Nanna and Grandpop
Nanna and Grandpop have returned from their long overseas working holiday, and Zoë is thrilled. She's also rather out of sorts on several levels, because it's all kind of weird and things are changing and she doesn't always handle changes that well. She is adjusting, though, and it's obvious she loves her grandparents and is very happy to see them.
The only thing that's really troublesome lately is that Zoë is wetting her pants again fairly regularly. I don't know why. Stress, I guess, with all the changes and so forth. It's pretty annoying, whatever it is, and from now on she's going to have to go to pre-school wearing continence pants (and not Pull-Ups, which are pretty and have Disney Princesses on them).
Doing really well
Zoë is doing really well with regard to speech and language skills. She had a really great day at Early Intervention playgroup on Wednesday, and then a really good session at her speech therapy on Friday. Everyone has remarked on how pleased and surprised they are by her interaction and communication.
For a while there, I was really despairing as to how she was doing, because there seemed to be so little progress, but I guess she just sort of absorbed it until it hit critical mass and flipped some little switch in her brain, because, wow, she's really getting it now!
Our goal of having her do four-year-old pre-school next year (with an educational assistant) and then actual school the year after that may actually be a reasonable goal after all (I was starting to worry about that).
So, big sigh of relief around here. She's doing really, really well.
Calling!
Zoë just called her sister! It's the first time I've seen her do this, although she may have called her Dad on a couple of occasions. Zoë got some cheese out of the fridge and peeled off a slice for her little sister and then called out, "Wanda! Wanda!" (that's "wand" with a short "a", rhymes with "land") and she used the correct sing-song voice that you use when calling someone.
WOW! She really is starting to get it! YAY!!!
Out the window
Zoë has figured out how to climb out a particular window. There's no effective locking mechanism on it (it's one of those crank-turn ones that opens at a slant). I've tried closing the window and just turning the crank as hard as possible AND putting in the screen, but she's quick and she's clever, and she got past both of those obstacles. Next step is to put something heavy next to the window (from the outside) so she can't get out.
Because a couple of times she's managed to shoot out that window and into the yard. She's very quick, frighteningly so. So far she hasn't done anything other than go outside and run around, but the world is a really, really dangerous place when you're an unsupervised autistic four-year-old, and it's deeply frightening that she's done this.
We've had to deadbolt all the doors, as well, and we have hook-and-eye locks on many of the internal doors, but this window is very problematic.
And with Zoë, there's no such thing as "watching her". She is very fast, very smart, and very sneaky sometimes, and you can't turn your back on her for a minute, but of course, you can't watch a kid 24/7, so...
This is, of course, completely normal behavior for a four-year-old. I did it, I know plenty of other kids who did it at this age. It's comforting to see her exhibit completely normal behavior, but it's also very frightening and extremely frustrating.
Thankfully, we live in a very quiet residential area. I shudder to think what would happen to her if she managed to sneak out of the apartment we lived in that was in the heart of Melbourne!
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