Bennett's Latest Happenings

I haven't written a post about Bennett in awhile. He's had quite a bit going on lately so I think he deserves a whole post to himself. He is proving to us that he is alot smarter than we have been giving him credit for. The talking is still very slow. We get a new word or two a week so there hasn't been a huge change yet with that. However, I did have two ladies from the school district come meet with us this morning to get a feeling for where Bennett is with his speech. We will be having a speech therapist come for a few weeks to help get the ball rolling. We wonder if he could talk but chooses not to...?

Anyways, in the past two weeks, Bennett has shocked us all and made us very proud of him. First off, Mike has been playing this Ipod game with him about shapes. It asks "where's the Circle" and then he is supposed to point at it. Well after a time or two of Mike doing this with him, he learned his shapes! We never really worked on shapes with him before I guess because of the talking. He is recognizing shapes everywhere now though. This morning he was in the kitchen and said Mama and when I went in there to see what he wanted, he was sitting on the floor looking at the rug and pointing at the squares and pretty excited about it. He didn't say the word square but I knew that this is what he was looking at. So, we are very excited about this.

We are working on colors but he seems to know most of them too. He will point to them when we ask 'which one is the ..." but the only one that he actually can say the word for is Blue.

But, it gets even better. For the past few months we had been playing this ABC song that I found on Youtube - A is for Apple, A A Apple, B is for Ball, B B Ball etc. I bet he has watched this 100 times. We just keep showing him this video hoping that once he started talking, it would all just kind of click and that he'd sort of know his letters too. Well, the other morning while I was feeding Ashley, Bennett brought me an alphabet letter (M) from the fridge and said said "M"! At first I figured good guess. But then he went back and brought the O and said "O"! He then got the A and did the same thing. I was shocked to say the least! First the fact that he said the letter and second that he knew the letter he had. I was telling David about this later and he didn't' really believe me. So David asked Bennett, point to the W and sure enough, he found the W. Then the I, etc. It was so cool.

So, this is why we are kind of wondering if Bennett could talk but for some reason doesn't want to. He has amazed us these past few days with the new things he has been doing. So we are really hoping and praying that the real talking is just behind the corner and that it doesn't take too long or lots of work to get it to come.

We also are starting to get back in to the potty training more. I gave up for quite awhile since I was always running or doing wedding stuff. So now that we are back to normal, we're trying. He stays dry for pretty long periods but I am constantly taking him to go. He has never told me he has had to go. He did pee in his underwear though one day and afterwards said "poopoo" - not quite the right one but he knew he had gone. So hopefully by the end of summer he'll have this mastered too.

We are so proud of the new things he is learning. He's always been very smart at figuring things out and problem solving, but we just never knew how much 'book smarts' he had since he doesn't show us with words. These are huge steps for him so I'm hoping it continues!

Oh before I forget - one of the new words that I did get out of him about a month ago is "ub you"! I was so happy I almost cried the first time he told me he loved me.

Relaxing in the car

Really relaxing in the car