A year of progress

Ethan has taken every opportunity this week to remind me that it is his birthday tomorrow. He will be eight years old. As you can see from the above photo he is growing up....and he has the cheekiest smile ever. He is a prankster and loves to tease me every chance he gets. His favorite color is yellow. He loves computers. He loves to garden. His goal in school this year was to learn to read, and because Ethan has extreme difficulty with verbal articulation it is hard to gauge how much he knows, but near the end of the school year, he spelled both teeth and mom on his communication device. This is quite an accomplishment for him. For his birthday, he has asked for computer classes, and he wants his dad to teach him. It has always been hard to find an appropriate gift considering Ethan's physical limitations and I am so grateful that he is getting better at communicating his wants and needs, it certainly has taken some pressure off of me. I am just hoping for a quiet uneventful day for his birthday....last year Helen was in emergency surgery on his birthday for a ruptured appendix, so Ethan had to spend his birthday at grandma's without mom or dad. Happy Birthday Ethan, I love you!