So much to say...

Okay, so I forgot to mention a few things that Liam said/did today. The funniest by far was telling Beckett to "take your fingers out of your mouth baby." Beckett was not amused, nor did he listen.

He's always talkative in the bathtub. Tonight he was telling me again about having fun. I have fun on the slide, I have fun at school, he mentioned Mandy's name again (lucky you!). We started talking about his classmates. I mentioned Nora, Evie, Tyler, Coco...and he says "And Kristie." Awww...Kristie, he's really loving on you lately!!! Then he told me "No pushing Coco." I don't know if Coco was pushing someone at school or if someone was pushing her...anyhow when I picked him up today Kristie said that two boys were pushing, so she read the special "no pushing" book to them (this book was actually created in Liam's honor by Bernice, who is a special needs assistant at his school--it's a book with pictures that teaches kids not to push--it's referred to in special ed circles as a "social story"). Liam came up to them and said "No pushing!" then ran away. It's as if he had to offer his commentary. I guess he was glad that for once, he wasn't in trouble for pushing. hee hee

About the slide--when he came down he said, "That was so much fun!"

After school we went to Target to get diapers for Beck. We *always* stop at the Starbucks inside...we have made friends with a woman named Cheryl who works there. She always has a cookie saved for Liam and he gets really excited (I get excited too cuz it's free!). Unfortunately she wasn't working today so I had to buy the thing. While I'm getting my money out I hear him say "What a great picture, Mama!" a few times and my heart just sank. Echolalia is a symptom of autism spectrum disorder. Some kids with autism repeat phrases over and over and it's thought that they do it for a couple of reasons. First, they are trying to make sense of the phrase and trying it in new situations to see if it works. Second, some kids use echolalia as a means of self stimulation--maybe saying the phrase feels good. I looked up to give the cashier my money and noticed that he was pointing to a picture that was drawn on their little chalkboard. It was a summertime scene of some people having a drink. I wanted to cry with relief. Thank God, it *really was* a picture he was looking at.

His recent echolalic phrase is "Great idea!" He says it now and then. I'm trying to put it in a context for him, but it's so abstract that I don't know if I can help him to understand. Before that it was "What's your name?" He asked poor Beckett "What's your name, baby?" about a million times a day not too long ago. Beckett always had this perplexed look on his face, like hey, kid you know my name, quit clowning. I hope we can get "Great idea!" conquered and the echolalia will leave us alone for awhile. :(

Oh, one last bathtub story for your Thursday evening...he was going on and on about something--I couldn't exactly figure out what. So at the end I said "Are you serious?" and he replied "I'm serious!" Yay for proper pronoun use! :)))))