Christmas progress

If you've been reading for a while you might remember that last Christmas was pretty disastrous for Bright Eyes. He didn't cope with the noise, the presents, the people, the excitement. It was pretty much the worst Christmas I think he ever had.

This year, however, it is a different story. Tonight we had the first of our three family Christmas parties, with presents, dinner... the works. And he was great!

First, he had to wait for at least an hour for the rest of the family to get there. Then, he had to wait to find the present he really wanted (Woody from Toy Story). He helped to deliver the presents to all the rest of the family. He opened things by himself. He coped with the delays of getting toys out of boxes (&*$%^ packaging). He even coped with the delays in putting batteries in things and finding screwdrivers etc.

All in all, he was absolutely a normal child opening his Christmas presents. It was really wonderful to see such progress in a year.

And just now, he brought his Woody toy to me and said, "In the morning I will go to preschool and I will put Buzz and Woody in my locker. Then it will be news time. I'll show Woody for news."

After that, he said, "Woody is really fantastic. He is just fantastic. I want to show him to someone."

It's so nice to make progress.

We are now more than halfway through Stage 4 objectives. When we first looked at them in January, I thought, "Oh no, there is no way Bright Eyes can do this stuff." I looked again at the remaining ones yesterday and thought, "he can at least do half of all of these. There is nothing hugely out of his reach."

Then I looked at the Stage 5 objectives and thought, "But there's no way he's up to these." It's great because from the experience with Stage 4 I can see that he will get there. He's got this far, and unless things really change, he can get further and do even better as long as I'm content to go piece by piece, step by step.