Feb 20

This week we got 8hrs and 50min.

We had a great moment playing with matching squares. Normally Sarah just likes to play with them bc of the texture and feel of the multiple squares and isn't too interested in matching them, to put it mildly. This week she had increased attention and flexibility and twice she picked up the correct match when presented with 3 choices. She also went along with hand over hand stacking matched pairs.

She had her 5yr check up with Dr. K. On the drive when I told her where we were going she replied "dahdah k-m." Sarah hates having her ears checked but when Dr. K. said she was going to look in Sarah's ears, Sarah grabbed the looking tool and put it to her own ear. Then later in the week when we were playing in the Sarah-Rise room she started talking about it out of the blue, saying, "dahdah k-m l-k eer/l" (her ear sound sort of ends with an "l"-ish r). We talked about this and I explained that we would be going for a hearing test too where they would look and put things in her ears. she let me put my eye up to her ear. we then talked about grammy and granddad visiting and how she wanted to play with brian but he wouldn't be visitng and then about mommom and poppop visiting. Her contributions to the conversation were "gg dad" and "pai b-n" and "mama papa." the exciting thing was how long she had attention for this and looked at me as she listened and her prompt contributions of the words she did say. this was the first time I felt like we were having a real conversation that was spontaneous and not based on someone bumping their head or blowing their nose. i think the repetitive conversations paved the way, especially as we could expand them to be about my asking what color tissue and her saying no to my question of "was the tissue green? blue? pink? etc." we played for two hours Mon and Tues and both times I had her attention with me for most of the time. amazing.

She has started reminding us after dinner to get her oil. (she gets a tsp of oil by syringe for calorie intake)

I feel like she says new words every day. When she was eating an andes mint and I said "delicious" I swear she tried to say delicious even around her mouthful of chocolate.

Normally she isn't really into cards or presents. For Valentine's Day I made a card with her interests in mind, including textures, stripes, flowers, hearts and minimal words. When I gave it to her she really looked at it and when I said "it says I love you." she responded with "ah vv"

Sometimes when she says "ah vv" I say "I love" and wait. she then says "ee oo" (you) and "t-oo" (too).

We had the best music class yet this past Sat with no resistance to going in after playing with the door and no real resistance to staying and she took her coat, shoes, etc off as requested and then put them on at the end. She again paid quiet attention for many sections of the class.