the move...

All settled into our fabulous new house by the first of September - Hunter has no problems adjusting, he loves it and is okay with the big move and the really big house with stairs, yeah! We are now just a few days away from his official 3rd birthday so now we can get our appt with ChildFind here in NV. Again, more questionnaires, more tests and then we finally get the paperwork to register him into school into a Pre-K Special Ed program. His actual diagnosis was Autism, he did not meet criteria for Asperger's, he did not have the language for that diagnosis. We were told he had 'High-Functioning Autism'. His delays were about 1 1/2 years behind the typical child, that was extremely hard to hear but I believed in him and we were going to work very hard to make sure that gap did not get any wider. I am now okay with his Autism, I now understand, and I will not let a "label" get in the way of what we need to do! We are beyond lucky to get a first year teacher, so sweet and caring, a complete angel named "Miss P", a tiny little colorful classroom with fun toys and cool things and only 2 other lovely little boys in the class at the time. Hunter also received Occupational and Speech Therapies in school which were also a big help! We are off to a great start...we know being in a school with others is going to help, since Hunter is an only child, we just knew he would thrive being around other kids his age. We also knew from our research that we wanted to get started in an ABA therapy home program as soon as possible! During our first IEP, we were lucky that his teacher and school believed that Hunter could really benefit from an intensive therapy program like ABA so we were able to get it through the school district. Super lucky this was not during all the horrible budget cuts like we are going through right now! Something else remarkable happened a few months after his 3rd B-day which won't sound to impressive to most but it was everything to me. Hunter never pointed, which so many babies do when they want your attention, or want to show their parents something. We had just pulled in the Target parking lot and got out of the car, Hunter pointed to something in the sky, I almost died. He did it again and said "plane". This was the very first time he pointed, I was shocked and so happy I remember calling M at work to tell him. It's the simple little things that some may take for granted but they mean everything to a parent that has a child with Autism!