Improvements

The other day I asked Sammy's teachers how she was doing. And, behold, there are improvements being made. One really exciting thing is that she is "attending" better, which means she is spending longer amounts of time on certain tasks. The goal is 5 minute chunks of time working on certain things. Now, believe me, I know Sammy can focus on something for longer than 5 minutes. Give her a door and she's there for 45. But, she needs to learn to focus on things that she doesn't want to do as well. So, yippee for our little Sammy.

Also, she is beginning to parallel play a little bit -- she's starting to play with other kids. It's in her own Sammy way, but that skill is emerging. I have noticed it the past few months when she plays with Callie. Callie initiates the play, but Sammy will laugh and giggle and look at Callie, expecting more. It's great fun!

Finally, this past weekend we noticed something new. We were all sitting around the table eating lunch. Something funny was said. We laughed. Well, Sammy piped right in and started laughing with us. She belted out a laugh that was similar to ours, and then stopped. She did this 3 times that day. And it was different from her laughing because we were laughing and she just thinks that's funny. She was imitating us, like Callie does.

So, hooray for Sammy. Her teacher informed me that Samantha will be getting a report card in March! Ha! I love it. Sammy's getting a report card! I can't wait to do a scrapbook page on that...but Marcus has already informed me that it'll be going up on the refrigerator first.