Wow.

There's snow on the ground. In November. In Kentucky. This is kinda unheard of. Jason is blaming me for bringing my "Michigan weather" with us :) Owen is LOVING it! Now he wants me to buy him a pair of snow boots and, if he'll actually wear them, I'll happily give in to that request!

This is how Owen fell asleep tonight, which is pretty much how he falls asleep almost every night. The boy loves his books. He's not met a book yet that he didn't like.

And once I took the book off to put it away, I figured out his little secret.... he didn't want to wear those pj's but it's COLD tonight (see above pictures!). But he agreed to wear them, because he knows he wakes up cold and then can't fall asleep and then mom gets a little cranky. LOL. So after I gave him his goodnight kiss and left the room he unzipped them. What a stinker! The other night he completely took off his pj's and covered up with the blanket so I wouldn't see it. LOL! (And yes, he has a Christmas blanket on his bed already. Because he's spoiled by Jason's mom who wants to buy him everything under the sun. Ha. Great. She also bought him a Christmas towel set for his bathroom because "he needed them because they have Christmas trains on them". Sure. Uh-huh)

And on to some not quite as fun stuff (actually, kinda boring I'm sure if you're not Owen's mommy! LOL!). Anyway, we got 11 pages of Owen's evaluation results back this week (from the school). There's still more, but it's a start. I won't write all the results since that would take a long time but basically he doesn't qualify for a "classic autism" diagnosis. Duh. We knew that. He does qualify for an "autism spectrum disorder" diagnosis. Again, we knew that. We've known this for years. But we had to go through this whole evaluation anyway just because that's how the school does it. So, surprise surprise.... Owen's on the autism spectrum. Bet you all are shocked ;)

There was obviously a whole lot more to the evaluation than that and maybe I'll go into more detail later. But it's late and Owen has a dentist appointment first thing in the morning. Yippee.

I will say though that the evaluation said that he's reading at a 2nd grade level right now (in preschool!). Yay for Owen! And everyone who asks is shocked to learn that he taught himself. I swear I'm not sitting here giving him reading lessons (like he would actually sit for them if I tried!!). He totally taught himself. The only thing I do/did is tell him what a word is when he asks. Usually after he asks once he knows it for good and won't ask for that word again.

We also started a new food thing this week. Owen got into a really long rut where he started dropping foods again and refusing to try new foods. Not cool. It's been going on for a little while now so it was time to crack down. Jason, Owen's OT/feeding therapist and I talked about it and decided to try a weekly menu for him. He's obsessed with lists and anything written down so we thought this would work well. For every meal he had at least 2 foods that he likes and eats well. Then some meals he had a food that he's previously eaten but doesn't anymore. And some meals there was a brand new food. The new foods were usually at dinner. He got all foods presented to him at the same time. He chose to eat the "favorite" foods first and then asked for more of them. In order to get more of his favorite foods he had to at least interact with the new foods. This could be smelling, touching, snake testing, biting and spitting out or chewing. It all depended on what his previous experience with that food was and how he was handling it. Nothing was ever forced (we don't believe in force feeding. Food should be fun, not stressful) and he never went to bed hungry. But at times I think it was a battle of the wills between he and I! But, over the course of this week he tried (and liked!!) celery (he ate about a 2 1/2 inch piece!). He also tried a bite of cucumber, but didn't care for that. He touched a hard boiled egg. He also bit a piece of chicken and spit it out (was pretty indifferent on the taste, it didn't seem to bother him too bad, but he definately didn't want it in his mouth!). He also put a piece of spaghetti in his mouth but couldn't handle it and gagged until he almost vomitted. That one obviously got spit out immediately. We were at the gym on Monday and they were giving out free hot chocolate. To my surprise, Owen wanted some (it's not something he's ever drank before). He asked for some with mini marshmallows, whipped cream and hershey's syrup on top. And then he DRANK IT! And THEN he asked for some more the next day and drank it. And then again tonight for dinner!!! We've been making it with water (which is how the gym made it) but we may play around with milk and see if he'll drink it that way.