screaming and laid down.  He laid there a good 10 minutes because he loved it so much. Now he sleeps with it ever night.

- Lately for bedtime he likes to have "quiet music" to fall asleep to.  Usually classical or instrumental music. He's his father's son.
- Still pretty small for his age.  He may be 5, but he just moved into 4T pants.

- Nate had a sleep study this spring.  He did not like being hooked up to everything while he slept.  I slept with him in his hospital bed and stopped him from pulling off wires.  Worst night of sleep of my life.  But we did get useful information from it.  And Nate's now started some sleep medication which means we're all sleeping better now.
- Nate and Evy love to stand on the coffee table, I mean, "stage" and sing and dance for us.  He's even got a few new moves that have us laughing!

- He likes to play pretend with Evy.  It's so fun that things they come up with to play.
- Nate also likes space, just like his daddy.  They like to watch rocket launches and play with Nate's rockets.

Man, I love this kid.

Nate at 4

- Still the funniest kid I know.  He makes me laugh so much.
- Getting to be such a big helper.  He likes to help with sweeping up the floors, grabbing Evy's blanket for her, and cleaning up (well sometimes!)

- Nate works so hard.  I can't imagine having to do all he has to at his age.  There are so many therapy hours.  Literally, our only free day is Fridays.  He really does work so hard and actually enjoys a lot of it.
- Just for reference, Nate does 2 hours of speech, 2 hours of OT, 1 hour of ESDM, and 4 hours of ABA a week.  And goes to preschool for another 11 hours a week.  He's a busy boy!

- After a really rough period, Nate is getting a lot better at being nice to his sister.  One day, I had them sitting side by side in a cart at Costco.  Evy started crying and Nathan put his arm around her and said, "It's ok Evy."
- I've caught Nate doing his hair with potty water.  EWWWW!
- Nate knows all of his letters, upper and lower case. I'm pretty impressed because I did not teach them to him at all.

- He's pretty good at counting too.  But my favorite has to be when he makes a mistake and calls 11, "Onie one" or 15, "Five teen" or 20 "Two-ty."
- I was reading "Pete the Cat and His 4 Groovy Buttons" to Nate at bedtime.  And Nate points to the buttons and says, "Thomas, Edward, Henry, Gordon!" For those of you who haven't watched one million hours of Thomas the Train, Thomas is #1, Edward is #2, Henry is #3, and Gordon is #4. Yes, my child counts in Thomas. I've caught him doing it a few different times.

- The things this kid says!  My favorite recently has been, "That's so awesome!" just like in The Incredibles with his hands in the air.
- Still loves his blue blankie.

- He has loved preschool this last year.  He likes riding the bus to school, he loves his teachers, and he's made some friends.  His nickname at preschool was "Mr. Responsibility" because he always made sure they followed the rules.  His teacher even sent me this picture one day of Nathan walking back into class from the playground holding hands with a little girl from his class.  His teacher said he had the cutest smile on his face while walking with her. Too cute!
- His favorite food has to be spaghetti.  He usually eats several plates which is a big deal when most meals he eats only a few bites.

- He's a little escape artist.  He learned how to open the dead bolt on our front door.  Luckily, you have to have a key in there to open it so we've just taken out the key.  But he knows how to open the sliding glass door to the backyard.  And how to open the side gate.  Which has now been zip-tied closed.
- Such a big fan of books.  He knows several books by heart.

- He loves his Duck, Duck, Moose jammies!
- He has such an amazing memory.  It astounds me.
- His 4 year stats are: 31.5 lbs (13th percentile) and 38.5 inches tall (14th percentile.)  He finally moved into 3T pants!

- Favorite things: space rangers (astronauts,) watching rocket launches with daddy, trains, letters and numbers, playing outside, riding his bike, and books.
- He has such a sweet little singing voice.  I love when he spontaneously starts singing.

