JonesSoda , 26

Julian has been diagnosed to be within the Autism spectrum. He is going to have an appointment set up with a specialist and once we go to that appointment, we will know what exactly he has and how to help him. Obviously I am feeling very overwhelmed, concerned, upset, guilty, anxious, hopeful, nervous... confused.

And, Ethan read all by himself yesterday- what a big boy!

I am so proud of Ethan! I had parent/teacher conferences tonight and he's doing fabulously.

The teacher told me:

When he started the year, he knew 24 of 26 letters by sight, upper and lowercase.

He can count past 100 and by the end of the year the teacher said they'd like them to count to 50 at least so she said he's already far ahead.

He can write 1 to 16, and is only expected at this point to know how to write 1 to 5.

Ethan is making connections well- she gave me the example that each student has a job daily and when his was delivering the milk, he told her that he didn't like the job because he had to go all the way down to the cafeteria, collect the milk, and pass it out. He told her that because he had to do all of that, he had less time to eat his snack and the other students had more time. She said in all her time teaching, no child had made that connection.

His teacher also told me that he said to her, "Mrs. C, I am trying to get big muscles and be really strong. One day I am going to be a dad and I need to be able to protect my kids."

The most impressive by far is that he is already starting to learn to write and spell on his own, which is beyond his grade level. He did this entirely by himself. The teacher said that they have journals and they are expected to illustrate based on a prompt, and then the teacher and teacher aides go around and write whatever sentence the child tells them to write, and helps label them. She said they were asked to say what they'd done one weekend and Ethan had gone to his dad's and spent time with his step brother Caleb. He drew a picture of two children and then drew rectangles. Then he wrote, by himself, with no help:

I WS PLNG LGS W C.

When she asked him what he was trying to say, he said, "I was writing 'I was playing Legos with Caleb' but my hand got tired."

They have just recently started working on letter sounds and she said only three students are really grasping that letters make sounds and that letters make up words and you can find out what a word says by the letter sound. She said she's never had a student who has only learned the sounds of letters sit there and try to make a sentence and, for the most part, do it. He also tried to write pancakes and wrote PKS. So he is on his way to writing and spelling with ease, I am hoping.

He is also learning a lot of French. His classroom teacher isn't his French teacher but I can tell based on the words and phrases he says at home that he's picked up tons from French class.

After all that, get this... her one suggestion for us is to work on...

COLORING IN THE LINES.

Haha! Can't be the best at everything :)

Here are his school pictures that I got tonight. The one in color is the one we have to pass out to everyone. The other two came on a picture disk that came in the package we got.

You are beautiful! In fact, you're probably more beautiful than someone you *wished* you looked like.

Check this out!

http://www.topsocialite.com/celebrities-without-makeup/

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AIDAN RYAN! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!