Today seemed to be a very good day for Tony. I believe that the
mental transition to being home all day instead of at the office is
finally almost complete for him.

He is starting to use his picture symbols for cup, chips, and
sandwich occasionally and he is definitely communicating with us
(even though it’s still not verbal). We are also excited that later
in the week we will be receiving a shipment from kinnikinnick.com of
some wonderful new gluten and casein free bread type products for
Tony. This should really excite him. Unfortunately, not everything we
need is available at Whole Foods, but luckily we have the internet to
fill-in the blank spaces. He is still engrossed in his food magazines
and I bought him a couple of new ones. Honestly, I was simply getting
tired of looking at the same Saveur day after day. We are starting to
try to use the magazines as rewards or calming items instead of
allowing him access to them at all times.

In the past couple of days, Tony has also began sitting on the sofa
by himself for extended periods of time. Until recently, sitting
still for more than one minute never really happened. Now, he has
taken a space for himself on the sofa and seems to “place” himself
there to relax and look at his magazines or watch one of his PBS
shows. I have photos that I will hopefully post soon….

The weekend also went quite well considering that we completely
removed him from his normal environment for a whole day on Saturday
to visit Anton’s parents in Beaufort. Of course, he did get over-
stimulated at times and he did have several meltdowns. He also
refused to take a nap. BUT, on a good note, he slept well on Saturday
night (even though he didn’t get to bed until 9:30 which is quite a
bit later than he has been going down). Sunday was sort of a recovery
day for us all and it was quite relaxing even though I had an awful
headache all day.

Tomorrow, we have both speech and OT. Speech will be at 10am tomorrow
instead of 1pm, but hopefully this won’t throw things off. Anton and
I decided that ABA on top of speech and OT was a bit overwhelming for
Tony, so we have decided for the time being to not have ABA on
Tuesdays. Last week after speech he was exhausted and actually slept
through the time for ABA. Poor Whitney waited around for him to wake,
but he never did. I am pretty sure that even if he had been awake
that he wouldn’t have cooperated. Hopefully, at some point we will be
able to add ABA back into his Tuesday schedule. For the time being
though, I think we’ll just let Tony tell us when he’s had “enough”!