Her speech is coming along fantastically. She has been working SO hard at speech pathology. Still gets to angry at me at home if I try to get her to say something the correct way. She doesn't get near as mad at the actual lessons. She is working on the F sound without expelling any air through the nose. Sounds easy for a normal kid, but a kid with a cleft who had the muscles at the back of her throat running in complicated directions has more trouble than you'd think! Once the F is mastered, we can start with the S and then I predict she will be nearly fully 'normalized.'
We've had some fun with doctors too. She bit her toenail off (that's how she says she did it) and had to get that checked out. I've noticed she picks at her big toenails too. She also fell on the May long weekend and bumped the side of her face on the ground. She developed quite a bruise and a big lump at the joint. She wasn't hindered with eating or talking, but if I touched the spot she definitely would cringe. It started to get better. Three weeks later the bruise reappeared and the lump was bigger! This is when I started to worry. We went to a walk-in clinic as we couldn't get to our GP until next week. They referred us to x-rays at the kid's hospital. The x-ray department referred us to Dentistry because they could get a better panoramic x-ray. Now, we are quite familiar with Dentistry so she was right at home in that waiting room! She was definitely nervous getting the x-ray (wouldn't let go of my hand to hold the handle on the machine) which was unexpected to me. My heart went out to that little girl standing in the lead apron with the machine circling around her head. She doesn't like asking for help or showing vulnerability but it was there - and so was I. After the x-ray was taken, we were referred back to X-rays to get it read. No broken or chipped bones. Yay! Now we go to the followup with our GP next week and he will have the full report and assess the lump to see if he thinks it is anything more than just a tendon or ligament injury. Poor kiddo is so used to people poking her in the mouth now!
We had our first dentist appointment too - which went swimmingly, a visit from Gramma, birthday parties for friends, and lots of fun overall. She's becoming obsessed with dinosaurs. Mother's day was special as it will always be around the anniversary of when we first met her!!!
She has a fan club of a few little kids (they are at school and in the neighbourhood) who like to watch her be 'Dania.' She still doesn't initially just play when kids approach or she is in a new situation. She will act like a cartoon character (I'm told that comparison a lot!). She will fall down and shake her head, she always looks with shifty eyes, freezes her stance to look around or listen, and then will start acting like an animal or dinosaur. It's hilarious to watch. Kids will come up to her and just bark or roar to try and get her to do it.
She is still very difficult in the home when I ask her to do something and starts to act angry now too. Brow furrowed, deepens the voice, crosses the arms. It's obvious she isn't actually angry, just acting that way. It's cute, very cute, but also frustrating. The full moon this month had her prowling her room like a caged animal, as per usual, but I swear she has not stopped eating since! I told Mike that she asks to eat nonstop all day and when he finally had a morning with her on a weekend he told me I was right! It's kind of funny since she had just fought us screaming at the top of her lungs just the night before to not eat dinner. Growth spurt for my little werewolf.
My favourite thing though? Car rides hahahaha! After the random unprompted screaming that lasted at least 6 months, I now can drive and listen to her sing to herself or play with the little figurines we keep in the back seat for her. She has such an imagination. It is impressive to me how she will create and recreate stories and scenarios. Some I recognize from things we did, books we read, or a cartoon she watched, but most of the time she is just making things up. And the soft singing melts my heart completely. Such a sweet little voice.
This is probably my favourite picture of her ever!
