Wet shoes, tantrums and parties :)

Ben had a fun weekend in sefton park. He has started to say words to describe what he sees, it's really amazing to hear him spontaneously point something out. For example when we are driving in the car he says swing, slide and park when we pass them, and at the weekend he said garden when we went over the fly over and could see houses with gardens down below.

On our last trip to sefton park he finished with the swings and wanted to cross the road and walk in the park, so we gave it a go. When we reached the brow of a hill he saw steps and liked them, I knew this because he shouted 'stairs.' The only challenge was that as we came further over the hill he realised there was a lake in the way! He walked right to the edge, looked over and for a minute I thought he was going in. I managed to coax him to walk around a bit until we found stepping stones and some more stairs hurray. The walking up and down the stairs game was fun but he all of a sudden ran back to the stepping stones and jumped into the water in between them. Had to carry him back to the car because he wouldn't walk in wet shoes :)

We stayed in Jim's the weekend and he was very good, a bit confused but good.

When we got home on Sunday though he was not happy. He threw tantrums all day, then today when he got up the first thing he said was park. We were going to a party at 4 so I said no play first park later when we go out in the car. It didn't go down well to say the least and so started a day of tantrums :) This is a great day for learning as we worked all day on responses. I really felt by the time he had calmed down and we had a little play (about 2 o'clock) that he understood that his tantrums were not a good way to communicate but that he had the choice of what behaviour he was going to use.

Charlies party was fun, Charlie is so cute and his sister Bronte is lovely. Ben ran in and wanted to go on the big slide, I ended up going in and showing him the way to it and was amazed to watch him do it again and again on his own. Good job Ben. He then started to explore different ways to go and even climbed up onto the top level. He got stuck once and I had to rescue him but it didn't put him off. The funniest thing was a couple of men had gone in to play with a toddler and left their shoes by the side of the slide. Ben thought this was just plain wrong and kept moving them, I kept putting them back but the men were only seeing me with their shoes and missing Ben every time. I got very strange looks! By the time we left he had sat in the party room with all the other kids and eaten chips, even though the music was really loud. He only pushed a couple of kids which is great and they were play fighting with each other so I like to think he was joining in :) Thanks autie Debbie for being so nice to us.

The best thing was after we had gone to the park on the way home he came back into the house without throwing a tantrum like he usually does. Well done Ben for learning that today :)

xxxx