She also blew Brent and I away last week. She was standing at the fridge where we have the Leapfrog letter bus and she would pick up a letter (not put it on the bus) and walk over to Brent and tell him the name of the letter... she did this with 9 letters!!! Brent looked at me and asked if this was normal and I said no, she isn't even 2 yet! We thought maybe it was just those specific letters she knows because of the bus but then the next day she was at PT and they have a magnetic wall with letters on it and she walked over and started picking up letters and telling us the names. Yup, Lydia knows at least 9 letters. No one has sat down and worked on letters with her, although she is around during Jilli's school time, she just learned by playing and watching. We were at the museum yesterday and she walked up and pointed to a 5 and said five so apparently she knows some numbers too. Her speech path was talking the other day how sometimes its hard to think of activities to do with Lydia because doing typical 1yr old toys is too easy for her. She is also one of those people who once she is determined to do something she is going to work at it with everything she can, however the flip side goes too, if she decides she doesn't want to do something she will come up with some creative ways to get out of it.
Lydia has also made a lot of improvements in speech and will soon be dismissed! Starting her on oxygen made a huge impact... imagine that, it takes oxygen to talk! She talks most about her friends Emerson and Oliver, infact most mornings she wakes up babbling all about them. The worlds Elmo and Fight (for Fight song) are also very frequent in her vocabulary.... as well as saying ow any time someones does anything she doesn't like, so much so that sometimes its hard to tell when something is hurting her or she is just mad.
Jilli also reached a huge milestone last week... ladies and gentlemen... we have a reader! She has been asking to read for a while but I wanted to work on foundational skills some more first but last Monday we got out her first Bob book and she did great. She now has a list of 11 books she can read. A couple of them she still needs a small amount of help but several of them she can read all by herself and has read them over and over. She is doing a great job! Wednesday we went to Barns and Nobel and for the first time ever she was able to pick up a book and read it (with a small amount of help). She was SO proud of herself! And it was a book called "I Love Pink" so even better in her world. I am so excited for her. We have reading time every morning once she wakes up and we work on reading skills, letter sounds, reading a book and writing. We are kind of doing a Readers Workshop style and it is working for her. Then when Brent gets home from work she reads her book for the day to him. The challenge right now is finding the right books for her. Some of the Bob books are perfect, others are still too hard, the leveled books at large retailers vary in skill so much (I often feel like those leveled books like that have little standardization to them) and I want to take this at the right pace for her. Its not like when I was teaching and had bins of level A books, honeschooling reminds you the cost of education! Thankfully both my mom and Brent's mom have gotten her some books to get her started.
This week we also had our meeting for the CTLS waver. This is a waver for people in our state who qualify for Katie Beckett. This waver is to help pay for medically needed things that KB doesn't pay for like respite and home modifications. Jilli has been on the waitlist for this waver since she was 18mo and her name just came to the top of the list due to a funding increase. I wish this process has been smoother then it has been but we are approved for 10 hours of respite care a month! This will help when I have things like dentist appointments for myself.
This week I was also had the privileged of being published again in Complex Child magazine! The article is adapted from a blog post I wrote on John 9, as this month's edition was on faith. I was really blessed that I was able to have my friends Jaime, Lauren and Elisha to message with to get their Biblical views on it to help check it for biblical accuracy. I am so thankful that college brought the three of us together. You can click HERE to see the article and I would love for you to pass it along to others you know, its not just for parents with special needs but also for everyone that knows someone with special needs.
We have most of the records in for NIH and I am really hoping the rest come in the next few days so I can get that sent in. I have finished all of the 36 page questionnaire for that as well. On Wednesday Jilli's PT and I worked on finding the right adaptive bike for Jilli so we can continue to work on the paperwork for Shriners to hopefully be able to get her a bike!
I also have never been much of a reader, I am more of a vlog watcher (mainly Disney lol) but I stumbled upon a few books and have spent more time reading lately. I just finished Never Say No, a really good parenting book (seriously, go read it if you have children in your house! and this is said by someone with a degree in early childhood education who has read lots of child development and behavior books). I am also in the middle of Wholly Jesus (good) and Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God (not a casual book, it is has started a lot of interesting conversations between Brent and I and also my friend Yoomi, its not a book for everyone, I think knowing what you believe and why is a good place to start before picking this book up). For someone who is not a reader (above kids books, I taught 4K, I LOVE kids books) I have been enjoying reading these books. I have also become more of a podcast listener (now I feel like a millennial lol) and have been really liking the Relevant podcast (faith with humor and similar world views), The Faith Angle (politics and faith, first one made me irritated, but the second two have been amazing) and The New Activist (ways to help others).
So life has been busy here but it is rare that it isn't. Our Easter ended up calm because Jilli had a stomach bug that day that Lydia and I also got the "fun" of experiencing. The normal kid stuff still happens in our life too. Lydia also is on meds for a gut bacterial overgrownth again. She is on probiotics to help stop these but every 4-6mo she needs a few days of meds to help her body keep the right balance in her gut.
So back to our calm day now, Lydia is napping on me as she woke up too early and Jilli is going between playing and resting, the children's museum yesterday was a lot of fun but we are warn out today!
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| Jilli's book list so far (plus the one she learned today) |
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| learning about plant parts |
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| story yoga |
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| How Jilli's hand looks |
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| Made a few Tubie Friends a couple of weeks ago (no worries, a while before the stomach bug hit, I don't make them if anyone in the house doesn't feel their best) |
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