My own new year

I started this yesterday -- Thursday -- but once again thought I would finish it after Julia went to bed and fell asleep.

Lindsey, Julia's violin teacher, is introducing Julia to notes this weeks. She is using puzzle pieces for whole, half, and quarter notes and their numerical value. Julia is still hard to keep attention with Lindsey but Lindsey presses on; I intervene when necessary. Julia wants to learn but she is impulsive and it is hard to keep her on task. Amazingly, Julia retains a good deal of what Lindsey says and does.

New concepts today:
up (v) and down (n) bow
staff and treble cleff
whole, half, and quarter notes

Is this the true measure of Julia's fear of learning? Julia likes Lindsey and she would love to direct the entire lesson.

Some things from this week:

While the dentist was looking at Julia's teeth and giving me a referral for an oral surgeon (because Julia has an extra tooth up in her gum in the front of her mouth), he asked how old she was. I told him and he told me that her tooth maturity is a bit more than a year behind where most kids are. Every so often I wonder if I should pursue Julia's age. There are tests that can be done on bones. Especially considering how she and Abby are virtually the same size and Abby is supposed to be almost two year younger. But the number age matters very little.

Today, in speech therapy, Julia was able to do nine 3-card sequences. She was generally able to put each three in order and tell the story. She does not have all the words she needed to tell compete stories at times, but she had a good time putting them in order and talking about the cards. This is so different from last year when she had to almost be tied down to put a single set in order.

Julia and her new speech teacher has clicked very quickly.

And now yesterday, with out attachment therapist. Pretty cool! We spent about a hour and a half with her. We had some paper work for insurance to fill out. Then we talked about therapy goals, methods, and of course, lots about Julia. Marilyn gave me some reading and I asked her about the Beyond Consequences book which seems to advocate the oposite of traditional attachment therapy. She admitted that she hadn't read the whole book but told me that if I found anything useful in it, to bring it to her attention. I did not mean to confront her with a method that criticizes what she does but I know I have done the same thing before. Oh, how I hate the status quo.

We are going to work on cuddling on my or David's terms -- holding Julia like a baby and trying to have fun with her for awhile. When Julia feels like doing this, we can do it for a good long time. Doing it on our terms instead of hers will be a bit of a challenge. We did it this afternoon for the first time. She squirmed and protested some, she became comfortable and enjoyed it some, and she couldn't wait to get up some. We will see how she does and what we discover.

This morning there was an all-school concert at Franklin. Julia sang about 6 songs with all of the K and some first graders. She very willingly and without much encouragement stood on the risers with her class and generally paid attention. (She was not willing to even stand with her camp group during camp performances last summer). She sang 2 of the songs, she clapped and moved her hands for most of the songs. A small step forward but a definite step.