January 2012

Oh my goodness, I've been horrible about updating the blog lately! I missed the holidays!

Biggest news over the holidays is we went with round 523 of trying of potty train Tyler but this time... it's finally working :) He is doing fantastic, even has a few completely dry days here and there. We take him potty every 30 minutes at home and at school. For the most part he goes every time, he's just starting to tell us when he has to go, sometimes pee but recently he began telling us when he has to go poo. Sometimes he's right in the middle of already going but what's good is he's recognizing it and letting us know. We had a secret santa that gave us an itouch and we added applications to it that Ty didn't have available on his IPAD and initially that was his reward for sitting and going on the potty. We also used an app called the Potty Journey (I think) about a little boy named Jacob and Ty loved the app. He actually started using the app to tell us he had to go potty and now he uses it to tell us what comes next, i.e. flush, wash hands, etc. Now we no longer need to reward his good behavior, he just gets excited at the fact that we are excited that he went potty. He's doing really great.

Santa visited our house on Christmas Eve. We had previously tried to go visit santa. A local brewery was having a sing along with Santa and pizza for kids. We were attempting to go there for dinner but as soon as we walked in we knew it wasn't going to work. The place was packed, no where to sit. Ty immediately headed for the kegs in the back room, either to get away from everyone or to get his drink on so that it wasn't so stressful, LOL. So within about 30 seconds from walking in we were headed for the door with two crying kids. One who couldn't get out of there fast enough and one who wanted to stay and see Santa. Ahhh the joys of having twins where one has autism and one is typical. So Ty and I stayed home and Dad and Ben went back and Ben had soooo much fun. There is a pic of him playing foosball, his first time. Since then, one of our neighbors gave us their old table so that he could play more often.

New Years Eve we followed the tradition of spending it wtih my dads side of the family. My aunt just built a massive pole barn and they threw a big bash, had a big inflatable, basketball, etc. Attaching a pic of Ty making a basket, he was very interested in playing basketball in the inflatable and the big hoop.

School is still going fantastic. He does all kinds of activities and worksheets on his own that always amaze me. Like he rolled two dice and added them up on his own, etc. The other day he really surprised me though. We were at home and he saw a january calendar that Ben had made in school. He then asked for a crayon/marker (by pulling out the bin in the closet) and then he wanted a piece of paper and he started writing out numbers in chronological order from 1 - 25. This is the first time he has ever wanted to use a crayon or marker at home of his own free will. He prefers to use his finger on his IPAD, so it's awesome that he was choosing to use a good old fashioned writing utensil and paper!

This was the first year that Tyler seemed to understand Christmas and be interested. He loved the ornaments (even broke a few) and loved sharing his thoughts with us by using his December page on the Dynavox. He'd point out rudolph, santa, lights, etc. whenever he could. He also would try to say Ho Ho Ho.... came out more like Ah Ah Ah but I knew what he was getting at.