Two months progress (and a trip to Tahoe)

My favorite activity at Tahoe... isn't that what Kevin and I seem to do with everything we do?

Thank you all for your kind comments on my 'coming out' post. It's encouraging and liberating to be able to share what has been going on. I wanted to share some good progress that M has been making, plus some photos of our recent annual camping trip to Tahoe!

The car was packed so full we couldn't see daylight out the back. It was worse on the way home... laundry expands!

In June we increased M's ABA therapy hours from 50 to 100 per month, which works out to about 2 2-hour sessions per day. We usually do one early in the morning and another in the afternoon. There have been several rough points where either she didn't have the stamina, or simply didn't want to follow the instructions given by her interventionists. Thankfully, M's whole team communicates with each other daily and when she is having a hard time one of the Ph.D.s comes out to help and make adjustments to the program. As soon as they introduced a little chair for M to sit in for the work part of her sessions she stopped crying so much as she was able to distinguish better the difference between play time and work time. A good day is when I hear the interventionist whooping it up, giving her lots of loud verbal praise because she is starting to imitate sounds or follow very simple directions.

In the past two months I have seen M's attending skills improve (awareness, paying attention, tracking sounds, eye contact) tremendously. She looks at us almost all the time now when we call her name. She was tracking her cousins when we were all at Tahoe last week.

The kids on the hike from Vikingsholm to Bliss State Park... a total of 4.6 miles, their longest hike yet.

The major change has been that she is starting to imitate very simple tasks. Shake bells and push car... but as she makes progress the tasks will become more complex until she develops the ability to imitate and learn on her own. She is also starting to vocally imitate during her sound-pairing. She babbles all the time now. If she's not babbling then I know something is up... she's hungry, thirsty, tired or not feeling well. These are all good signs!

One of the spectacular views from the Rubicon Trail.

On the attachment front, yesterday I had some time to sit down and hang with her all morning because she only had an afternoon session. (The sessions keep her so busy... I feel like frequently I only have time to dress, feed and put her down for naps between sessions and shuttling C and K around). I had to go down to the car to get something and for the first time she stood at the gate at the top of the stairs and cried like a normal 'separation anxious' toddler. She was needy yesterday too... always wanting to be near me and touching me. It was such a great thing for her (and me). (If only she'd taken a nap....)

M doing one of her favorite activities during camping. She loved the freedom to run around!