Obviously, this whole "coming back online" business was somewhat oversold

But I am going to try to start updating this again at least weekly.

Wild Thing has been less wild over the last week or so. Something seems finally to have clicked with him--this ability to regulate emotion that we've been reading about is finally starting to kick in, I think. Part of this might be sleep-related, too--he's sleeping about as much as he did six months ago, but he seems to need it a bit less. He is decidedly tired at the end of the day, but he no longer seems completely drained before we even start eating dinner.

Tonight I expected a relapse at dinnertime. He'd been acting a little testy, and when we asked him to wash his hands for dinner, he initiated the startup procedure for a meltdown: yelling, taking a tiny little swing at me, crying. But: he then announced that he was going upstairs to take a nap. He disappeared for a few minutes, and then came back downstairs with equilibrium restored. He announced that starting he was never going to cry again and would always listen to us from now on.

Now, we want to keep reassuring him that crying is fine and all that. But this sort of self-calming is something that he's really mastered only in the last little bit. And WOW is it a relief ...