Welcome to the new website! The change should be basically invisible to you. I had to migrate my WordPress installation from one cloud server to another. Having a WordPress site, even one that is religiously kept up to date, was just pounding the bejesus out of the old server, which made it unusable for the rest of my family. Well, I’ve been looking for an excuse to explore EC2/AWS, so here we are! Hello!

It’s been crazy. Now that I’m actually sitting in front of a blank posting screen again, I can’t remember what happened in the last month. J started saying, “I love you” with delightful sincerity and regularity.

She also got re-tested for both her “proprioceptive disorder” and her speech delay, and both have improved significantly. She needs more occupational therapy for balance, coordination, and body/space awareness. I’ll be surprised if she gets much better though… some things are just innate, and she comes by her clumsiness completely honestly. I hope I’m wrong about this one, because it’s not fun to be clumsy, but I am not really holding my breath. Her speech also still needs some work, although she has become much more intelligible and also much more self confident about her ability to talk. She still needs more work there despite testing well within normal for both her ability to communicate and her ability to pronounce sounds. The problem seems to be that she can’t string together sounds quite right yet, which makes her speech hard to understand. However, she’s absolutely brilliant about compensating. She uses a lot of ASL if she knows the sign, and some pretty impressive pantomime if she doesn’t. I’ve also noticed she’ll use synonyms when she can, or add in adjectives when she’s having trouble. In short, she’s smart enough to be effectively working around her speech delays. Speaking of smart (okay, I’m sorry, I know I’m straight up mommybragging here, but I’m gonna anyway) she also tested at the level of a 6 year old for receptive language skills (how much she comprehends when spoken to). Basically, the receptive test is a whole bunch of stuff that just keeps getting more complex and with a larger vocabulary, and the idea is that the tester continues to ask the child questions until the child gets so many wrong. The therapist wrote me a note saying that she Just. Kept. Going. with J. Yay!

What else? Potty training is here and there. Mostly she does great, although we do need to remind her of the Daniel Tiger song that goes, “If you have to potty, stop and go right away!” Generally we only need to remind her once about that one.

She’s completely adjusted to the new classroom, and is absolutely nuts for her teacher, Mr. Julian. Ms. CeCe left, which was hard for everyone, but the new teacher (also named Cece, by pure coincidence) is wonderfully sweet and a great fit. All this week, when I’ve picked J up from school, she hasn’t wanted to leave. Mr. Julian is the teacher that closes most days, and when I come, J wants to involve me whatever game he’s currently playing with the kids, then throws herself into his lap for cuddles and tickles. I did spent about 30-45 minutes at school playing one day, and sadly now J wants me to do it every day. It was wonderful to see how much she loves school and how well taken care of she is, but it has made for some very rough pickups, since she wants that to be the norm. We’ll get through this one, just like everything else.

Two more molars have arrived! Halfway, anyway. Both bottom molars are poking out, making her mouth hurt all the time and making brushing her teeth difficult, because trying to get those two brushed is tough before they’ve fully emerged. No sign of molars on top yet.

That’s all I can think of for now. A whole month of missed posts, and who knows what wonders are lost to the ages now ;).