Wednesday, December 11, 2013

How She's Doing

Yesterday morning as I was getting ready for the day, Olivia found a pen and some paper. Still just in her undies, she sat down to write. She loves writing these days. She’ll doodle on anything she can find.

We call it ‘embellishing’ when she’s attempting to doodle on her homework or other important paper. She laughs so hard when I remind her not to embellish her name with little circles for the dots above the i’s in her name.

That morning, she was writing on the back of a receipt from a doctor’s appointment. It was fine. No need to admonish her about embellishing.

She finished writing and showed it to me. I wish I’d taken a picture because was awesome. And typing out her words doesn’t do it justice. But before I could think to do that, she wadded the paper up and threw it away. Into the pail that holds the nightly pull-ups it went. I wasn’t going to brave the smell of that pail just to get that paper back.

She wrote: Well cum to my party

Do you love it? Can anyone appreciate this as much as her mother? This little seven year old, this kindergartener whom a few doctors predicted would never read, never write, never understand even basic math, wrote that sentence. And it was legible. I could read every single letter, ever word.

She sounded out words, just like your typical kindergartener. She wrote them out the way they sound.

She’s awesome.

And get this. She’s on the verge of mastering the headstand. Seriously. She works so hard at standing on her head that she’s starting to develop a dreadlock on the top of her head. And I love it. I love what that dreadlock symbolizes. It symbolizes my girl’s determination to never be held back, to never let anyone tell her what she can and cannot do. She won’t even let gravity get in her way.

We love a service at school in the past month or so because O’s abilities have increased to the point that she no longer qualifies for that service. It was a reading service and she doesn’t need it. I’m so proud, so amazed at her progress, her abilities.

We’re so lucky medically as well. Olivia is incredibly healthy. She has the occasional cold but that’s the worst of it. We see her developmental pediatrician every two years. We see our family doctor maybe every six months, if that. I know how lucky we are and I never, ever take it for granted.

We still read every night except Thursdays, which are gymnastics nights. Olivia does her homework each night with my supervision (got to keep an eye on the embellishments.) She flips and flips and flips all day long. She works hard on standing on her head, sometimes managed five or even six seconds before flopping over and doing it all again.

I am grateful every single night that this is my life, these are my girls. How did I get so very lucky?

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