Life is busier than ever and I've failed to post any pictures of some other things that are still "firsts" - or "seconds" (but the first time really participating) for Emily. This month, she had a Christmas performance at school, a County/IEP evaluation, Christmas, one last quick family get-away, a move to a big-girl bed, and an early family birthday celebration.
Emily continues to do so well and when I have a chance to step back from the daily chaos, I'm reminded again and again how very lucky we are to be a part of her life. She is amazing us right and left and she fits in so well to our family. People sometimes ask her how her English is coming along and we have to laugh because she NEVER STOPS TALKING! My Dad calls her "radio" because she talks non-stop. Nobody who met her would believe that she didn't hear a word of English until she met us at 18 months old. She speaks in compound, 10+ word sentences, uses pronouns and other complex parts of speech correctly, and "gets" things far beyond her years. I thought my boys were bright (biased mom), but Emily is really much more ahead of things than they were at 2 years old. I think they are a big reason for this as she greatly benefits from being around older children at home and at school. As the sister of two big brothers, her vocabulary also includes a lot of "poop" related words. She is also obsessed with porta-potties and spots them everywhere. The boys wanted to count Christmas lights on the way home from a restaurant the other night and she wanted to count porta-potties (lots of construction going on along our typical routes). She wants to be just like her big brothers. Mostly, this is a positive thing. But, the poop-related conversation and general loudness are probably slight negatives. :)
She is the youngest in a 3 year old class at her preschool (I pushed for that) and she is doing great. She has learned to identify some capital letters and calls herself the "letter spotter" because she can find the letters E and A (her initials) all over the place: on Exit signs, toys, bulletin boards in class, catalogs and magazines, books, etc... She has also learned to write a few capital letters. We started with "her letters" to get her interested and, for now, she is into it and is wanting to know more.
Video of her first effort at writing a capital E:
She really looked forward to Christmas this year and considered herself the monitor for Santa's "naughty list." At breakfast one morning, I overheard her tell her brother that since he "tooted on the sofa" (yes - such is our life), he was going to the naughty list and "losing all electronic privileges." (you'd think she had heard that before...) She wanted Santa to bring her a toy cat that wears glasses and a pink scooter. She must have been good because Santa followed through with her wishes!
She had her first Christmas performance at school in mid-December and she did so well! She was the line leader for her class and went up the steps with no problem. She sang the songs and smiled and was so mature. We were so very proud of her! She memorized words and motions to several songs and was so confident. She walked right up the steps with no rails and looked out at the crowd. Nobody would have ever known that she has any vision issues. It's sometimes so crazy to think that little things that we take for granted - like our children's ability to sing about Jesus' birthday in a Christmas show -- are not even in the realm of possibilities for children in orphanages.
We had a family party (early) for her 3rd birthday and iced lots of cupcakes (the orphanage reports before we went to China said that she liked sweets. That's still the case!) She keeps saying that when she "grows huge" and "turns 3," that she can do all sorts of "big girl" things. I guess we'll see.
She had an evaluation by the County to see which services she qualifies for at age 3 in January. Not surprisingly, she qualified only for vision services. She will begin working with a TVI (teacher of the visually impaired) in January for 30 minutes each week. The current goals are for her to work on tracking from left to right (pre-reading). (People with albinism have a difficult time getting their eyes to work together (binocular vision).) She will also work on finding details in pictures with a lot of "visual clutter" (lots of drawing and details and colors, etc...). The TVI who did her evaluation told us that she believes Emily's vision to be in the better range for someone with albinism. We should be able to find out for sure (with an acuity number) when we see the ophthalmologist in January. For now, we're so pleased (really astounded!) by her progress and we are really glad that we had her evaluated early and got her "in the system" so that she can begin work with a TVI as soon as she turns 3. We want her to have all the tools that she'll need so that she can excel at anything/everything she may choose to do and so that she is not frustrated by reading and other school endeavors that are more difficult for someone with a visual impairment.
Too many words. Pictures are better!
