Little Tidbits

We've been talking to Ethan about emotions lately. The understanding doesn't come easily to him but he's learning. Now when Anna starts crying (which is quite often, I must say, since she's such an emotional one like her mom) he'll say, "Anna sad!" Of course, he's only seen Anna cry (well, he must have seen ME cry, but I'm not nearly as dramatic with it), so apparently he is still trying to figure out that's not what you say when someone else cries. We were at his OT appointment and a baby in the other room receiving PT was just wailing. "Anna sad!" Ethan piped up with right away.

We've been talking about being mad too and the other day he went over to the keyboard and started making up this song, banging on the keys and shouting, "I mad! I mad!" in different notes, along with the music.

And now he's discovering the bodily function thing. But he jumbles them together sometimes, so for example he'll cough and then say "Ah-choo!" Or he'll burp and then wonder why he can't make it happen again, but he can cough if he wants to. I can see the little wheels turning, questioning.

His therapists are teaching him to comment on what's happening around him (like "mmm oatmeal good!") and they made a little game out of saying the wrong thing to make it funny. So, something like, "Do trains go in the sky?" and with just a little encouragement he's figured out to say "no" or actually "nope!" pretty quickly. He's started to get the hang of this and the nope comes more easily then a yup. But I can't tell you how much it means to have him answer a question. Dan said that today that it was so neat to feel like he was actually having a little conversation with him. Most of the time we talk to Ethan and it's rather one-sided. It's a lovely thing to ask a question and get an answer! I don't care how simple that seems. It's still making me smile.