January 29

I have been thinking that while the biggest thing we have changed in Sarah's life is to add Sarah-Rise time, there are also many other people who have been providing lovely support and that I wanted to acknowledge them too. Sarah has a wonderful teacher and assistant teacher at her preschool. And every week Sarah gets 30-60 min OT at school, 30 min PT at school, 30 min speech therapy at school, 30 min hippotherapy (horse back riding) at Slippery Rock University (Storm Harbour Equestrian Center), and 30 min twice a week with a speech therapist, G., at home.

This week we (me, Carl, volunteers/volunteers watching Amy) did 10hrs 20 min of Sarah-Rise time. Woohoo!

She learned how to put her coat on by herself using the upside down flip move. (coat on floor, she is at the hood end, sticks arms in sleeves and flips coat over her head).

At hippotherapy Sarah added a "t" to her "want" and an "l" to her "play."

Her baby doll wears pajamas and yesterday I worked with coaching enthusiastically (like a cheerleader coaxing the crowd) "pa! - ja!- ma!" Sarah repeated after each one and was looking at me and sort of giggling. We would go through rounds of 3-4 practices and then she would tell me she was done. We would return later. Then last night when it was time to get her own pjs on she said "pa-ja-ma" with very minimal pauses between the sounds.

On Friday a new girl was starting at school. Sarah has always been interested in other people and often talks about saying hi to them and is also interested and concerned when someone is upset, so this moment built on all of Sarah's innate sweetness rather than being, but it warmed my heart so I want to share.... the new girl was very upset to be at school. She was crying and crying. Sarah was playing at the table (as they start every morning). Sarah then got up and went over to the new girl and waved and said "hi." After a few moments it was clear that the teachers wanted her to go back to the table so I took her back and got her started on a puzzle. I just love her friendliness!

Puzzle progress... I have been continuing to introduce and invite work on the alphabet puzzle in the Sarah-Rise room. Sometimes she does a couple letters (favorites are M which goes on the moon and O which goes on the octopus, both of which letters and pictures Sarah indicates verbally). Then she tends to move to spinning the letter pieces on the sit-n-spin (they fly off) or to a different toy. Yesterday she wanted to nap when we still had 15 min I wanted to do in the room. So I said she could nap after she helped clean up all the puzzle pieces. I handed her pieces (in the correct orientation most of the time) and she put them in. all of them! with minimal help or coaching or refocusing by me and with minimal frustration on her part! So I think her puzzle stamina is increasing and her piece manipulation is improving a tiny tiny bit. Hurrah! (if I say to rotate a piece then she turns it on the same plane as it is already in; if I say it is upside down or to turn or spin it then she picks the piece up and turns it end over end as if this will magically help). Sometimes I wonder how often the rest of us do similar things in life (doing something and hoping it will magically change things but not really looking at what we are doing or thinking it through).

This afternoon we are celebrating Sarah's birthday (even though she has a bit of a cold) with an Elmo themed party (we have a huge elmo balloon that goes to the ceiling so Sarah gets to have a story about elmo bumping his eyes on the ceiling. I'm pretty excited and so now should go clean the house.

I hope all your puzzle pieces are fitting with minimal spinning or rotating required and with minimal frustration. :) As always thank you to all of you for your help and support. It means so much I always get teary thinking about it.