Woo-hoo! Some progress...and a temper tantrum!

Despite pulling Brycen from school for a week for our family vacation to Florida, he did amazingly well adjusting back to his school routine this week! Mike and I are amazed at the progress Brycen has made so far, not only with language, but he showed us over vacation that he can adapt to new places and things, as well as initiate play with a peer.
Just in the last couple days, Brycen spontaneously (and in imitation) has been saying "Boom Boom" in response to a song that is on one of his videos! His teacher reports he is saying "all gone" at lunch after he has drank all of his milk He also is doing more pointing...with one finger too, not just his whole hand! He has mastered the sign for "Thank you," though he still needs to be prompted when he needs to use it. And he is also imitating "Where'd it go?" when something is hidden or looking for it...though it comes out "whe go" though we all know what it means!
While in Florida, we stayed with some fabulous friends of ours who have an 8 yr old daughter. This is the first time that Brycen has played with her and after a couple days, he actually initiated play with her! She did great playing along with him and was a wonderful example for him! As we all know, Brycen is usually oblivious to other children around him unless they are right in front of him and initiating play with him. It was so exciting to see him come over to her to want her to play with him!
Brycen did have one incident at school on Thursday where he became very upset. Brycen is very routine oriented (as most children with an ASD are) and he becomes very upset and will throw a tantrum when parts of his routine that he loves or relies on are interrupted. We have found that if we are in a different environment (such as in Florida or at grandparent's houses), he will more easily adjust to a change, but if the change is in his typical environment, this will most likely result in a tantrum. Anyway, the teacher told Mike that they had to switch to a different place in the classroom to do greeting circle in the morning because there were some visitors there using the space they normally use. Brycen did not understand this change and became very upset, yelling and throwing things. We've determined that it was not the change in place that upset him, but now that he enjoys greeting circle in the morning, he probably thought they were not going to do it at all, which would have been completely out of the routine! The teacher has decided to adapt to this need of his and now they are going to do greeting circle in the two different places, switching every-other day to show him that it will still happen. What a wonderful teacher to notice that this will help him in the future!
On the other side of things, Brycen has begun grinding his teeth more often and has been chewin on everything. These types of sensory and compulsive habits are common among children with Autism. We try to give him something else to chew on to distract him, but this doesn't seem to be helping. These are some of the compulsive things that eventually medication may help, but I still feel that he is too young to start on medications but of course I don't want him to damage his teeth either, so we'll have to keep a close eye on this one.