February 15

We began today with another wonderful group meeting. Every time I think about our amazing team of people I am just stunned at what a gift these people bring into my (our) life. Such love, dedication, creativity, thoughtfulness, and openness. We talked about what we bring to our sessions in terms of our intentions and thoughts ahead of time. We talked about how we deal with challenging moments when things don't feel like they are going easily and how it is good to be genuine and give ourselves a minute or two of a break of nothing if we need it. After all, that is very similar to what Sarah achieves for herself when she isms. 

We also had wonderful Grammy and Granddad babysitters! Sarah is extra excited to have Granddad around and we are slowly making progress with her learning to ask to snuggle with him without fake crying or truly working herself into a state of upset.

Yesterday Carl gave the girls valentines with a few words on the back. Sarah read hers all by herself except for the word "from." Wow!! She read "To Sarah (from) Dad. I love you." The word packs continue to go well and whenever I give Sarah the option to read them she chooses to do so and often knows all of them except for the newest word. Sometimes she knows even the newest word after only learning it once. Sometimes there is confusion when two words are slightly similar (Piggie/piano, snake/sneeze). One day I dumped out several retired words and pretended they were snow that we had to shovel. I asked her to shovel specific words to me and she did at least 10 before wanting to switch to number snow.

Number cards continue to be the favorite item. Sometimes we use them to build the outline of a small house, sometimes she pretends my arm is a door (this started with a volunteer) and she goes back and forth as often as she does when she plays with real doors. Sometimes she takes numbers to the moon.

The math dot cards seem a bit more challenging than the word cards so I don't often ask Sarah if she wants to read them, though perhaps I should do so more often and then maybe slow my rate of changing the cards (though only two number cards get retired per day and two new ones added). Sarah does seem to have a general sense of when the amounts is smaller vs larger.

We do bit cards of information almost each day now and so far they are all about inventors. When we are done I put the card in the back of the pile. Amy commented recently, "Maybe tomorrow we can learn who he is. We don't even know what his name is or when he was born or what he printed." Wow! I am so impressed with Amy's generalizing the types of information we learn.

Sonia did a small science project with the girls involving cups of sand, dirt, clay, and rocks with cards for labels. On the second day, Sonia put out the cups and gave the cards to Sarah to see if she remembered where they went. Sarah did all of them perfectly.

Sarah has been having lots of itchy skin areas so I have backed off some of the newer foods and I reduced some of the supplements just in case that will help. This may all be a reaction to a banana that I tried for her recently, hoping that she could eat bananas again. I think not yet.

When Sarah arrived at gymnastics on Tuesday she said loudly and enthusiastically, "hi guys!" just like R. does when we see her and her kids for playdates. Sonia says that Sarah continues to do new things at gymnastics that she used to not feel comfortable doing.

For Sarah's school Valentine party her class was having ice cream with chocolate sauce and sprinkles. I made an equivalent that she could have and she ate every bite. As Carl pointed out, these efforts on my part not only help Sarah feel included but perhaps they help other people see her as less different, if that makes sense. Sure she can't eat what everyone else does, but she can eat something that looks the same and can be called the same thing.

I hope you are all having a snuggly Sunday.