Spicy Dragons & Dinosaurs

At speech therapy today, Julia took parts of a phonetic awareness test. She did better than I expected -- she does understand rhyming of simple words, she was pretty accurate at identifying which pairs of words rhymed although she cannot usually come up with the second word by herself. She also was able to identify first sounds and some last sounds with easy words.

Another interesting challenge was to say a compound word, like railroad, and then take one of the root words. Julia was a bit slow at this, but she was thoughtful and methodical, and got most of them correct. She could not do it with two or three syllable words.

At OT today, Annie had Julia climbing a ladder made of rope with wood rungs to attach little dinosaurs to Velcro strips on the ceiling. God, I love OTs! Julia was afraid but the task was too tantalizing. Watching her was wonderful. She is really developing core strength. Finally!!! And she did it despite the fact that it was scary to climb on a ladder that moved around. Annie was right there by Julia, but Julia was afraid. It is wonderful to see that she is also trusting Annie enough to be afraid, ask for help and do something challenging.

Two, possibly three days and we are off on our travels! House is almost completely packed -- the play room/office gets packed on Wednesday. I am hoping for a nice day tomorrow to garden -- lots of beds need some care before we leave. But like everything else, no sweat about this one. I could leave and come back in a few weeks and the weeds will only be larger.

Clothes are laid out -- too many as of now. Julia work assembling. I found the portable DVD that David had put away and I couldn't find last year. It was in a box that I would have never looked in if I had not be cleaning out the basement.

The proposed work is set -- refinish wood floors through out the house (that is every room except for the bathroom), paint downstairs, install built in bookshelves in living room and dining room. I say again, that packing up feels like leaving David behind in many ways, but the changes will be good for me. And in truth, David is not here to be left behind.