We're still here!

  Wow, it's been a long time since I've updated our progress!  We've been quite busy lately with so much school and therapy and even squeezed in a vacation over Spring Break.  Andrew has been doing very well at therapy but it is slow going.  His behaviors haven't improved much as we had hoped but we have been told by many people who don't see him often that he is more verbal.  I guess we hadn't noticed much because we know he's had these words all this time but he's becoming more comfortable with using them around everyone.  He says words every day now whereas in the past it seemed we'd hear words a couple days then nothing but sounds the next few.  Also, when he says things he looks right into your eyes and shouts them at you lol!
  We are also excited that he's been sleeping great.  I'm almost afraid as I say this that I might jinx ourselves.  It was very common when we put Andrew to bed that he would whine a little and head butt the wall.  In fact he eventually head butted a hole right in the wall next to his bed.  We created a padded headboard and nailed it to the wall after that but he would still bang his head into it nearly every night before falling asleep and sometimes during the night.  Well, I'm happy to say that he hasn't been doing that at ALL lately.  He's getting a good 9 hours of sleep every night without disruptions.  It's really life changing when we can all get quality sleep!
   We have added speech therapy at another clinic once a week and he is enjoying that as well.  She has introduced a bit of the feeding therapy we are also going to be doing there.  In the summer we will be adding an extra session specifically for the feeding therapy so we can get him to eat more foods.
    Unfortunately our Brain Balance funds will be running out at the end of May so we have about 6 weeks left there for now.  But because Jason's insurance now covers speech therapy and occupational/physical therapy we also plan to add a session of occupational therapy this summer.  We plan to continue doing the Brain Balance exercises and listening therapy with Andrew here at home while we take a break from them.  We will stay busy with that and the other insurance covered therapies and maybe we will be able to afford to go back to Brain Balance at a later time. 
  There are still 6 weeks to go there though so we're going to utilize every minute and get any bit of knowledge we can out of the place that might help Andrew keep moving forward.  We have definitely seen changes; I was just hoping they would be bigger and faster but as Andrew has taught us...progress is progress and we'll take whatever it is :) Hope everyone has a Happy Easter!