Motivation

Joy has learned a new sign.

It was just over two weeks from the point at which I was taught the sign in April (and started using it sporadically) to the point at which she demonstrated conclusively that she understood the sign without a spoken word.

After that, I started doing hand-over-hand to have her make the sign as well.

This past weekend, she grabbed JoyDad's hands to have him make the sign.

Then later she made the sign all on her own.

Here's a web site where you can see a demonstration of the sign.

Here's what she's asking for.



Video. Baby Einstein video, to be precise. She's also vocalizing, a little sound halfway between "vuh-voh" and "fuh-foh".

It's all about the motivation, baby!

More Things To Say

It is hard to believe that it's been three weeks since my Some Things to Say post.

It is hard to believe that it's ONLY been three weeks since my Some Things to Say post.

In a nutshell: it wasn't all just-for-that-day.

Joy's speech and all-around developmental burst has continued at an awesome pace. There is literally something new every single day. To put this into perspective, we've had stretches where if there were even one of these new things in two weeks' time, we'd have been over the moon with delight.

Joy is now vocalizing regularly with her signs (more, open, all-done).

She is chiming in at the end of each line of familiar songs if we pause and leave off the last word, including a long-awaited return of the bed-time lullaby chime-ins.

She is waving and speaking both for greeting ("hi!") and farewell ("buh-bye!")

She is imitating familiar words, particularly when prompted.

"Joy, can you say 'coffee'?" (We have a tradition in the grocery that she gets to smell the open bag of bulk coffee beans.)
"FEE-fee!"

"Joy, tell me 'gold-fish'!" (Goldfish crackers at snack).
"Fee-fsh!"

"Want some music?" (Baby Einstein soundtrack on CD).
"muh-ick!"

Besides the songs she chimed in on, here are -- surely just some -- of the words she attempted yesterday, either in imitation (often prompted) or initiation.

Coffee, goldfish, music, candy, kiss, pear, chip, go, open, bye-bye, ball, more, drink, juice, lion, cracker.

Happy, happy Mother's Day!

Elvis Wants a Cookie

Anyone for some positive stories?

• We've heard so few words from Joy, for so long -- other than the "more" sign, some photo-choice-making on her Go-Talk, and the occasional "uh-oh". But tonight at dessert time, she echoed the word "cookie," clear as clear. Just once. JoyDad and I both did a double-take. And gave her one with chocolate chips.
  
  
• Speaking of the "more" sign. The other day at breakfast, JoyDad came swooping past to distribute kisses to his breakfasting ladies. Joy giggled at him, and tilted her face up. And then after receiving her kiss, she signed a great big "more"!
  
  
• And still more "more" -- today I was home with Joy, and had a few minutes where she was playing in the living room and I sneaked in some plunking on the piano. I've given up trying to play piano when Rose is around. I don't know why, but I get great big huge objections to my playing if Rose is within earshot. So it felt really good today to end a section of the Maple Leaf Rag with a big flourish... only to look up and find Joy grinning at me and signing "more"!
  
  
• Some totally cool imitation/initiation -- this morning one of Joy's baristas reported that Joy had snagged a tissue from the box and used it to go after the barista's nose! She did it again to me later on in the day. Unfortunately in my case it was with a nasty tissue that was blowing around the playground that she picked up. But the thought was in the right place.
  
  
• We had a therapy-team meeting last night, where positive stories are always the first agenda item. Joy bopped around the living room during the meeting, with her Baby Einstein video on repeat-play. She has never shown much interest in the meetings. But last night as the meeting was nearing a close, she decided that she wanted in on the action. She sidled up to Lynda (her Wonder Woman daycare lady) and climbed right up on her lap. And then she did this marvellous flirty little sequence of turning to make eye contact with Lynda, with a great big ol' grin. Over and over.

Accentuate the positive!

Random Tuesday Thoughts

A belated May-basket to Keely at The UnMom for running this Random Tuesday Thoughts operation, and giving me a reason for randomness!

• Joy wants "more". She's been signing it for food, bubble machine, swinging, all sorts of goodies and activities. Way to go, girl!



• Rose wants more too. More time playing with Mama.



• Mama wants more too. More independence on the part of Rose, especially during handbell concert season.



• Sunday's concert went awesomely well. I love it when we finish a piece and the audience gives a little gasp/sigh after the last note and before the applause...



• We debuted new royal-blue floor-length dresses for the show, most with plunging necklines, and managed not to have a single "wardrobe malfunction"!



• When Joy has a "wardrobe malfunction" it usually has to do with a leaky diaper.



• Why is it that Joy always seems to wake up in the wee small hours on Tuesday mornings, one of her busiest days of the week?



• I was up early today too, but it was intentional. Got a nice pre-dawn run in. Lots of birds and blossoms and bunnies out there.



• The strawberry patch is starting to bloom, now that JoyDad has fenced the bunnies out. Can't wait till the garden we planted this weekend starts to sprout as well!



• Did you know that violets are edible? Tastes kind of lettuce-like and makes a lovely unusual contrast to a salad of greens. Rose has loved picking flowers for dinner. Joy eats them on her plate, but hasn't figured out to pick them out of the yard to eat. Which is just as well, I suppose.



• Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Updates and Downdates

Doesn't it always seem to be a bit of cognitive dissonance when an "economic UPdate" comes on the TV or whatever, and then the news is all about how things are spiraling DOWN?

Anyway. We've got both ups and downs here, so we got both updates and downdates.

