Dear Noah - opening a belated gift from a good friend!

We got a package from a very good friend of ours in Florida the other week and you opened it and found this inside...a very cool monster truck toy..which you loved playing with. In fact..you actually TURNED OFF your computer to play with this ...and I even played it with you. We had fun...I must admit it is fun to play with.

Hard to believe January is almost over. We have been very fortunate thus far as far as winter goes...with very little snow. A dusting here and there....more unseasonably mild temps than normal....some rain. We even had THUNDER during some storms this month. I do not think I have ever heard thunder in January before! I think the most we have gotten so far has been about 4-6 inches ....and otherwise it is nice dustings and then they blow or melt away...it sure does look pretty to see it snow though. (and this is the year I bought you actual snow boots!) lol.

Speech therapy is back on....I have revamped it now so you are only receiving actual SPEECH THERAPY and no more social scenarios they were trying to keep interjecting in your speech therapy time. You are doing fine socially and I have no worries there...they need to spend more time on the speech therapy part. So that is finally happening and maybe you will be able to make some faster progress this way. After all, it has been like 10 years that you have been in speech therapy now!

School is going well...you are really making heads and tails out of your math which excites both you and me. It is like the lightbulb finally went off in your brain and you just GET IT. I get the luxury of refresher courses on the way in all subjects as I teach you..or I even learn things I never knew before. MANY times you know an answer when I DO NOT! However, getting you to break away from your computer to do school remains a huge challenge. In fact...getting you away from it for much of anything is a challenge. BUT you have been that way for years. You do not seem to need anyone as far as much of anything...and I realize that is the autistic parts of you....and I too am very much okay being by myself a lot of the time...but I did remind you that you will have to be around people some of the time...and asked you if you could or even wanted to do anything with people...you said ONLINE..I asked about real life..you said "with a girl." haha...so I guess in the end you will be fine.

I saw this sign the other day posted online on Facebook and I was telling you about it. You just smiled...but when I got to the part about being 50 years you immediately stopped me cold and said, "well I don't have to worry about that stage because YOU WILL BE DEAD by then!" I proceeded to tell you that would only be less than 40 years away and I COULD VERY WELL still be VERY MUCH ALIVE thank you very much!



Well...I need to get your school time in for today..the day is fading fast and I have house cleaning to finish as well.

OH..you have been staying up like WAY TOO LATE...and that has to change!

Love you lots,

mom
x0x0x0x

Dear Noah....your visit over Christmas with your dad...

I just realized I forgot to upload photos here about your visit with your dad over Christmas break. He flew in from Colorado to spend a few days with us...and you had a great time visiting with him. This was the first time in 3 years since you had seen him last. You 2 played videogames together and trains...we opened presents...went out to eat....and just had a very nice visit. I know you have missed him a lot since he went back to Colorado. I still sometimes think maybe we should be living closer together so you could see him more often, especially as you are entering those teen years!

Here is a picture of the 2 of you I took at the Asian Buffet restaurant.

I love you Noah. Hard to believe you are now 13 years old! I think I forgot to post pics and anything about that too..your birthday on December 29th! See I was on vacation from work for over 2 weeks and I did not keep up online with posts I guess.

You are officially a teenager now....wow. So hard to believe. I will include just a couple of pics from your BD now too. We made up a Shutterfly photo book for your dad as a gift and 1 for us to keep with pics from his trip and the holidays. It turned out nice and he loved it.

I love you lots....

Mommy...mom.....
XOXOXOX

Happy New Year blessings to you and yours!

Noah and I are wishing you all a very blessed and happy, healthy, prosperous, abundant, joyful, and peaceful new year!