Taking the Scenic Route

Another holiday tradition around here…Grandma/Oma comes up and plays and decorates cookies with the kids while we finish up our Christmas Shopping.  She wears them out (and the feeling is probably mutual).  And yes, that is a pumpkin in the background.  The kids didn’t want to toss it after Halloween and it.won’t.die. lol

At the end of the Fall semester the new Montessori School finally got all their licensing stuff done and she was able to go the last few weeks before winter break.  She loves it.  One of my former classmates (went to school from preschool-12th grade with her) is the mom to one of Zora’s classmates.  I am not the oldest mom there!  (well, actually, I might be…if I recall correctly, her birthday is in either March or May, but at least not the oldest by a decade)

Here are the cards Zora made as Christmas Gifts.

An Annual event for our family.  They had cookie decorating, a craft, coloring, a bean bag toss, a relay race, fishing and some other cool stuff that I know I am forgetting now.  Oh, and of course, Santa hangs out for a bit too.

And what has to be among my most favorite photos of Zane…

We have a BODY!  Yeah Zora!  She was drawing a gingerbread man and actually made a body instead of a head with stick limbs. (another note:  she has taken to wearing hairbands around her neck as “bow ties”)

And the backdrop…balloon sculptures

We had our Christmas Photo taken, and since we needed a new avs for Facebook (especially me…that photo, although good, is from a funeral that I don’t want to think about every time I see it), and here are a few of the shots we got.  The official photo coming later, after we get it.

Well, she is making improvements and is much easier to understand, but we still have a ways to go.  She is actually shy in preschool, which just stuns me, but was starting to offer answers/initiate interaction as the semester came to an end.  Next year they want to increase her ST hours, using one time to prime her for the preschool a little more (similar to what I did with Zane, but not as intense), and the other for pure speech & language development.  I hope to get her into Reading Explorers as well.  She is moving forward.  I proud of how hard she is working.  She is actually adding the “S” and some of the other clusters she is struggling with to her words and it is starting to generalize, so I expect that she will catch up with peers reasonably soon, so that is great.

They did discover the same thing I realized when I heard she was not actually understanding (during testing) some basic things (like over/under…those type of things).  I thought that she knew that stuff, but didn’t realize that she was just following body language.  She is so good at following body language that they found that they have to cover their entire face during auditory discrimination work because she can figure out what the right answer is by looking at your eyes & even just eyebrows.  *snort*  She is absolutely awesome at reading body language, which is really a bit novel to them, since they work with so many autistic kids, and me, who’s first child is all but blind to body language.  (he had to be taught explicitly how to read common body language, but he does have the capacity to learn at least the basics, which is good).

She instinctively follows gaze to an astonishingly accurate degree, even a fast unconscious glance, so you really have to hide your face to make sure she is listening to the words and she can read your face like a book (well, better than a book for her.  lol).  It is going to prove challenging as a parent, but what an amazing gift for regular life.

The annual “Gingerbread House” day was a hit, as usual.  The Clinical Educator goes to the effort, every year, of making Gingerbread Houses from scratch and then transporting them to the school.  They are always awesome, but this year, she actually put a little Gingerbread Baby (I assume to go with the book they read) and a light inside the house so that you can see it through the hole in the door.  She said the thought of Zane and how much he would have loved that when she was making the light part.  (by the way, my Mom came up to spend the day with Zane that day because he would have had a total meltdown having the watch somebody else put together a Gingerbread house and not be able to do one himself…it is one of his obsessions).

Zora enjoyed the houses almost as much as Zane did when he went here.

Jennifer, the Clinical Educator, turns on the light and shows Zora the surprise inside.

She loved decorating, but unlike Zane, she got to a certain point and wanted to go play instead of keep decorating.  She and her friend played in the kitchen area, her favorite spot, and she donned a doggie mask (she loves pretending she is a dog).

And one last shot of the house.

Santa visited ROCKO this year and both of the kids were excited.