The Winter of Our Discontent and Looking to the Future

It's March now.  I know that's a Captain Obvious statement, but to anyone who has been battered by the soon-to-be-infamous Winter of 2014, March offers a small glimmer of a light at the end of a long, cold tunnel.  I know I'm looking forward to anything above freezing, especially since we have spent pretty much the entire winter in some state of illness. 

Lyric has missed 18 days of school so far as a result of being sick.  She's had the flu, stomach flu, and every kind of congested gunk you could think up.  Despite this, she is still doing well.  Her speech is miles better than it was when she started the school year, and she's picking up plenty of other skills along with it.  She knows the words and motions to more songs, and is learning new words every day.  The other day I found out she knows the word "professor."  Apparently, she picked that one up from Mickey Mouse Club House. 

Her newest thing is "Can I try?" with everything.  If I'm cleaning, she wants to try.  If I am cooking something, she pulls up her stool and tries to help me cook.  The last few nights we have had dinner together at the table because when I bring the food to the table, she wants to eat with us, too.  When I go grocery shopping, she wants to take the things that we need and put them into the cart - which can sometimes be a problem, because she's not exactly gentle.  She also wants to either push the cart, or hold onto it and help pull it, which is both adorable and kind of a pain.  But at least it keeps her close to me when we're in the store, which is a far cry from the running off that she used to do.

We got her progress report back in January, and it was kind of a mixed bag.  She knows all her numbers, shapes, and colors.  She can recognize her name.  She was learning how to cut with scissors, and draw various things.  She's very good at circles.  She somewhat follows along with songs and finger plays, and is relatively good at cleaning up after herself.  She will tell you her name and her age if you ask her.  The report on her IEP was pretty encouraging.  She has met one goal 100%, one goal she has met 75%, and the other two she met at 50%.  For halfway through the year, I would consider that pretty good.  I try to be positive about it, because while I obviously wish it were a case of her meeting everything at 100% before she needs to, she is making great progress.  Preschool has definitely been a good thing for her.

Which brings me to the future.  Today I got an email about the Preschool Open House for Waverly Schools, which is where her preschool is at.  Thursday and Friday they have enrollment for the GSRP (Great Start Readiness Program), and tuition based preschools.  I learned that we qualify for GSRP, so I was thinking that I would go to check it out and try to secure her a spot in the program, because I know they are limited.  At this point, I had in mind the fact that her teacher told me she was thinking that regular preschool with speech services on the side was going to be the "plan" for next year.  Unfortunately, our IEP meeting isn't until April 1, so all of the details won't be worked out until then.  I just wanted to make sure that she would have a place at SOME preschool, because she definitely needs it.  I emailed her teacher to see if this was still the plan.

The response I got surprised me.  Her teacher thinks that she would be a good candidate to do both GSRP AND ECSE (Early Childhood Special Education) next year.  A full day program.  She would go to one in the AM, and switch to the other for PM.  I am now a roller coaster of emotion and questions.  On the one hand, I'm a little bummed out that she thinks Lyric will still need to be in special education next year.  On the other hand, I think it would work out well in terms of providing her with speech services and getting her a "regular level" education so that she could potentially no longer need services when she starts kindergarten.  I guarantee that I will be going in to her IEP meeting with a list about a mile long with questions about how they would do meals, and rest time, and switching between classes, and where speech would fit in, etc.  It's an exciting new prospect, but at the same time I am definitely feeling a little like a deer in the headlights right now! 


With that, here is the customary "closing" photo.  She likes to cheese it for the camera.  I'm sure I'm going to have a lot of updating in the coming months as we work out the details of this new development.

Long Time, No Type

It’s been a while, mostly because Lyric has been on holidays from school, so there isn’t a whole lot to document in terms of her IEP Goals or preschool in general.

