Hooray for Ben

It has been a year since Ben was diagnosed with autism and the yearly assessments have started. This month we have about six appointments with researchers to obtain data on Ben's progress. The first one was last Monday with his favorite researcher and the psychiatrist, and Ben knocked their socks off. The psychiatrist is very happy with the progress he's made with the limited help we've been able to offer him. The combination of the daycare, shadow, us at home, and the recent addition of a one-hour speech therapy session every two weeks has produced some great results, and the psychiatrist thinks that he could do even better if we can just get him into the 20-hour/week therapy program that we're waiting for. We are going to start getting more agressive and send them a letter from the psychiatrist in hopes that this gets him into the program sooner. She feels that he will probably be able to go to mainstream schools, with some assistance, if he continues on at this rate. We've come so far over this year, and it's still hard for me to talk about, but this assessment have given us a lot of hope.
We went to a Kids' CBC show this weekend, Ben got very excited about it and was only a little freaked about the large cartoon characters. Naomi was cranky and spent most of the show with Steve running around the lobby.