!!!! AWESOME !!!!!

This is the longest I've seen him play interactively with a toy. He was watching Elmo on Netflix and I ran and got his Elmo and showed him it was the same, he got all excited and started playing with it. Really great step for him considering he only sorted his toys when we first got him and didn't like to play with any stuffed animals at all. He would take the toys out of the bucket and then put them back, the circle stacker was the only one he really played interactively with on our pickup trip. A few days ago he finally picked up his bear and hugged it, laid down with it and talked to it. It was great because the bear was one of the first toys I bought him when we were adopting and he finally liked playing with it. So add Elmo to that and we have success !! 

We also hit another milestone today. Drake has been TERRIFIED of bath time since we got him. We are uncertain what happened but he feared the bath itself. We narrowed down the issue to some kind of trauma that must have happened from his orphanage. He did fine playing in water, from the faucet or elsewhere and playing with his hands in a buck of water but when it came to sitting or even standing in water he was TERRIFIED! We tried the bathtub, a bucket, the shower -- and it was all one terrified child!! 

BUT tonight we have success !!! Drake just got done taking a bath/shower !! This was an incredible step for him and we have been working with him from the first day. We've had to put a lot of effort, play time and gradual steps to get here. We stripped his clothes off and he walked to the bathroom(no crying!) He went in the shower, sat down on a towel. I had his plastic mixing bowl with his "bath" toys in it and his soap bottle but no water. I took the hand held shower head down, waited to make sure he was okay and warned him the water was coming on! Then I turned the water on.  He sat and played in the water, took his toys in and out of the bowl and played. I even let the water build up to about an inch and got him to splash in it!! He was still holding one hand back trying to hold onto the shower door for security but overall it was awesome to see the progress he has made. He did really well and we had very minimal fussing and no outright crying. 

~~~ One happy Mommy!