UPDATE: Rose is feeling much better. She went to school on Monday, only a little worse for the wear (achy muscles from all the hurling). Cute Rose story from yesterday: we were in the car on the way home from piano lesson and she asked me, "Did men always used to have to have short haircuts?" I started an answer about how it wasn't that you had to have short hair, it was just...

"Tradition!" she supplied from the back seat. I chuckled and told her what a grown-up girl she was, that that was exactly the right word.

"Yep," she replied smugly. "I'm a human dictionary!"

That's my girl! A chip off the ol' OED!

UPDATE: Joy's "more" sign has persisted this week. She's not using it at every opportunity, but we're still seeing it occasionally. She also seems to have retrieved her old sign for "all-done," which consists of self-applause. Which makes sense, because what do people do when you finish an achievement? They applaud and praise you! She used it remarkably well at Tuesday lunch, when I was around the corner as she finished the food she wanted to eat. I heard the clapping and came running, and she was absolutely telling me she wanted to be done. And then I told her that she needed to eat a few more bites of ham before I'd let her get away with being "all-done." Heh. Little stinker.

DOWNDATE: Sigh. This one harkens back to my Rules post the other week, in which I ranted about the ridiculous conditions and hoops to jump through to get 3 months worth of House Blend therapy (at 4 hours per week) at our fabulous daycare. Our daycare lady, Lynda the Wonder Woman, provides just an ideal setting for therapist work, and is a full member of our team. The daycare setting provides Joy with the opportunity to work on generalizing goals that she's been working on at home, into her "home-away-from-home" setting where she gets to interact with more peers.

Well. The response came back last week.

They said that in the next 90 days, we could have FOUR of our 4-hour therapy weeks. We're to sprinkle them throughout the 3 months as we see fit, but the emphasis should be on training Lynda so that we can fade out the need to have the therapy at the daycare at all.

This is not a decision made with Joy in mind, or with any clinical basis in the situation. This is a bean-counter decision, made in service of an apparent crackdown on therapy hours outside of the home in general.

ALL kids need structure, and stability, and routine. Kids on the spectrum have an even greater need for structure, and stability, and routine.

So, let's jazz things up at daycare, shall we, with 4 hours of therapy in week 2 of twelve, and then we'll take two weeks off, and then we'll have another week with 4 hours of therapy, and then we'll take three weeks off...

You see what I mean. That kind of approach isn't particularly kind to barista-schedules either, might I add.

It looks like our only sensible option is to take all four weeks consecutively, starting next week. And then we're out. No more therapy at daycare. No further venue of appeal, other than the committee that handed down the decision to begin with.

Well, our particular case might not be appeal-able, according to the rules that are apparently being re-written and tightened as the months go by. But when the rules are THAT BAD, maybe someone needs to do something to get those rules changed in the right direction....

Will keep you posted. If I need help, I'll let you know that too. Not quite sure what form this will take yet.

Just for Today, She Signed the Word "More"

We've seen it a couple of times recently.

Today it was unmistakable at lunch. Joy wanted more Kix. (What, you don't feed your children delicious nutritious breakfast cereals at lunch? C'mon!!) And when her portion was done, she very deliberately gave herself her own little fist-bump, the sign for "more" that has come and gone over the months, and come and gone. Who knows if it will be here tomorrow. Or even this evening.

Just for today, she's chewing the bejammers out of her super-strength chewy-toy. This overwhelming need to chew came back two or so weeks ago, I think. She's also leaving it clipped onto her shirt today. The last phase of super-chewing, she would let Lynda clip the chewy onto her at daycare, but would pull it off in a second at home. Who knows if she'll need to chew tomorrow, or if she'll leave the clip on.

Just for today, she's been pushing some boundaries. Climbing onto the toy chest to get to the TV. Climbing onto the glider-rocker in the living room, which she never used to do. Most of the time she's responding well to a voice-prompt of "Joy, down!" But who knows if she'll climb tomorrow, or if the voice-prompt will work tomorrow.

This weird uncertainty, this not knowing when the switches and sliders on Joy's mixer board will flip and slide, is making it a challenge to write her IEP, her Individualized Education Plan for the upcoming school year. Her school-district team leader commented to me the other day, after having combed through months of daily reports, that there are lots of times where we report something new starting, but then she often doesn't find a mention of when it stopped.

Well, yeah. At one point back in September I blogged that Joy had retrieved the word "ma-ma-ma". A week later, I wrote,

And we never know, from day to day, whether this day will be the last day that she says ma-ma-ma for the next year. We can't take any gain for granted. And that's very, very hard.

Guess what. One day, probably not too long after that, was the last time I heard "ma-ma-ma". But I don't know what day it was, because when she said it for the last time, I didn't know it was the last time. I don't even remember when I realized, "Hey, where are the ma-ma-mas?!"

So we end up not having a good record of when things go away, either the things we want to go away (like the night-wakings, still with us, alas!), or the things we desperately wish wouldn't go away. Like "ma-ma-ma."

It's funny, but it almost feels as if IEPs are written with neurotypical children in mind, in that way. You write goals, with the general expectation that the child will make documentable progress toward those goals, so you can record when a goal has been met and set new, higher goals. It's not set up for our reality, which is more like, "Joy was doing this thing pretty well in the fall. Then she didn't do it for a long time. Now she does it sometimes but not always, and we don't know why she does it some times and not others, and it might disappear again, who knows."

So, what goal shall we write for whatever "thing" it was? Do we keep trying to teach it? Do we figure she knows it but doesn't show it? If she doesn't do it, how can we build on it?

IEPs are not built for living in the moment.

And today, just for today, maybe even just at lunch...

Joy signed the word "more."