Monday, March 16th

We've had a good week overall, a bad week getting all of our therapy in. This is starting to be a pattern. We are still seeing progress though, I guess that's the important thing. Although S had done pretend things before, it has been with toys. Yesterday, we did something together that was completley imaginary. She put her cupped hand up to her mouth and was pretneding to eat something. I decided to follow her lead and imitated her. Then I pretended to feed her something imaginary with my hand to her mouth. She has extreme oral defensiveness, so she grabbed my hand to see what I was putting near her lips. She instantly realized that I had nothing in it, and then let me do it. We did this back and forth and she even fed me some imaginary food. I thought this was a big step in her development. Everytime she does something new, I rest a little easier knowing it's one less thing we need to wonder about. We were watching the space shuttle take off yesterday and when she saw it on TV where it was just a bright light, she started singing Twinkle Twinkle because it looked like a star. I know I have only pointed out the stars once to her. Her sister did a couple of times, but it was a long time ago. What a thrill to know how much she has stored up. I was just watching her play yesterday and I was marveling over how happy she is. She goes through life so joyfully, enjoying every minute. She lives life rather dramatically, I don't know if this is partly environmental influence or just who she is. We are a very lively household, we find that the kid's friends who are only children are quite overwhelmed when they come to our house. They keep coming back, so I guess it's kind of a fun chaos. S can get serious when she's studying how a toy is made or how something works, but other than those times, she's always smiling and talking with tons of expression in her voice. Since she's started singing, we find her singing all of the time. She still won't answer yes or no to a question, we need to work on that.Hopefully I'll be able to report that we're better about our therapy this week. She is going to miss school this week because I'm home with her sister who is sick.