Ask and You Shall Receive

I was eating my breakfast in the family room, and Ellie wandered off into the kitchen. I couldn't see her head over the peninsula counter, so I asked,

"What are you doing, Ellie?" as I'm sure I must several times a day, everyday.

"Lizzi!" she replied.

I listened, and sure enough, I heard her peeling off and sticking magnets to the frig. Months ago, someone gave us a 3 inch cut-out magnet of a pug that looks a lot like our Lizzi. Last weekend, Scott and Jessica gave us a 15 inch version. Ellie thinks it's great fun to have "Lizzi" on the frig, in small and large versions.

But the point is that I asked her a question. And she answered me! And her answer was not, "No!" This is a first.

I was talking to my mom later today, and mentioned that the language gap between Ellie and other children her age - particularly children I read about in blogs - is growing. And she's never really been very delayed with her language, so this is hard for me to watch. She walked slower, she still can't jump, she gains fine motor control more slowly - this is all to be expected. But seeing her expressing herself in (often hard to understand) single words while reading about other little girls her age talking in paragraphs, well, that's harder for me. Ditto for seeing other kids not too much older than Ellie doing more complicated puzzles.

There are delays. I know this. I have a realistic view of Ellie's diagnosis and abilities.

But seeing an increase in the gap, well, that's always going to be hard.

Then my mother related anecdotes from a couple of her (teacher) friends that included dialogue with their sons, also Ellie's age.

"Cookie. Me!"

I am reminded that there is a range of what's typical for this age. That we will get there eventually, and it's still so, so very sweet when we have breakthroughs and successes like we had today.

(I also found two tiny turds on the family room floor after my shower this morning. But we're focusing on successes here, so I'm not going into that.)