Special Exposure Wednesday

Will turns five in just over a week. I can not believe it!

Here are pictures of his birthday present - a Fuf chair. A very sweet friend and her husband gave us a great deal on the Fuf....her husband owns the company. We are so blessed to have so many caring people in our lives!

As you can see, Will LOVES it.

In other news, we visited the medical director of our local autism clinic/program here at our hospital. Will has had plenty of other diagnoses in his life, and although I knew this one was most likely appropriate, it just wasn't necessary. However, it has become necessary for some school based decisions and programming.

It went well, and I really enjoyed talking with her. (In fact, she has a daughter that was adopted from China!) She agrees and gave Will a provisional autism diagnosis. We will go through the process though of filling out the ADOS and meeting with some of the other team members to get an official diagnosis and look at some of his strengths and weaknesses. It was nice to hear that she thought he had some really good skills in place. He does show nice joint attention for some things and he is trying to imitate and speak quite a few words on top of the significant apraxia he has going on.

All in all, this appointment was a good one and I am not sad in the least bit. This is simply another label that explains more about the way that Will thinks, but it certainly doesn't change who he is. I realized once again today how lucky we've really been with him. It may not sound like it with all of his issues and diagnoses, but we are. Some of this doctor's comments confirmed it as well.

And so, we move ahead.