Christmas and New Years have come and gone, and we are now in the process of attempting to clean and organize the house, which involves getting rid of tons of stuff.  Lyric has been helping with that.  She likes to sweep and try to mop, and if you sing the “Clean Up” song, she’ll help pick up clutter.  Forget vacuuming though.  She runs to whatever room is closest and slams the door as soon as the thing turns on.  If you ask her to take her clothes and put them in her room, she will do it – which I think counts as a 2 step direction (one of her IEP goals), but I’ll have to ask about that. 

She was completely potty trained, but the change in schedule when she was off school threw her off and caused her to regress.  She won’t do #2 on the potty anymore.  Again.  We’ve been trying to work on it, but at a loss as to how to talk her in to going back to going on the potty instead of in her pants.  On the impressive side, though, we’ve been doing overnight in underwear for months now and she has yet to have a single accident.  I’m sure now that I have said that, she will wet the bed tonight because that’s how Murphy’s Law works. 

Verbally the improvements she has made are pretty crazy.  She asks for cartoons she wants to watch by name now.  Or, if she’s being extra funny, she’ll ask for them by listing off the characters in them.  Scooby Doo is either “Scooby Doo” or “Shaggy.”  UmiZoomi could be either it’s title or “Millie, Geo, Bot!”  If she sees a Garfield DVD, she will talk about Garfield, Odie, and Jon Arbuckle.  Some things are a little more random, like if she wants to watch a learning DVD she has, she just asks for “ABCs.”  Or with Despicable Me, we have to ask if she wants “Regular Minions or Lipstick Taser Minions?”  A work in progress, I suppose.

She has recently learned to tell us that she’s hungry, and is already using it as a tactic to delay going to sleep.  Most of the time she asks for food by name, but it can be difficult to differentiate.  Like if she says “I want cheese,” we have to figure out if she wants slice cheese, cheese block cheese, or macaroni and cheese.  She’s still working out how to say “macaroni.”  Once when I came home from work, I thought she was telling me about “cheese cookies,” but after a minute I figured out she was actually telling me that there was macaroni and cheese cooking for her.  She doesn’t really have the concept of hungry vs. thirsty down yet, but I suspect that’s not going to be too far off.  She tells us when she has to potty (or when she’s already gone in her pants).  She tells us when she wants us to be quiet (sometimes politely, sometimes not so much).  She will also say "Hey, watch where you're going!" if we bump in to her, or tell us to be careful if we're doing something she thinks is risky.   

She can sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, The Wheels on the Bus, ABC, and Jingle Bells.  She knows all her shapes, and will point out to us that her crackers are squares, or diamonds.  Or that the can she found is an octagon.  She counts well from 1 – 20, and knows all the colors – including the ones she couldn’t name in November at parent/teacher conference times.  She tells us she loves us at least once a day.  She’ll have conversations on her fake phones that are HILARIOUS because she just acts outraged for most of it.  She can draw people and has started trying to write letters as she says them.  She knows how to work Facetime, and will use that with Travis’ mom – and say that she is “finding Nana, and Papa, and Walph, and Jijet.”

We still have a long way to go.  There are times when she clearly thinks she’s telling us something and we have no idea what she is saying.  About 40% of what she says is still gibberish, I’d say.  There are points when we’re all frustrated to tears because she is trying to tell us something that she really wants, and no one can figure out what it is – and she can’t figure out a way to show us.  There are still times when I see kids that are her age – or younger than her – talking, and I feel defeated or get frustrated because it seems like she is so far behind them and she’ll never catch up.  The problem with improving that it takes so darn long.  Obviously in this case, instant results are what are wanted.  I still worry that she won’t be caught up for kindergarten and we will have problems with that.  She’s always been about a year behind speech wise, so somewhere in there 2 years of improving is going to have to be crammed into one.  BUT she’s improving.  By a lot.  And that’s the most important part of all of this.  I’m so grateful that we contacted Early On when we did, otherwise she wouldn’t have preschool, and it’s been such a great opportunity for her.  I’m worried about finding a school we can afford next year, because her teacher wants to transition her to mainstream with speech on the side.  We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, I suppose.

 Another new development - She's learned the whole concept of the camera, and loves to either pose for it or make us pose.