Ashlynn and I went to her class field trip to visit farms from the 1860’s and 1890’s in Littleton, Colorado. They had a lot of animals and she was so stoked to see all of them! I was taking an informal language sample as we walked along and sample phrases were:
Come here mama! Look! A cow!
I see a donkey!
Ewe, muddy piggy!
Whoah! I see chicks!
Two HUGE developments with Ashlynn popped out over the weekend! We celebrated my youngest’s 1st Birthday on Sunday. Six months ago, my daughter had to really focus on including all the sounds in syllables, so when it was my husband’s birthday, she could day “Happy Day” with cueing. Well, after the celebration ended and everyone had gone home, she went over to her brother and clear as day said “Happy Birthday Jace. ” There are substitutions so it was more like, “Happy buhday Dace” but my husband and I understood it perfectly. In fact, after she said it we both kind of looked at each other as if to see if we both had heard it. Then we teared up realizing we both DID hear it and it was perfect and beautiful! We asked her to say it again, and she did it again! It was just an awesome moment.
It’s no secret that my dad is the pushover. Don’t get me wrong, he could lay down the law when he had to; but when it came to playing my dad is the person to sweet talk. Ever since Ashlynn was a little baby, my dad would play ball with her. It started out almost as a game of fetch, but each time she gets better and better.
After Jace was born when she was 2 1/2 and still wasn’t really talking, he came over to see the kids. He hadn’t seen Ashlynn in a while. He no sooner walked in the door and she went running for a ball. That day he went home and told my mom that he didn’t think Ashlynn remembered him. I was incredulous! Was he kidding? Ashlynn NEVER just went and grabbed a ball whenever someone walked in the house!! She knew exactly who he was.
Fast forward almost a year later. My husband and I were going to drop the kids off at Grandma and Grandpa’s so we could celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary. The whole ride there she was talking about “papa’s house.” When we rounded the corner of their street she announced, “Ashlynn happy. Ashlynn papa’s house. Ashlynn play ball….papa’s house.”
Ashlynn has told me she was happy before when I asked her if she was happy, or we were reading a book about characters who were happy. I’ve never heard her say out of the blue, and perfectly in context that she was happy….and THEN tell me why she was happy.
It made me tear up, maybe for multiple reasons. The first and most obvious being that she had communicated to me that she was happy in context without prompting. The second being that I related to her like no one else could. Growing up we didn’t have a lot of money, but I did have a dad who cared about me and who liked to play ball, and I was the richest girl in the world for that. I always knew if I begged long enough (which never was very long), he would give in and go play. I remember how happy I was to play catch with him, and especially to practice basketball with him when I got older. I’m so happy my daughter gets to experience that too.
So today, despite having a great anniversary with my incredible husband, the sweetest words spoken were
“Ashlynn happy…play ball……papa’s house.”
I’m so frustrated today! To make it worse, I’m frustrated with myself for being frustrated. I went to put Ashlynn on abcmouse.com, and early learning site for kids as young as two. Since she’s 3.7, I figured this should be great. Wrong. Turns out using a mouse requires a high degree of motor planning and coordination. God. It sucks. She can’t even do things two year olds can do. I mean, she can, but it’s going to take a high degree of practice. It’s not fair!! I just want to cry. I mean, forget using the site for educational purposes, we’ve been stuck on the tutorial just trying to help her get the hang of the mouse.
It’s not that she’s not trying either. She’s so excited like she always is, smiling, happy to be learning something new. It’s just where most kids get to actually use the other programs on the site, we are using it to learn how to use a mouse. This is something two year olds can do!
Why does everything have to be so hard for her? Anything she’s ever done has required so much more practice. Everything she’s accomplished has not come easy, yet she perseveres with a smile on her face. I have so much to learn from her.
After my IEP experience, I was excited but also skeptical pending the first day of school. Excited and hopeful she would finally get the speech and language enrichment she so desperately needs, and skeptical because it didn’t seem like her teacher or SLP would be the ones able to do so.
I dropped off her private speech report to the teacher and SLP so they could at least see her progress documented by the private SLP.
I was pleasantly surprised to see there were 4 kids and 3 adults in the room. Talk about a great student/teacher ratio! There was the teacher, the para, and then depending on the day either the O/T or the SLP.
Day 1: I received a weekly agenda, which is basically the teacher’s lesson plans. It’s awesome because even though Ashlynn can’t tell me what she did, I can look at the agenda and talk about her day with her.
Ashlynn came home and we ate lunch. While she was eating, she balled up part of her sandwich, hid it in her fist, and asked me playfully, “Wherdido?” When I repeated, “Where did it go?” She laughed, opened her fist and said, “right der!.” Now, “right there” she has been saying for a month or so, but this “where’d it go” was new! She played it the whole day, obviously proud of herself.
Day 2: I pick of Ashlynn up from school and the SLP tells me that she believes it would be best to pull Ashlynn out of the classroom and drill (duh), but I was nice and on my best behavior. I smiled and said, “Great! I’m glad to hear that! I think she really needs that.”
Day 3: Ashlynn brings home art projects everyday. Today we got a tree with various fall leaves.
Day 4: Ashlynn brought home the cutest fall leaves wreath. I immediately hung it up! I love it. Great for working on colors. While eating lunch today, I asked her if she sang the song “Autumn leaves are falling down.” She kinda said ‘ya’ and so we sang it. When she was done, she said “see” for sing. I asked her what she wanted me to sing and she said “bee..bubu bee.” I clearly didn’t understand and she started kinda singing the melody to the baby bumblebee song. I asked her if she was singing “baby bumblebee” and started singing it. She started doing all the cute little gestures that go with the song. I emailed the teacher if they had sang this song today (I hadn’t seen it in the agenda), and she responded in a timely fashion that they had been singing it all week! How exciting!! Ashlynn finally told me something that happened in her day!!
My skepticism might be waning. I hope so. I just want the very best for Ashlynn, and this week seemed very productive 🙂
Today was such a great day! I have to write it down so I remember things Ashlynn is doing so later on, I appreciate how far she has come. When I’m with her everyday, I tend to get focused on how much she is behind instead of celebrating the new things she does. I really need to focus and celebrate all the successes!
Today when she woke up from her nap, she started to say outside (ou-sie), and right before I could tell her no, we weren’t going to go outside, she said, “i – da-dee” (is doggie). She tried to make a sentence using three words! They may have been out of order and slightly unintelligible to an unfamilar listener, but I knew what she was trying to say! I clapped and we cheered at her success. She was so proud of herself she ran around the house labeling all the things she knew how to say just to keep up my enthusiasm 🙂
She pointed to various things: shoe, share(chair), baby, hair, nail, nose, pupple(puzzle), baba(backpack), etc. It was so cute!
Later when her daddy got home, she exclaimed, “home! Daddy home!”
My heart is leaping for joy today. Today was a good day. I can’t wait until we can really talk and communicate. My child is finding her voice!