First playdate, going to art class... and some more FIRSTs

1. Aditya just had his first playdate with a neuro-typical peer (other than his own twin sister). Our neighbor's daughter, who by the way was very sweet to Aditya, came over to our house. The two played Chutes and Ladders and built a "ride" with legos. They played for almost 20 minutes, and won praises for playing together so nicely!
2. Aditya has begun going to an art class once a week. There are 5 other children in the class including his sister. He loves drawing anyway, and this is a class where he gets to draw. In his first class he got to draw "his thing". In the second class, the teacher asked him if he would like to draw what the class was going to draw, and he agreed and did what the whole class did! Sister was all praises for her brother who did not talk about anything except for "drawing", "crayons" and once saying "Excuse me!" (Sister usually hears him talk about "rides" all day.)

Some more great signs of progress:
1) We went to the restaurant this week after a long time. There was a small child crying and we thought Aditya would appreciate sitting far away from this source of "noise". That would mean we would have to sit in wooden chairs instead of a "booth". Aditya asked to go to the booth. When we reminded him we could not leave after going there, he said he still wanted to go. I celebrated him for being so amazingly flexible about the baby that was crying. He said in response: "I don't feel so noisy now". (Only 2 months ago, listening to a baby cry at a store he would say in a loud voice: what's all that noise? I hate noise.)

2) Played Monopoly with Dad for 50 minutes. Okay to go to jail and lose a turn. Paid and collected rent, and made choices such as paying $160 as one bill of $100 and three bills of $20. Also pretended to be the "banker" and handed over the property ownership certificates to the buyer.

3) Played "FUNGLISH" with the whole family for 45 minutes. In this game he had to pick adjectives from a set of cards to describe a word. For example, to describe "Kites", he chose "colorful", "flying" and "paper".

4) When sister threw a tantrum, he said: "I am just going to ignore her".