Jodi Speaks Her Mind

Heading into summer 5/23/2006

Wow, the school year ends on Wednesday, and I am just astonished at how fast the past 5 months has flown by.   The temperatures are already in the 100’s here.  Adelina loves to say, “hot day!” every time we get out of the car or walk outside.  I suspect she’ll soon tire of it, though, as the summers here are brutal and seemingly endless.

Adelina is registered for swimming lessons starting Tuesday after Memorial day.  She is excited but also keeps asking who is going to hold her in the deep water!?   She does not seem to understand that the goal is for her to swim “by herself” despite the fact that this is one of her most used phrases.

I am so far behind in providing updates on her progress, but I’ll do what I can.  Really Adelina has just amazed and impressed everyone in how fast she has progressed in her speech development.  Her receptive skills are particularly good.  That means she understands a lot of what is spoken to her so long as we speak at a reasonable rate and clearly.  Her expressive skills are not as strong but are still progressing rapidly.  She still demonstrates an intense motivation to speak over signing, though if she is very excited she will sign because she can communicate so much faster and more efficiently that way.  Much of the time she speaks to communicate but her speech is still not very intelligible at times, so we often have to encourage her to sign as well so we can get the message.  Her “sentences” are getting longer for sure with her having finally abandoned one-word expressions for 2-3- and sometimes 4-word combinations.  She is also doing a lot of “echoing” which means she will repeat whatever you just said.  It is a tad annoying at times but is not a bad thing because it is her way of “practicing” how to talk.  She is also doing much better at answering questions, though “why” questions are still almost completely elusive to her.

Personality-wise Adelina is blossoming.  She is handling life beautifully as it gets thrown at her.  She still loves new experiences and embraces them with enthusiasm.  We took her to some friends’ kids’ soccer games this past Saturday and she spent almost the whole time just kicking a ball with whoever would kick the ball with her.  She is not timid in any way and says she would like to play soccer.  She wants a ball and the shoes - and she wants them NOW.  On Sunday we went to Big Surf where she fell in love with the wave pool and the “Otter Slides”.  This girl LOVES to play in water!

One thing we have always known about Adelina, but it is becoming more clear every day, is that she is an extravert.  She loves people probably more than anything else.  She makes a new friend in church every week all by herself.  Usually this is an adult but one time it was a 10 year old boy.  She somehow works it out so that this new friend is running up and down the aisles with her after the service.  This happened with the boy but this week she was running the aisles with a girl who was probably about 17.  I guess Adelina had “introduced” herself via fingerspelling (though she left out the “L”) while we were busy with worship, and within minutes of the service ending, there they were running up and down the aisles.  She has a way with people for sure!

There is much more to share, and we did finally get a few pictures added to the gallery but there are many more to come.  Thanks for your patience as we try to get caught up.