Progress: We're Making it!

Last night my wonderful, amazing husband had to give a talk, which left me in charge of the bedtime routine. Bath-time has been terrible for us here. She is so frightened at the outset of every bath that she clings to you and gets both of you soaked, refusing to sit in the tub. I feel like I'm hosing the poor kid down as I dump cupfuls of water over her. (The shower is even worse!) But recently, since she is building up trunk muscles and finding new ways to sit other than "w" sitting, she has taken to the bath. Especially if it has bubbles. The first few minutes of fear are still there, but once she overcomes the initial shock, she's happy to sit down and splash. So last night for the first time in a while I felt less like the mean-scrubby-bath ogre and more like a mom cleaning up her kid!
For the last few minutes of her day, we usually let her zone out in front of the tv. But I didn't feel up to listening to sponge bob last night, so I asked if I could read her a book instead. She nodded, so I picked out "The Very Quiet Cricket" by Eric Carle. This is a great book, about a little cricket who wants to say hello and make friends, but can't get any sound to come out of his wings, until the very end, when he tries one last time. When you turn that last page, a built-in speaker in the book "chirps" like a cricket. It always makes me tear up, the metaphor about trying to keep trying. Penelope got to that chirping sound and looked up at my wet eyes and said, "more!" So we read it again. Then she signed "more book" and I got a whole stack of boardbooks from her room, and we read them for over twenty minutes! She has that kind of attention span, but it's usually reserved for her independent play. I was so happy and proud.
Just like the very quiet cricket, I am learning to keep trying, and learning that it's okay for Penelope to keep trying, too. One day she'll chirp with the best of them!

Happy Mother's Day

For mother's day: a gift. In the last three months Penelope's vocabulary has tripled from about 10 words to about thirty. Happy happy happy!

Happiness

What is happiness? When I wonder this, I think about those Charles Schulz comics wherein he would say "Happiness is..." followed by things like "a hug from a friend" or "a warm blanket". He was really on to something that my little kid mind clamped down on. Happiness lies in a moment: a fleeting, non-perpetual state. I learned that lesson from him, and I am working on re-learning it for Penelope's sake.
Penelope has been singing songs lately. She made up a song to the suitcase in our bedroom that is mostly babble, but the refrain of it is "going going going". She also has been singing a song we call the happy song which simply goes, "happy happy happy (phoooooo)" The phooo part is her blowing. It took me a couple of times of hearing this before I finally realized she was trying to sing Happy Birthday and blowing out the candles! This is major because she's not a big cake fan or anything, so this little happy song is just about happiness, togetherness, the emotion, the moment, and anticipation. She sings it whenever she has a quiet little happy moment with her Dad or I. I think it's beautiful and sums up our life.
We should all have a happy song. Something we sing to remind us that yeah, life is tough but in this moment I feel joy. Something to make us really embrace and share that joy with those around us. Then maybe in the rough times we could ride it out, listening to our happy song in our head.

It's Been Months

It's been months since I updated PennyTalks.

So much has happened~ I plan to blog about it all in small increments, but Thursday is as good as any other day for just living in the moment, describing what is happening right now.

Penelope is asleep. She has had the Croup this week and seems to be sleeping it off.

She had school(!) this morning, and I stayed to conference with her teachers a little on the assessments they are doing for each child. They are using the same educational assessments as some public school system in California, and they used the Access (special needs-geared) assessment for Penelope. It is great because for each major goal it's broken down into smaller goals, which they then back up with observations. How amazing it was to read about observations from her first day, February 3rd, and then to know how far she's come!

Then, something beautiful happened. She sat(!) at the art table and painted for a lonnnnnnnnnng time. I even saw her touch the paint curiously, on purpose! For a child with sensory processing issues, getting your hands messy with gooey green paint is not a top priority. But there she was, holding out a messy finger for her teacher to wipe clean, and then giggling and repeating the game.

She also vocalized, "help" for her teacher at school. I think it's wonderful and I know she has worked so hard.

help play!

I haven't posted in so long. I think it's because things have been going so well, I haven't needed the blog as much to keep me on track with positive thinking. Today has been great for Penelope, despite the fact that she woke up at 3:30 this morning. She grabbed a quick nap on the way to "work" (I work as a nanny) this morning, and got out of the car completely ready to play. She was super social and imitative, and even played ring around the rosey with the 3 year old, totally "getting" the all fall down & giggle part. I was so proud, I almost started crying.
Tonight before bed we'd read books and she was toddling around from her bedroom to the livingroom (right next to each other) and came in, looked at Dad and I and signed "help". We asked what she wanted help with, she went into her bedroom. We came into her room and she sat down and looked at us and her face just said play all over it. We sat down and opened the toybox and played and laughed and had such a fun time! It was the first time she's really tried to get us to play with her and expressed interest in social activity, instead of just doing her own thing and me trying to get involved.
Since I haven't been posting, here's an update on her progress!
She's consistently verbalizing hiya, Dad, cat, up, "I see (jibberish)", "get it", bath and dog!
Her signs she uses faithfully are music, more, up, diaper, milk, eat, cookie, cracker, help, passy, and her own made-up sign for hungry!
Her receptive language is making headway, and she had her first speech therapy appointment last Friday. We like miss Courtney and even though Penny only made one sound during the appointment, we know she'll warm up.

Feeling very disjointed, had a rough day and am feeling negative about Penny's prognosis, and she doesn't deserve that because she had a late afternoon nap and woke up and was doing great.
She started by pointing at her Dad, and later said "Dada" and pointed at him repeatedly!
She identified her body parts again today, except her nose, which she *can* do. Finally when we asked her to do it for like the fifth time, she shook her head no! We all busted out laughing. Then Dad said, "please, penny, please touch your nose?" and she shook her head no again! We all laughed so hard.
She said two sentences tonight, "I'm getting it" (which she used to say often) and "I see a car."
She finally pointed to something I asked her to ID in a book (a rubber duck) and when she did, and I made her do it again to verify it wasn't a fluke, she did it and was extremely proud of herself and clapped and grinned so widely!
Earlier today, she held up a plastic snake, I made a hissing sound, and she copied it. She usually hisses as fsshhhhh sound and this was a true ssssssssss sound!
Other things she did today: said dog, labeled herself as up while I was doing up & down on my knee, waved goodbye at work!, kicked a ball, held her hands up to be picked up, labeled book, copied "laahh" sound approximately, made an elephant sound imitatively, imitated the cat meowing, climbed on the couch when I said, "come here", signed diaper as a request.

Long Day

Today's been a long day, but Penny has done several things today that were encouraging. She repeated a sentence we thought she'd lost, "I'm getting it!" while snatching the glasses off Dad's face, and she also labeled them, "glasses" imitatively.
She imitated a tickle gesture, made a choice between a reinforcer and a non-reinforcer with a gesture, and ID'd lots of body parts, including her tummy, ears, head, eyes, nose, and toes. While we were "working" this morning, the three year old was marching and Pen imitated her, as well as waving her arms in imitation when Dad was reading the Barney book.
She used some signs today, including help, diaper, and eat (she didn't verbalize this word today),
Dad asked her if she could shake her head no, and she did. She pointed, unprompted, to his mouth. When Dad asked her to put on her "hat" (a box) she popped it on her head.
Penny put a box-top on her toys when asked. She threw a ball when asked. She clapped her hands to show enjoyment.
We received the speech pathologist report and it was very discouraging, so today's blogging seems more important than ever!