All signed up for intervention
Well, Zoë will be attending early intervention playgroups in the new term (February). Her pre-school is Tuesday and Thursday, and playgroup will be Wednesday morning. We might reschedule speech therapy (which we normally do on Wednesdays) to Friday or Monday, which would give us a very full week, indeed.
I'll be attending the early intervention playgroup with her, as I do the speech therapy. This means that Miranda will be in childcare for the two hours Zoë and I are in playgroup. Thankfully, the centre has onsite childcare, it's quite affordable, and they had an opening and Miranda is all signed up.
So things are falling into place quite comfortably, and Zoë is doing quite well. I expect that next year she'll have leaps and bounds of improvement, too. This year, with just the preschool and the speech therapy, she's been doing very well. With the added intervention, she should do extremely well.
Birthday Girl!
Zoë is four years old today. I told her it was her birthday, and I'm sure she didn't quite understand, but she did make an effort to day "birthday", so that's a good thing.
She was pretty excited about her presents. The first one is a pink and purple backpack with Sesame Street's "Zoe" character on it, and it even has the name Zoe! Our Zoë was thrilled, and put it on right away and wore it all evening. She even wanted to go to bed with it!
She also got a nice activity set with stickers (her favorite!) and pencils and such, and also a nice book, plus she got a lovely blue sweater and a gold tinsel pom-pom of all things (she loves it).
Tomorrow, we're bringing cupcakes to preschool for her to celebrate her birthday there with the other kids.
So, happy birthday to Zoë!
Fairy!
Just now I wandered away from the computer and I came back to find Zoe watching my screensaver, which is a slideshow of pictures of fairies. This, in itself, isn't unusual. What WAS unusual is that she had gone into her room and gotten her dress-up fairy wings, and was holding them while she watched the fairies on the screen. I asked her if she wanted to put her wings on and she very nicely stood and let me hook them over her arms.
She's now floating around the room, touching her wings now and then, and hopping up and down, wiggling, etc. to make them flap!
Grandad!
Zoë's great-grandfather came back from a lengthy overseas holiday this weekend and Zoë was just absolutely thrilled. She wouldn't let him out of her sight for a while, and she very happily got into all his cupboards and played on the floor. She even talked quite a lot, using words I didn't know she knew how to say.
One thing she did that surprised me was pull out a number of egg rings (you know, to cook eggs so they're in perfect circles?) and she said, "Counting!" We used to count those with her (she loves to count, and seems to be starting to read/recognize numerals). Not only did she remember (from more than six months ago), she actually said the word! And she said it more than once, so I know she really did know what she was saying.
She was also very interested in Auntie May's skirt. Zoë was wearing a summery dress, and she touched Auntie May's skirt and then her own, and then Auntie May's again, and then grinned. No words (I don't think she knows the word for "skirt"), but she was clearly communicating. (And no, I don't think she's ever seen me wear a skirt; I just don't really like them.)
If Grandad had any doubts as to his high esteem in his great-grandaughter's eyes, that doubt is gone now. The kid clearly adores him.
Sign language
Zoë is starting to understand and use a bit of sign language. It's not formal sign (although when she gets into early intervention we may start using that), but just basic stuff that she understands.
She knows that pointing down means "get down". She will respond to it if I'm telling her to get down, and the other day her Dad was holding her and asked what she wanted and she pointed to the floor, very clearly telling him she wanted him to put her down!
She's also started pointing to things, and understanding that when we point, we're showing her something. This is actually something she's not really understood well up until now, but now she's doing it, herself.
Yesterday when we were out, I was pointing to some ducks on a little lake and she responded by pointing to the pigeons, which were much closer and more interesting to her at that moment. She did eventually look at the ducks and heard them doing that "duckchatter" that happy ducks do. Her Dad told her they were saying "quack quack quack" and when Zoë came back over to where I was, she announced to me, "kack kack kack" (which is Zoëspeak for what ducks say).
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