Hooked up for his EEG

- While Nate has been doing so many incredible things, we have also been seeing a lot of things that have been worrying us.  Over the past several months we've had growing concerns about Nate's health and development.  We've been seeing a lot of periods of staring off.  You can talk to him and even touch him and he will not respond.  We've been told to be particularly vigilant for seizures since 1/3 of kids with autism will develop epilepsy sometime in their life.  While there are typical seizures, there are also absence seizures that quite literally look like the person has checked out and then they come back.  We were pretty scared that Nate might be having these kind of seizures.  Then started the crazy screaming tantrums.  I know Nate's just a little boy, but these were 30-90 minutes of screaming.  Like he was in pain.  Holding his head, sometimes curled up in a ball on the floor.  Nothing would stop them.  Nothing seemed to provoke them.  We think he might be having migraines.  Add to this Nate was getting progressively worse at sleeping through the night.  He'd wake up at 2, 3, 4 in the morning and could not get back to sleep.  For the next 2-4 hours.  So sometimes that meant he never went back to bed after waking up at 3.  He'd do this 5+ nights a week.  And if he did sleep he would be tossing and turning all night.  All of this was taking quite a toll on his development.  His preschool teachers were quite concerned.  Nate's skills started to plateau.  We added more therapy hours.  More things stopped progressing and in some areas he was actually starting to loose skills.  That scared me more than anything we've experienced. We went to see a lot of specialists during all of this.  A pulmonalogist for sleep, a developmental pediatrician for the developmental concerns, and a neurologist for the possible seizures and migraines.  Nate has lot of blood tests, a couple EEGs, and even a MRI.  And right now we're not really left with any specific cause.  Our neurologist warned us to be prepared that that might be the outcome of all this testing.  What we do know is it the EEGs have come back as normal so Nate is not having seizures.  His MRI was also normal so we don't have a cause for migraines.  His blood panels have all come back normal except that his iron level was low.  This low iron level was the cause of Nate's restless sleep.  It's taken months, but it's coming back up and Nate is sleeping better.  Way better.  And we've been trying an anti-migraine med for Nate. And amazingly he's doing so much better.  Maybe once a week instead of every other day.  And the side effects are that it makes Nate hungry and sleepy, which is a win-win in our book.  I'm really anxious to get him back in preschool in the fall and see how he does developmentally.  But we really are so grateful that he seems to be doing better in so many areas.
- Man, I love this kid.  He's so smart and funny and sweet and hardworking and I could go on and on. We really are lucky Nathan is in our family.

Nathan at 3 Years

- Nathan has loved trains for a long time, but he has recently discovered Thomas.  He has a new level of love for trains.  He can play with Thomas all day long.
- He is a little smarty.  He knows his last name and has been learning his letters.

- Nathan finished tumbling class a few weeks ago, but he loved it.  He'll try to do forward rolls on his own.  I think we need to find a new class in Colorado.
- With the move, he's said goodbye to nap time.  Sad day.  I will miss you.

- Loves to be outside.
- Absolutely a daddy's boy.  He loves it when Brad gets home from work.

- Nathan loves his sister.  He is usually so soft and nice to her.  He loves to come give her kisses on the head and seeing what she's doing.
- Nathan's IEP went ok.  There are things I'm really excited he is going to get and there are things I'm going to have to be ok with.  We decided to place Nathan in a reverse mainstream classroom, which means he will be in a class that has 50% normally developing kids and 50% kids with disabilities.  I've done a lot of research on what kind of classroom I wanted for Nathan and this is exactly what I wanted.  But since Nathan can't function on his own in a classroom yet, we have an ABA aide who will come to class with him.  I can't tell you how happy I am about this.  He'll also get pull out time for speech and OT.  The one thing I'm not super happy about is his OT hours.  Nathan showed problems in every area of sensory testing.  And yet he is getting less time for OT than he is getting for speech which he barely qualified for.  I'm hoping I can work something out with the new school district so Nathan gets more one-on-one to help with his sensory issues.

- Moved up from the 1st percentile for weight to the 23rd.  Yay!  All the extra calories and working with him to eat is getting us somewhere!  His stats at 2 years are 29 lbs, 2 oz and 35.5 inches (8th percentile.)
- Hates bathtime.  We still struggle with getting him in the tub and staying in there while we bathe him.  But we've seen little bits of progress so we're hoping he'll learn to be ok with bath time.
- He has such a great memory.  Sometimes I'm shocked with the things he remembers.

- Likes doing crafts with mom.
- He has recently been interested in the toliet.  Not in learning to go to the potty, just in playing with the toliet. One day after I changed Evy's diaper I found him shaking a pompom in the toliet, shaking toliet water all over the bathroom.  Eww, eww, eww!
- Nathan asks to go on walks all the time.

- He is really starting to repeats everything.  Time to really watch what we say around him!
- Nathan will also repeat phrases that he's heard.  He's recently been saying what sounded like "Friendenemy." We couldn't figure out where he would have heard it.  Until we watched "Toy Story" and he started singing along with "You've Got a Friend in Me."

