May 2009 Update

Bad, bad blogger. No update for over a month. It has been a crazy couple months with lots of business travel and busy weekends. But there is a lot to catch up on....so here goes.

We have been making tons of progress in the speech and language areas. His letter recognition gets better and better, and he knows all his numbers and most of his colors. Words (and attempts at words) are coming more and more frequent. He will help us say the ABC's...if we say "A" he says "B" then we say "C" and he says "D"...and so on. Maybe not perfect everytime - but we are just making huge gains.

He's also pretty good with the number 3. If we ever have to tell him something more than twice - like let go of the dogs tail - we tell him once, and then say "ok, Hayden...1, 2, ....." and he will pipe in with "3". How do you discipline when it's so cute. He also gets so excited whenever he does something right as far as letters and numbers go - and when we say "good job" he just gets the biggest smile and starts clapping. What an awesome feeling.

Just this week we also had another amazing thing happen. Hayden's OT at school sent us a note home that said he wrote the first letter of his name - an "H" (duh, right?). She wrote it down - and he took a pencil and did it himself. I read the note and got a tear in my eye. How awesome is that.

Soccer started again. Hayden is playing in his second season. First day wasn't all that great - we maybe had a good 15 minutes of actual playing time....he was just so exhausted by the time soccer started. He seems to like getting up no later than 6:30am everyday.

We missed the second day, but on the third day we got a helper that I think is really going to be good for Hayden. The whole soccer program is for children with special needs, and the get kids from the community to volunteer and help out.

Well on this day we got a volunteer who spent the entire hour with Hayden. When he didn't want to actually kick the ball or learn to dribble - his helper would just sit on the sidelines and talk and play with him, tickle him, do just about whatever Hayden wanted. This kid had such patience and just seemed to enjoy hanging out with Hayden. It was great because I actually got to sit back and watch while he played. It was really great having that feeling of watching your kid play sports - even if it was just sitting on the sideline watching the other kids play. We will for sure ask for this helper each weekend.

As mentioned in a previous post we had some worries when it came to the ECDD program in our school district. How such great things can be accomplished when the public pulls together. For over a month weekly emails, phone calls, and meetings with school board members and school administrators resulted in a victory. The district eventually realized they couldn't get rid of special ed programs - but they had also wanted to get rid of the special ed director. Well at the April meeting, the board did not even make a motion to discuss the possible termination of the special ed director. With so much concern from the public - the board acted in our interest and I think for the betterment of the district. We still have some financial issues in our district - but I think they can be worked out.

That's all the updates on Hayden for now. I do want to say a little note for my Buppa (grandpa) who we lost on May 2nd. He had been sick for sometime and had been back and forth between a hospital and nursing home for the better part of the last 4 months. I miss you and love you Buppa...say hi to Nana for me.

God Bless