Little Girls, BIG Deal!

I have some news to share about Zoe’s progress…well, really about both my girls.  This is the kind of news that parents of special needs kids really relate to, that is, though it doesn’t sound like a whole lot of beans, I cried over it.

Amelia and Zoe both had their best days ever at school.  Amelia actually did work and did it well, and Zoe weathered changes and the standard routine beautifully.  She attended to do “work” tasks for 15 and 20 minutes respectively, which is a lot for any kindergartener!

Later, she came downstairs in her nightgown…second night in a row.  I can count on one hand how many times she’s put upper body clothes on herself since she stopped wearing shirts indoors 3 or so years ago, so this is awesome.

But NONE of that is the big news.  This is the big news:

What you don’t know about this picture is that the girls have on  nightgowns from the same Disney princess series, which would be insignificant, except that when Zoe and Amelia came downstairs in their jammies,  Zoe was wearing the blue gown and carrying the pink one.  She then gave it to Amelia.  I turned my head.  “I think she wants you to wear it, honey.  Is that right, Zoe?”

In response, Zoe went to Amelia and started to pull up her jammie top – so they could wear matching nightgowns.

My mind WAS SPINNING and I started crying.  Do you know the sheer magnitude of what she’d need to cogitate to get to this? First, the gowns are matching – but not quite.  They have different straps, bows, characters, and colors, but the same fabric. Then she had to have the idea that she’d like that girl she lives with and sometimes fights with but also plays with – her sister – to share something symbolic together.  Then she’d need to realize that she could actually give Amelia the gown and nudge her to wear it.

I’ve lost count of how many individual mental transactions of subtly that is, but it’s a goodly number, and hence, my tears.  Honestly, I’ve never seen Zoe do something that complex that involved someone else in a valuable way.

I will tell you that as far as the biomedical stuff, we’ve made some changes (goodbye Rice Dream, with your phantom glutens), we’ve been more consistent with base daily vitamins (90% of the time for both girls), and we’ve been doing a parasite cleanse since January 5th.  Are these things helping, or are the kids progressing on their own?  This is the trick when you’re doing biomedical and you don’t see Earth-shattering changes.  I’m sure things could be explained away with maturity or consistency, or other changes.  I didn’t mention that part of what Amelia did today was some excellent reading, because I’ve really put it to her to do sight words and read sentences and read a “just right” 4-6 page book from school…at least one of those things or more, almost every night since the year started.  So reading improvement could just be that.

Or maybe it’s taken this long to see results, or maybe we are doing more after countless December infractions on the diet. I don’t know, and I hope it’s the diet so we can go further, but tonight, I don’t care.

I’m on top of the world.