Surprise! I can find the giraffe, Ma!

Life with Esmé is nothing if not filled with surprises.

Sometimes they are rough…like the phone call I got two nights ago while my darling hubby and I were out on our first date in maybe six months. The call was basically that she was seizing, blue, not breathing and that 911 was being called. The breathless speeding silent car ride home was not “in the plan” when we decided to finally get a night out.

She was ok when we arrived home and we were able to avoid a hospitalization. But unlike so many parents of small children, we partially expect this any time we leave her…it was a surprise, but not surprising.

…and by the way, if you are one of those sweet thoughtful people who have don’t have medically-fragile children or medical or nursing degrees, and who over the years have offered to watch Ezzy so I can do something, this situation is precisely why I am silently giggling in my head when you make your incredibly thoughtful offers. This is the kind of stuff that happens at my house with some regularity…and I don’t want to put anyone in this kind of situation. Trust me, my heart almost stops every time and I am used to it.

But, I digress, what I wanted to talk about today is the other kind of surprise…because Ez specializes in those too. As I have written before, I often feel as though Ez understands a lot. But her lack of expressive communication and motor planning skills coupled with her poor eye sight makes it really hard to know how much she understands and is trying to communicate.

Her expressive language really hasn’t advanced at all in the last few months…honestly she has been too under the weather to work on word approximations or picture communication. We have been working on something Ez and I developed together. I don’t really know what to call it, but it uses large motions (not fine, like signing) and limited options, like: “We are going outside, do you want to ride in your wheelchair or play in the grass?” Then I give her options for movements “If you want to ride, kick your feet.” pause. “If you want to play in the grass, roll to maman.”

She is doing really well with it. We are also working on nodding yes (she shakes her head “NO” to everything currently–if she means it she looks serious, if she is teasing me she laughs)…

So I knew that this limited, choice-based program was working well. And I knew that she was able to work within known parameters (known flashcards, books, etc). But last night she showed the ability to extend her knowledge to “similar” items and problem-solve with that knowledge.

She was playing with her activity cube…it is a known item, but she usually plays with it alone. We haven’t focused on naming the items on the cube. She was on the side that looks like this:

Each door has an animal print on the outside and a drawing on the inside with the animal name on the other side of the door. I knew Ezzy has heard these words. In fact we just saw three of these animals up close at the zoo last weekend

Last night we were sitting up at the cube (I was behind her supporting her) and she was opening and closing the doors. I said, “Ez, can you open the frog’s door?” She paused a moment and then opened the door with the frog print. We repeated with each different animal multiple times with 100% accuracy once I waited long enough to let her decide and then to get her hand to the right place.

I was stunned.

Then I put out four of her flashcards across the floor and asked her to select one (the fish). She pushed two aside while rolling and comando crawling with great propose to the fish. She picked it up, smiling, and rolled on her back to gaze at it.

Clever, clever girl.