Ada update
It seems like it has been a long time since I’ve done an Ada update. I had to look back to even remember what I last posted about her. I haven’t done a really extensive one in awhile.
She is outgrowing the shoes that I bought in the spring. I did buy one pair a size bigger, and they now fit great. Pants that are meant to be capris were not capris in the early spring, but they are capris now. Even some of her dresses are getting short. I’ll have to get a comparison picture with one of them. She must have had a recent growth spurt because she just looks bigger. Her weight is about the same from her last appointment according to my bathroom scale. I’ll have to measure her height tomorrow.
Her sensory problems are improving at amazing speeds, and with that, she is talking a lot more. She counts now up to 16, although her teens sound pretty much the same. She is also using phrases more. She even has a couple of complete sentences–”Hi, how are you?” and “Oh no, I fall down.” All the rest of her string of words are unintelligible to me, but she seems to know what she is saying. She will also sign that she wants a drink, but will say “milk” or “juice.” She will also sing to songs. She responds very well to music. We were playing Guitar Hero and she sat and sang Free Bird, albeit with her own words, during most of the song. She can also spell and say her name. When I would try with her before, I would say, “A…D…” and she would go “E…F…G…H…” Now, she will say “A…D…A, Ada.” Not that her name is hard to say, and I kept telling her that if she could say “dadadadadada” she could also say “adadadadada.” It just took her awhile before she caught on.
She is getting over most of her physical development delays. She is climbing things, and has figured out how to climb on her vanity to get things that are on top of her dresser. She likes to climb over the arm of the sofa and into the massage chair. She still will not place her hands down fully on things, and opts to just use the heel of her hands. She will also at times do the same with her feet. She doesn’t like to put her hands in the grass either. She is getting better in water, and while she loves to play in the bathtub, she hates to be cleaned in the bathtub–and forget even trying to wash her hair in the bathtub. She will take a shower without having any meltdowns. She’s even tilting her head under the water to rinse out the shampoo. She will now point to items when you ask for them, including touching her face. It was hard to teach her where he nose was when she would freak out if you touched her face. She is also pointing at pictures of items, and with animals she will now make sounds and say the name of the animal.
Playtime with Ada is improving as well. She has just about ceased any repetitive behavior, and most of her playtime is purposeful. She uses James’ changing table to change her dolls. She has dolls and stuffed animals talk to each other, although there is always one that is hard of hearing which requires the other to yell instead of talk. She still thinks that everything can be converted into a phone, so if I miss your call on my cell, just ring me up on the bottle of lotion or the bunny jump rope. Ada will answer it.
We’ve also had the opportunity to put Ada into situations with other kids, and she has done great. She tries to interact instead of ignoring them or having a meltdown. We went to a picnic, and another couple had an 18-month old boy there. She walked up, bent in front of him to look at him, and then kissed him on top of the head. She’s done great playing with one of the Lilys, and my brother was here this weekend and brought two kids with him, ages 6 and 3, and she did great playing with them. When the 3-year old took something from her, she would just go and get something else to play with as opposed to the crying and fit throwing you would expect from a toddler. I was surprised at this because all of Ada’s toys are Ada’s toys, and she isn’t used to having to share.
Ada is still seeing an OT every other week. Our possibly last session with our current OT will be on July 13th. We are going to meet at Googols of Fun so she can watch Ada interact with other children. The OT we are working with has a child who also has a sensory processing disorder, and we talked a lot about it at our last session. She says if you didn’t really know her son, you wouldn’t know anymore that he has it, and she thinks that the case is the same for Ada. The two OTs that have worked with Ada for this last year are fantastic, and I’m really glad we have access to this service, but with us having to get Ada used to yet another one soon, I’m going to discuss whether we should stop having OT visits.
My next step for Ada is getting her integrated back into an environment with other children on a regular basis, depending on the OTs input during her Googol visit. I think she is ready, but the OT recognizes things that are related to her sensory disorder that I don’t always see. She said the best thing we did for Ada’s SPD was to take her out of daycare. She does fine with a couple of kids around her. I just don’t know who she will do with lots of kids around her, which is why I wanted the Googol session. If all goes well, I am going to look at La Petite again. When we were taking her there, they had the option to switch to only paying for partial weeks once they passed the age of two. If they still have it, I would love to send her there two days a week. The only thing that I’m worried about is returning sickness. While Ada was going there, she was sick every 2 – 3 weeks. She hasn’t been sick once since we took her out 15 months ago. I completely understand the inability of parents to miss work because their child is sick, but when they take their kids to daycare sick, then it just spreads like wildfire and all the kids are sick. We won’t miss work now since my mother can watch her if we cannot take her to daycare because she is sick, but I just don’t want Ada to be sick all of the time. Perhaps she built up a super-immunity during her first year at daycare and it won’t be an issue anymore.
Oh, I almost forgot this achievement. It is a big one. Ada will put on a hat. On her head. I can see people rolling their eyes at this, but when she was a baby, putting anything on her head would make her scream. Eventually she moved onto just whining and immediately taking it off and throwing it on the floor. Now, she will take hats, put them on her head, and leave them there! We can now wear funny hats together!
The best of all achievements, I saved for last. Ada will do directed tasks. I hesitate to call them chores because I want her to grow up doing the mundane things because they need to be done and to not give them any thoughts at all, let alone negative thoughts. If that makes sense to anybody. Anyhow, if you have something that needs to be thrown away, you can give it to Ada, tell her to throw it away, and she throws it away. She will even pick up things that need to be throw away–like the loose feathers from her boa or a banana sticker that ended up stuck to her foot, and just throw them away without us asking. So far, she has only thrown away two things that shouldn’t have been. She will also put clothes in the dirty clothes hamper. So, if we are changing James’ clothes, she will pick up the ones we took off, and put them in their clothes hamper. However, she will also put clean clothes in the hamper. I’ve been trying to teach her to put away the bibs and burp clothes that I just got out of the dryer, but when you hand them to her, they just end up in the hamper. She will also help Mac pick up the living room. When I was cleaning the kitchen, I had one cabinet door open because I had just taken the stuff out of it. If there is a door in Ada’s reach that is open, she will shut it, so I wasn’t too surprised to leave the empty open cabinet and come back to find it shut. However, when I opened it again, two of her play dishes and one bowl was stacked neatly inside. Fantastic!
Here is the bragging part of the Ada update. Every mother that says “my kid is a genius” really does think that their kid is a genius even when it is for doing normal developmental things. Some mothers will hear their baby say something that sounds like it might be a word, and they will declare that their baby is way more advanced than any other baby ever made. So, I really mean this when I say that my daughter is a genius and way more advanced than any toddler ever…in physical comedy. There is a good reason why Ada has a “I do my own stunts” t-shirt. She has the best timing ever, and always draws laughter for most of her falls. Except for those few times where she has broken a fall with her face, she never cries when she falls down, but she a great phrase to go along with her comical spills which leaves me laughing, and laughing at her usually makes her do it again. There is something incredibly humorous about seeing her stumble and then rolling down the hill in our back yard while going “oooohhhhhh nooooooo.”
It is late, and I need sleep, so I will end my update which is beyond wordy.
> She still thinks that everything can be converted into a phone
Good spy training.
Good spy training.
I thought a similar thing! I think she already is a spy, and her babbling she does is code.