[Ladyofmoonlight]

Last night we ate at a local Ethiopian restaurant, and when we were ready to go I went and grabbed the car. Nik stayed at the restaurant with Paxton and while he waited an Ethiopian man came up and asked Paxton "What's your name?" Paxton happily answered "I'm Tariku!"

I'm so proud of my little boy! For many different reasons:

-Hearing the name "Tariku" used to make him either go into a shell-shocked state or make him start crying/tantrumming.
-Answering new adults, especially men, used to petrify him.
-Answering a question directly (ie, thinking about it) used to seem impossible. He used to answer "Paxton" for everything a stranger asked him.
-He actually remembered the name Tariku, which we've been talking about every now and then and which we hadn't mentioned in a few days.
-He understood that Tariku is another name for himself, which is something we'd been hoping to work on that he apparently "got."

Of course, the reason we've been talking about the name Tariku lately is kind of silly. Aside from "testing" him with it (to see if it still scared him, which it doesn't) Paxton has been all about learning his letters and can sort of write his name now, if you'd accept upside down/backwards letters all over a piece of paper. But he was upset that Paxton didn't have a U in it since he likes the letter U, so I we talked about Tariku.

So when we were in the car driving home and he was proudly telling us how he talked to the nice man and told him "I'm Tariku," we asked him why he said the name Tariku and he told us "There's a U in it!" Haha, my silly boy