Three Year Update

On July 25th we celebrated "Nikolas Day".  Three years ago we picked him up in Sofia, Bulgaria and became a family of three.  Nikolas has made so much progress in the past three years.  He came to us as a tiny, scared little boy who had the skills of an infant.  He weighed 19 pounds and was 29" tall.  He was wearing a size 9-12 months clothing.  He walked unsteadily, didn't know how to play with toys, and didn't speak at all.  Today he is outgoing, friendly and caring.  He makes friends easily and gets along well with others.  He now weighs 38.6 pounds (10th percentile) and is 44" tall (75th percentile).

His gross motor skills have greatly improved, and he was released from private PT at the end of July.  He hasn't quite caught up to his peers, as his low muscle tone and range of motion prevent him from being able to complete certain tasks, but he doesn't let it slow him down.  He'll still receive a small amount of PT at school to help him continue to work on the skills that challenge him, such as hopping on one leg, skipping, and balancing on one leg.

His expressive speech continues to be his biggest challenge.  One of his speech therapists diagnosed him with CAS (Childhood Apraxia of Speech).  He's been working hard on his sound combinations in speech therapy each week and is really improving.  He is still very difficult to understand, but he's trying so hard.  He has a private speech session once a week and also receives speech therapy at school.  His vocabulary has expanded so much.  He understands how to form sentences and is using the correct tenses most of the time.  His receptive language seems to be right on track for his age.  He can successfully identify all of the letters in the alphabet, even when they are out of order.  He knows the sound that each letter makes and has even started sounding out basic words.  He still has a long way to go, but he's doing great!!