- His hands have become super sensitive.  It got to the point were Nathan refused to touch food.  We're been working on helping his hands not be so sensitive so we've seen some improvement, but occasionally he'll still freak out when there is stuff on his hands.
- His hand sensitivity has pushed him to use utensils more and he's gotten way better at using them.
- He is excellent at playing by himself.  Which is great when I need to go nurse Evy or take care of something.

- He's getting better at following directions.  He likes to help mommy with his baby sister so I can usually get him to follow directions if it is for Evy.
- He loves his therapists. He still asks for them.
- Since our move he's asked a couple of times, "Blue car. Nathan house," meaning he wants for us to drive in our car to our old house.  It's taken him a while, but he's now understanding that Nathan has a new house.

- Things are always interesting with this kid around.  His mind works in such an interesting way and sometimes the things he tells us makes us laugh.  We sure love our little Nate Nate.

Nathan at 33 Months

- Nathan is talking so much!  It makes me so happy to see him getting to the point where he can express himself more.  He's starting to pick on verbs and emotions which helps a lot with his communication.
- I am so proud of him for learning to say the word "want." Usually he just labels the object he wants.  But he is now using the word "want" to express that he actually wants something instead of just labeling it.

- We went to this awesome indoor playground and Nathan loved it.  He had so much fun sliding, climbing, and swinging.  It was nice after being cooped up from the snow.
- When he rides his bike, he has to wear his sunglasses.
- Breakfast time.  We're sitting down eating French toast and bacon, both foods that Nathan likes.  Nathan had finished his portion of bacon and was asking for more.  I told him to take a bite of French toast and I'd give him more bacon.  He immediately put in a piece of French toast in his mouth so I gave him the bacon.  He then spits out the French toast and says, "Ooo, too hot."  He eats the bacon instead.  My son had just said his first lie in pursuit of more bacon.

- He loves being a big helper in the kitchen.
- He FINALLY figured out how to jump.  We have tried teaching him for months and months.  We got him a trampoline to help with some sensory issues, but he wouldn't jump on it.  Run on it, make it into a racetrack, play with toys on it, or use it as a place to take a nap? Sure.  Jump on it? No way.  We also thought he'd figure out jumping at his tumbling class.  Nope.  What finally made him decide to jump?  I have no clue.  He just hoped on the tramp one day and decided it was time.

- Nathan can sing his ABCs.  We also got him a new alphabets book to help him learn some of his letters. He loves it!
- Nathan has a little dinosaur puzzle where the puzzle pieces are big wooden dinosaur cutouts.  One day, Nathan set up the dinosaur pieces and said, "It's scary! Ahh!"
- Naptime is pretty much gone these days.  On rare occasions I can get him to go take a nap, but usually we just have quiet time, aka. Mom needs a nap time.

- Nathan's been a lot more cuddly lately.  We often find him climbing up to wherever we are for a snuggle.
- He's decided that ice cream is yummy.  He's had such a sensory aversion to it before that he usually spits it out immediately. Grandma let him try some while she was here and he loved it!
- Getting better at saying yes and no.  One of his therapists showed him a little video about yes and no and now he mimics it.  Everything now is "Yes, I do," or "No, no, don't."

- Nathan likes going outside to play with the snow.  It's so funny to see him moving around as best he can in his snow gear.  He loves to stomp in the snow.
- This kid loves his bus and putting the little people in and out of it.  I had Evelyn with me on the couch and Nathan came over and tried to pick her up saying, "Evy bus," meaning he wanted to put his baby sister in the bus.
- He is not one for staying in his pajamas all day.  He will grab the clothes he wants to wear out of his drawer and have me help him put them on.

- He loves building with his blocks.  He makes the greatest buildings.
- Recently Nathan discovered flashlights.  He loves playing with them.  Now if only he wouldn't shine the flashlight in his eyes.  Or his sisters.

- Don't let this smile fool you, Nathan HATES bath time.  He was just happy to be done. It breaks my heart to see him screaming when we say he has to have a bath, but he has to be cleaned sometime.
- He likes building forts with chairs and blankets.
- We've been trying to get Nathan to do thumbs up as one of his targets for ABA therapy.  He wasn't able to figure it out so we decided to try it later.  Well, Brad asked Nathan to do a thumbs up and he did it right away!  Anything to please dad.

- Everything now ends with, "One more time?"

- He has a few books he is "reading." And by reading I mean, he's memorized.  I'm pretty impressed with his little memory.  He can read "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?", "We're Going on a Bear Hunt," and several other stories.
- Nathan will come up to us and lead us to sit down.  Then he plops down between mommy and daddy.   He gets the biggest smile when he has both of us by him.

- He still thinks he is incredibly funny.  And we think he's been funny too.  Love that cute boy.

