Autumn is my favourite season of the year.

The colours of nature makes you think how wonderful life really is. It is also the time of the year when I get pretty sick .... yes and it always does especially close to a month before my next birthday.

I am coughing my guts out again ..... I know ..... it's not fair especially after last week's episode of dodgy tummy!

Alex is also coughing and he is one hardy child. To be fair, he does whine a bit now and then but as a whole, I am ever so proud of him. His appetite returned .... after a whole week of feasting on water and nothing else. He asked for his cereal over the weekend - finished his share and then has this habit of eating our breakfast as well. An hour later, he would go to the larder and ask for his snack - normally a pack of crisp or little gems. Then, he goes to the fruit bowl and ask for an apple or an orange. I would, of course oblige - nothing makes a mother happier than seeing her child eat.

He is starting to talk a bit now, can't really understand much but we could get the gist of what he wants. He would say, "out there" (which could also mean up there) - he would push me to the hall way and then point which direction he wants me to go. When he wants to go somewhere, he would say "car" or if we are out and about, and he wants to leave - he would say "car".

Neel from TASS came today and did some role/pretend play with Alex. From the exercises, she could determine at what stage his speech and language is at and his understanding of instructions (setting a task by giving him two pieces of information) - for example, give baby his bottle - he will have to get baby from the box and feed the baby with the bottle.

His speech is at 18 months level but his language/understanding is at 24 months. Children with ASD will have developmental delay in some areas especially pretend play and excel in others. Although, delayed - this is a really good sign as she believes that Alex could blend into mainstream education.

There are certain things that we know he could do but he wouldn't do it for Neel. She is preparing his statement and could only put in what she sees and not from what we say. To be fair, it makes sense and I have no problem with that.

We will be visiting Rainbow Resources Centre tomorrow and I have more or less made up my mind with what we intend to do with Alex's education. We heard a lot of good things about the place and we really hope that they will take Alex. Rainbow will only take a child for not more than six terms (about 2 years) but during these times, children with developmental delay gets a lot out of the resource centre. I can only give more information until we see the centre tomorrow.