Portage visit

It seems that with every week that goes by, we have a meeting with another organisation to try and help Emily.

This morning we had an initial assessment by Portage, a "home-visiting educational service for pre-school children with additional support needs and their families" (not the act of hauling a canoe over dry land from one body of water to another). It lasted about an hour and, even though there's still issues with Emily, it's good to hear that we're doing all the right things. Just wish the right things resulted in the right outcome instead of a child that still needed to be assessed.

We're going to get a home visit every three weeks from Portage to see how things are going and give us hints, tips and strategies to get Emily on the straight and narrow developmentwise.

For those playing along at home, we're now seeing the Sutton council language therapist, on the waiting list for a paediatrician, Fennie's is sending round a therapist in January to view Emily's progress at the nursery and we're on the list to see a private paediatrician in December.

The stuff is all there in Emily's head, and we can see it dripping out in dribs and drabs. Hopefully ONE of these organisations has the key to getting it flowing out in great gushes.

Emily IS Brick Heck

Brick Heck

The more I watch "The Middle", the more I realise that Emily is very likely going to be Brick Heck. He loses himself in books, would rather read something than play with something and doesn't really care about social interaction. Well, the main comparisons end there, but they're enough to have be start calling Emily "Brick".

Emily's also developing some rather odd habits. She now likes to stand on her head with her bum in the air and just sort of balance on her neck. She's been doing it at Nursery and the first time freaked them out enough to let me know they thought she was going to break her neck.

We've had some crazy times in the last 2.5-odd years and this isn't even the tip of the iceberg.

I just hope that her Brick tendencies subside and she develops her social side as well. There's no prize for the bookiest girl in the library.

Learning's going well

We've been worried about Emily's learning and talking and in recent weeks it's been going a LOT better than it has ever.

She's starting to say things in context, and not being prompted. Tonight she said goodbye to Helen without being asked, and said cake when she looked at one of Sue's dessert chocolate eclairs.

Last night, while watching the Gruffalo on DVD, she said something that resembled butterfly when said creature appeared on screen.

Wordwise, she's already saying "read" with book in hand, to an annoying level. However, instead of saying "drink" or similar, she's just letting out incessant screams.

We're getting there, and I can't wait until she's talking in multiple words.

We're off to see the language specialist again tomorrow, and I'd like to think that she's going to see quite an improvement in Emily.

Emily - Can't sleep or won't sleep?

It's been a fun weekend with Emily.

My mum arrived on Friday night, so Em's got one more family member to wrap around her fingers and to plead "read" to.

We went out last night and dropped my mum off so she could visit with my aunt for a few days. On the journey down, Em fell asleep. This was around 6pm after an intense 15 minutes of trick or treating around the neighbourhood.

On the way back, around 8.30pm, she woke up and quickly fell back asleep once we got home. Having put her straight to bed on getting home, we heard footsteps on the stairs about 40 minutes later.

Around 11pm I felt it was time that not only Emily get back to bed, I was also quite exhausted. On arrival in bed, I nodded off feeling exhausted. Emily, however, was refreshed and up for a party. It was around 1am when I went to the other room to try and get some sleep, with her still babbling and singing to herself.

One odd thing I noticed in the babbling she was doing was that she actually counted BACKWARDS from 10 to 6. With a little prodding, she also managed 3 to 1 as well.

In the last couple of weeks, I've been really amazed by a lot of stuff Emily has done - from being much more lucid and expressive, saying more words - like  "read" and "no" - in context, and now demonstrating insomnia.

It's just a pity she had to drag Sue and I into her "can't sleep" hell as well.