Tuesday

Okay, another new header and background. I need to fiddle with it to make the new pictures come out right. I want to learn more but get caught up playing with pictures and elements and colors of backgrounds. Sort of like painting.

Working with Julia tonight, I felt some frustration and tried to work through it for myself. Julia and I worked with her pets, counting and then telling me how many pets she had. She could do this last week but tonight she had a very hard time keeping the number in her head between the time that she counted the pets until she said, "I have __ pets." Is it memory? Is it distraction? Is it concentration? Well she ever understand numbers?

So that worried me.

And then we did some writing work. Julia wrote as I dictated words ending in "at." I went through all the small words I could think of and Julia dutifully wrote them out. What she didn't get to was that all the words had something in common. She sounded out each word as if it was totally different from the word before.

I know that there is great progress in that she will sound out and spell the words but she is not making any connections. I don't know if I have to spell out the connection very plainly or continue to work with rhyming words until she makes the connection for herself.

We have been doing our looking into each other's eyes many times a day, each time Julia begins to get angry, each time she grabs me in anger, each time she tries or threatens to hurt the dog. Sometimes she tells me she doesn't want to look in my eyes. Sometimes she tells me it hurts. Sometimes she tries to hit or scratch me. Many times she goes from anger to smiling at me as I count. She puckers up to kiss me when I am finished counting.

We have also be cuddling every day very deliberately. Julia does not protest and she wants to hug and be close. She arches her back sometimes like a young child. She tries to keep me on at arms length -- some of her affection superficial. Is she fighting a deeper relationship? At times, I feel like I am fighting for that deeper relationship. But the fight is quiet and gentle. I do hope we win.