30 Months

That's 2 1/2 years old!  Is he really?  Here's a little bit of what Nathan's like at 30 months.

- We just discovered Nathan can sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." You have to sing really slow, but most of the words are there.  He'll even do little hand motions.
- "Stinpy." Same word for sticky and stinky.
- Somehow he has learned the word scary.  Lots of things are scary now. The cars are scary.  The blocks are scary. We don't think that he really knows what it means.
- After a long struggle again nap time, he's back to being my great napper.  Which mommy really appreciates these days.

- He calls this his "daddy shirt." It's probably his favorite.
- His speech continues to grow!  He says a lot more phrases now so that you can understand what he's trying to communicate.  His vocabulary was increasing a lot, but it was mostly nouns and I was a little worried he was just learning to label things.  Now since he is using phrases you can tell he's understanding a lot more of how to use language to help him communicate.

- His thinking face.
- New favorite food: canned pears!  We had some at grandma's house over Thanksgiving and now he's asking me for pears at snack time.  He gobbles them up.
- Checked in with his pediatrician and he's weight is doing better.  He gained 5 lbs in the last 6 months which means he's now up to the 7th percentile instead of the first.  He also grew 3 inches which moved him for the 9th percentile for height to the 31st.  He's been doing a lot of growing.
- He likes it when we do "Wheels on the Bus" and "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" together.

- Still a big Nemo fan.
- So in love with cars.  He plays with those all day long.  He has tons of little matchbox cars and a few bigger cars that he will play with forever.
- While Nathan likes going to nursery, he's been struggling a lot with transitions and sensory overload  while he's there.  One of our therapists actually offered to go with Nathan to nursery to help see if she could help problem solve.  One of Nathan's problems is doing a lot of pushing to start social interaction.  He doesn't do it to be mean, we think he's trying to actually get kids to play with him. When our therapist came she was able to redirect Nathan to have him ask for high 5s which has worked great.  He even had kids coming up to him asking for high 5s.
- Nathan's been great with the Christmas tree.  He keeps calling the red balls "apples."

- One night I was reading to Nathan a story when Brad came home from school.  Immediately Nathan was up and asking daddy to read him the story.  He really is a daddy's boy.
- Nathan threw a fit in the grocery store because he wanted broccoli.  Yes, broccoli.
- He can count to 10 but consistently skips six.
- Nathan plays this game we call the Awchew game, as in the sound you make when you sneeze.  You put something on your head, and then sneeze it off your head.  Repeat.  It makes him laugh so hard.

- I was in Home Goods looking for stuff for baby girl when Nathan started screaming for blankie.  I didn't have him with me and Nathan kept pointing after something.  So I let him down and low and behold he found a pillow that looks just like his blankie.  Yes, we came home with it.
- The monkey made it out of his crib today for the first time.  He would not stop throwing out blankie and doggie so I took them out of the room.  He got so mad he got out of his crib and came running to get them from me.  Now I hope he doesn't ever do it again.

- Still in love with coloring.  He's getting pretty good at it.  Today he drew a ghost with eyes and a mouth.  Can you see it?
- Finally learned to say orange.  Now we just have to get him to stop calling white black and then he'll know all of his colors.

Making French Pancakes for the first time.

- He absolutely loves helping me bake in the kitchen.  He's pretty careful not to throw the mix out of the bowl when he's stirring and doesn't try to put his fingers in the batter anymore.  He loves to count out ingredients and pour them in.
- He's a full on two year old responding to everything we ask him with "No!"

- He loves looking at books and having them read to him.
- Nathan was playing with cars in our room while I was putting on my makeup for the day when all of a sudden he stood up and asked, "Where baby girl?"  I don't know how he figured out to ask that, but it made me laugh.  I had to explain that baby girl is still in mommy's tummy.  I don't know if he understood, but he went back to his cars.
- Another great phrase from after his nap, "Oh no! I feeling sicky."

- He loves to play with all our pillows.
- Nathan loves to play his version of Hide and Seek.  It starts with him saying, "Now tount (count.)"  He runs off into the kitchen to his counting spot and counts to ten.  He then says, "Where mommy?" He then systematically looks for me asking himself if I'm hiding certain places.  His conversation with himself usually goes like this, "Shoes? No. Chair? No. Pillows? No. Toys? No. Couch? I found you mommy.  Now tount." And off he goes again.
- He's been showing so much more of his little personality with being able to speak more which is a lot of fun.  He's such a funny little guy.  He sometimes says things out of the blue that make us laugh. We sure love our funny boy.