Improvements

Back in -- oh, was it so long ago? -- in early July Michelle wrote me a long letter full of good advice about having a child with other than mainstream characteristics.  And I paid attention! 

We had Alan evaluated, though -- for reasons that had to do with the school he's attending here in Yerevan.  The school can react only with a paper in hand.

We also changed a few things in his life.  First and foremost we hired a teacher to do some work on his fine motor skills.  She's coming in three times a week and mostly does exactly what I tell her to do.  I hear you asking why I couldn't do it then myself?  Well, I'm not the most patient of people, and I would quickly lose my cool with Alan, and I don't want him to have childhood memories of long afternoons with Mommy yelling at him.  So, the teacher. 

She's working on some different planes.  Alan does tracing, coloring and cutting to hone his fine motor skills, and there's some work on social behavior, and simple kindergarten stuff.  He's a smart cookie, so he needs a bit of a challenge.

It's working.  As they say, a picture says more than a thousand words.  This is Alan's drawing style in June of this year:

It's a typical drawing of his.  He never did draw a thing, it was always scribbles and mostly in one color, and that one mostly black (so this one is not quite that typical after all).