Let him eat cake! And other small successes.

You know you're the parent of a special needs child when you find that you are beside yourself with pride when your 4-year-old eats cake. With a fork.

This has been a week of great little successes. On Sunday, Nathan and I went to the public pool.

Last year, he would only stay in the shallow part of this zero-entry pool. He was very happy to play in a foot or less of water and very scared to go deeper. On Sunday, holding both my hands, he walked into the water up to his neck. He needed both hands on mine or on the wall most of the time, but briefly let go a couple times. So brave! I do not have photos of this; my hands were busy and I didn't want to bring the camera into the water, so you'll have to take my word for it.

On Monday evening, we went to Kayla's birthday party at Bounce U. Perhaps you've read my previous posts on Nathan and birthday parties, especially indoor ones. I knew that this could be really challenging for him. When we arrived, he was clingy and scared. The room was really loud, and the noise of bounce houses (that blowing air noise) always gets to him. I went into the bounce house with him. After maybe 10 or 15 minutes of sitting on my lap clinging on for dear life, Nathan relaxed, played with a ball, and let me detach from him to go get the ball. He was not ready to stand up in the bounce house, but enjoyed the vibrations and playing with the ball.

In the next room, he was able to play independently and dance around. He was comfortable. He was happy. He was fine. I decided to back away, talk with some friends, and let him be independent.

Then we moved on to ice cream, cake and "Happy Birthday". Nathan initially spit out his milk and pushed the ice cream away. This is nothing new. I've never known him to eat the cake and ice cream at a birthday party. However, after a few tries he decided he liked the ice cream, and ate it himself, with the spoon. He has never had a plastic spoon before and due to his technique of biting the food off, he went through 3 spoons. But he ate all the ice cream. I put a bite of cake in his mouth and to my surprise he did not spit it out. A few more bites made it in, and then I decided to put cake on his fork and let him do it himself. Nathan doesn't use a fork at home at all, but he does at school, with help (there are reasons I asked for this to be an IEP goal!). After that success, he was ready for full cake independence. His technique involved mashing the cake to make it stick to the fork, but he persevered, down to the end when he popped the last bite in his mouth with his fingers.

With all this bravery and adventurousness going on, today I decided to be brave and take Nathan to his first movie in a theater, by myself. Jeez, I'd hate to pay over 20 bucks for the 3 of us to go see something as a family, only to find that Nathan can't tolerate a dark, crowded theater and we have to leave. So when I saw that the theater here in town is doing matinees of old kids movies for a buck, I figured this was a good opportunity to try it out. I figured that if we had to leave after 10 minutes, I would only be out 2 bucks (that's really and truly all I spent, because I snuck in my own snacks. Nathan doesn't know that Cheerios and raisins are not the traditional movie fare.). Nathan was, as I expected, rather loud and clingy in the lobby, but he was able to stay for the entire showing of "Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabit" without getting too loud or overly antsy, so I'm calling it a success, and we'll likely go back next week to see "Jimmy Neutron" for a buck.

Ah, I love celebrating all the little successes!