WARNING: sentimental kid stuff

you've been warned. sentimental, mushy kid stuff coming up. if you gag at just the thot of it, leave now and go read some snarky post elsewhere. otherwise, get ready for a little misting of the eyes.

as you know by now if you're a faithful reader, our 11 yr old son is non verbal. he has a few signs he does constantly (ie pizza, dad, dog, lightsaber, & crocodile) he had others in his repetoire too, but usually has to be prodded to use them. and then he has others that we try to teach him, but he has no patience for, for whatever reason.

this year i wrote to his teacher and asked her what the sign for merry christmas is. i thot it would be great to try to teach him that this year. so after we found out, we started working on it at home, and they worked on it with him at school as well.

yesterday in the journal that comes home with him to let us know how school went, it had a note saying that they had an assembly with Christmas music. Joe loves music anyway, so had a great time. AND .... in the middle of one of the christmas songs joe signed "merry Christmas" without any prompting!!! when i heard that my mama's heart just welled up with pride. my son gets it! he knows what merry Christmas means and said it to let others know that he knows. sigh .... it gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.

now i'm hoping we can catch him signing it and send a video to grandparents, family and friends. of course, that would mean finding someone with a video phone or something of the sort to help us in the effort! but whateva ... i can dream.