Something significant happened today.
Some people won't understand the significance of this. Many people will. Some will be thrilled and understands it's importance considering Cuyler's diagnosis.

This evening, after their baths, he was crawling on our bedroom floor. He crawled into our bathroom, turned around and crawled back into the bedroom. I said "Cuy! Whatcha crawling for??"

He looks up at me and said "Fog! Yibbit! Yibbit!"

He continued PRETENDING to be a frog for a few minutes as Sean, Cam and I were laughing at him. He just kept crawling around our room saying "Fog! Yibbit! Yibbit! Yibbit! Fog!"

Children with autism have a very difficult time with associative play, pretend play, representational play - whatever you want to call it.
Cuyler pretended the HE was a frog! No prompting from anyone. He just saw some animals on tv and thought "Hey...I'm gonna be a frog!"
We were shocked and not shocked at the same time. It was like "WOW! Cuyler! We knew you could do it!"
And he was doing alot of verbalizing. He was even using 4 words phrases. "I want more juice"
"I want more toast" And when he couldn't open a box, he'd say "Help me"
Lots of words today!! So nice to hear.
And I'm not sure what to make of this...whether it's representational in a good way or an "autistic" way.
He walks around with 4 small duplo blocks. A red, a blue, a yellow and a green. Always the same 4. And one day he hands them to me and says "Wiggles blocks".
Ahhh! Of course they are! Only we don't have any purple blocks, so the "Jeff" block is green.
He won't do much with them. Just carry them around. But to him - those blocks represent the Wiggles. I think it's a security thing - he's a Wiggles fanatic.

- - - - - - - - - -

Well - thank God for my friend Robin. After I blogged last night, I instant messaged her to discuss the diet stress I was under. She's a master of the diet and I tend to go to her often with issues like this one. She suggested it may be the EFA and not the corn. Which I never even thought of, but makes total sense. So he won't get any CLO or flax for a week and we'll see what happens. Let's hope this is it, and we can relax on the corn elimination...that's tough!!!!
If it is, we'll need to figure out how to get the essential fatty acids into him - they're super important for his brain.

I had a great day with Cuyler. He and I hung out most of the day together playing and singing and being silly. I really had no choice. I can't even pee without this kid at my side. He just so loves his Mommy. Which is great. To a point. At which I really just wish he would love his Daddy a bit more. But it was a really fun day. I can't remember spending that much time with him, just he and I. I was so freaking exhausted because as fun is he is, it seems that all of our interactions have a purpose behind them. Mostly FloorTime based - so it was like doing a full day of therapy.

Perhaps that's why we had a frog in our room this evening.