Eating Out!, Dancing Snowman and continued progress

We decided to go for it and eat out as a family.  Several other FG families with very sensitive kids have been able to eat at Five Guys without an issue and even eat the fries.  We took their advice and took bread for Megan to use instead of their bun and she did great.  She was extremely happy to be sitting at the table eating her own fries.  She had a blast and even better than that she didn't have a reaction to anything.  It was so much fun to get to go out again as a family, it has been more than a year.  We will definitely do it again.

I have a dancing snowman that responds to sound.  When you make a loud noise nearby it starts dancing and singing.  Megan LOVES the snowman.  A few days ago, before I had finished with decorations on the mantel, it was sitting on the mantel with several breakable items.  I was on the phone with Will and Megan was standing beside me pointing and grunting to the mantel.  I said "you can't have anything from up there"and then I noticed the dancing snowman - which is what she was asking for.  She remembered it from last year.  Amazing.  I had to replace the batteries first and then it was on.  She played it with for an hour - turning it on and running around, dancing, repeat.  It did take her about 10 minutes to warm up to it enough that she would turn it on herself - until then she had Sam do it for her.  She continues to love playing and dancing with that thing every day.

Megan is continuing to respond to the limited program we have started implementing.  Will is still reading the books and I am still getting through all of the videos but armed with just the information each of us has we are doing what we can.  She is giving us really good eye contact both on her own and when it is requested "Megan, look at mommy".  She will look me right in the eyes when I request it and previously she would turn her head toward me but wouldn't always actually look me in the eyes - in fact more often than not she would look off to the side.  Today I learned that looking on request is on a different level than looking just when she instigates it.  Yay for her!

She has also been extremely talkative the past couple of days - pointing around the room and using word approximations "ight" for light, etc.  Tonight I was sitting in the floor and she stood up and hugged me and then started grunting to get down and I told her to "tell mommy down".  I waited several seconds and watched her thinking about it and then said "say down" and she did the sign for down.  It was incredible.  She repeated this again a few minutes later.