11-15-08

Lily is doing great as usual. I am getting over strep throat, so it's been a rough week, but I'm finally feeling better. Lily continues to make progress everyday. I've been trying to sign less with her, because I really feel like she is using it as a crutch. The other day she was gathering up all of her mickey characters and trying to bring them into the living room. I asked her if she needed help and since her arms were full she actually said "help" instead of signing it, lol, there's no way she'd drop her toys! It didn't come out perfect, but it made me see that signing was good for awhile, but we need to move past that now. It is really VERY difficult for her to speak, she gets very frustrated and prefers to sign rather than try to say the words that she just can't formulate. Anthony finally taught her to say "mom" on request and she said it so slow and forcefully that it really broke my heart that she had to work so hard to say it. I've been giving her any and all praise for trying to say words, even when they come out nothing like the word. She doesn't like to make mistakes, so she won't even try most of the time.

Her speech therapy is going well. We had to cancel a few appointments this past week, due to my being sick, but I've been working with her and she continues to do well. She tries to pick up on the sounds in words that she knows and will repeat those sounds. She use to be able to say the "t" sound. It was one of the sounds she preferred, but she seems to have lost that one and only says "ck" sound for the "t". I did hear her say "tinkerbell" or something like it while she was watching her movie. She's really all about hit or miss, my little one-time-wonder!

She seems to be MUCH less into TV now and more into playing with her toys. She use to consistently try to turn on the tv throughout the day, from the moment she ran out of her room in the morning, but she hasn't lately. Her spinning has stopped for the time being, but she seems to have substituted that for running around in a circle. Her favorite thing to do continues to be lining up toys (though she does spend time playing very appropriately with a lot of her toys). She is very easily frustrated if things do not "stand up" just how she wants them to. Some things fall over easily and it really upsets her. I have to try to take away anything that she is playing with that I know won't "cooperate" and substitute it for other things, but it's hard to do that unless she's not looking.

Lily's attention span is getting better. We played with playdough a couple of days ago for over a half hour!! Unheard of for her. Most of her speech therapy requires that she sit in a chair with a tray (kind of like a high chair) so that's been helping. Also she's been having to sit in the car more for the to/from appointments.

I know I've been saying this alot lately, but Lily's understanding of things is skyrocketing. I'm in awe of some of the directions and requests that I can ask her and she understands and actually does some of it! She never understood simple things before and now it's as if a lightbulb has gone on in some part of her brain. Just being able to give her directions at the playground on how she can climb something or that she can run across the wiggley bridge instead of scooting across on her butt and have her listen and understand is amazing to me. She's been much happier too. I can't imagine living in her world. How hard it must be. It's no wonder she's so much happier, she can understand so much more and communicate better than she ever has been able to. She still doesn't point for a request. Like if she wants something she doesn't get that she can just point to it. I still have to try to figure out why she is crying and what she is after. She has trouble following a point, like if I point to something that she is looking for I have to walk towards it until I'm almost touching it for her to be able to follow my point, but we're working on it.