My friend Jennifer, who is a teacher (and also my BFF Kim's sister....thus, making her my sister by default as well), recently went to a training workshop where she learned that kids on the autism spectrum are stimulated by writing with blue pens on yellow paper.  So she bought Jeremiah a pack of legal-size yellow pads and a pack of blue erasable pens.  We put some in the van and some in the house.  He loves them!!  He uses his pad in the van all the time and it really keeps him busy and content, no matter how long the drive is.  He completely fills a sheet before turning to a new one and then tells me all about his picture, including some scribbles that resemble letters.  He drew a "Z" the other day and told me, "Look mommy, it's like Zachary."

He's been surprising me a lot like that lately.  The other day, he had to identfiy which pair of letters in a row of about seven pairs was the same (i.e.  AA, FF, BB).  He recognized the Z's by his friend Zachary's name and the D's he recognized by saying, "like on the DVD player". 

He's been very patient in school lately and asking often to do more.  His fascination with monster trucks since going to the rally has given him just that.  I printed a bunch of monster truck coloring sheets from online and, after he colored them, I wrote the names of the trucks in dashed letters and he has been tracing four or five truck names a day.  We three-hole punched them and put them in a binder with all of the pages of his pictures from the rally, as well as copies of his ticket to get in and the parking pass.  He LOVES that book!