We’re doing New Year cards instead. Coming soon!

Stationery card

View the entire collection of cards.

(I have really been slacking on the blog lately. Sorry about that — I’ll try to do better!)

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2011

The woman who runs a local parenting blog asked me several months ago if I would write a guest post about special-needs parenting. That’s a pretty broad topic, so I took my sweet time thinking about how I wanted to approach it.

I finally came up with a draft to send her, and within a few days it was up on her site. Within a few hours of that, it had spread all over Facebook and racked up all kinds of lovely comments.

Go check it out!

Joe’s speech-language pathologist has been working with him on communicating a desire for one thing over another. She tried using recordable switches, but he seemed more enthralled with the button itself and the sound it made than whatever toy or reward it got him.

So yesterday, she set out laminated photos of toys he’d seen before: two that he didn’t care about much (a stretchy Elmo and a yellow ball), and one that he adores (a “blue squishy thing” — none of us were sure what to call it!)

After a few tries, he got the message that touching the picture of the toy he wanted would get him the toy itself. Eureka!

2008: Bee Ennui

2009: Little Stinker

2010: The Lion

2011: Gnomeo!

Awwwww.

For weeks, Joe’s stepping has been mostly of the “left-right-left-fall down” variety. He eventually made it up to seven steps, which was his record as of yesterday morning. By that afternoon, he had managed 16 steps at school, and another 18 in physical therapy!

Today, his teacher sent a note home saying that he’d taken 30 steps!

We haven’t gotten any of these sudden spurts on video, but I did catch this little milestone at PT yesterday: Joe let go of one surface, shuffle-stepped toward another one, and then moved over to it. Hands-free transition!

I don’t know why the audio didn’t pick up, but at the end you can see his therapist say “That’s awesome!”

We’ve been having a lovely fall weekend!

Yesterday was the Festival of India, where Patrick and I stuffed ourselves with samosas and kachori.

Today we went to the pumpkin patch at Boulevard Flower Gardens and picked a winner. Joe enjoyed the hayride and tolerated our incessant photo-taking.

Definitely a little taller than last year:

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Joe is very much enjoying his second year at school! We were nervous at first, with a different teacher and building than last year, but both of them have been wonderful.

Miss Deena, his teacher, is great with him and sends sweet notes home every day:

His bus driver, Miss Theresa, is driving him for a second year now and loves him to pieces:

And he has a couple of new classmates, bringing his class size to four (he seems especially fond of Courtney):

Here he is showing Dada all the classroom amenities on “Meet the Teacher” night:

This week, his class joined all the older kids for “Picture Day,” having their portraits taken. (I’m told there’s also a yearbook, which is so cute I can’t even think about it for long.) Look for one of the wallet sizes, coming to a mailbox near you!