Family

Hello! Just wanted to comment a bit on Jill's talking. She's gone from saying one word, to two word phrases, to a few three word phrases over the past few months. Then, about two weeks ago she must have noticed that when we talk we use some smaller words in with our important words. So, at Jake's soccer game she said, "car?" "car?" and I ignored her because the game had just started and we had a long time to go before getting back in the car, but then she said, "do......you.....car?" It was so cute the way she asked! She was just trying out words and guessing if she said it right or not, but I knew what she meant and filled in the blanks for her, "No, I don't want to go to the car right now; we'll go after Jake's game." Then, a week later she did come up with a real sentence! On the refrigerator there's a picture of Jill riding on the giraffe on the carousal at the zoo. My mom stood by her and my dad took the picture (They took her to the zoo one Monday-she loved it, especially seeing her favorite animal-the elephants!) She comments 100 times a day on that picture "Jill giraffe" "Jill-Wheee" "Jill Myama (grandma)", "Pah picture", "round a round" "merry go round" etc, etc. But this day she said, "I'm going round!" I was not sure I heard her correctly and said to Wade, "I think she just said a sentence!" Then she said it again, "I am going round!" Turns out my mom has her repeat after her in the car whenever they are going somewhere, "I am going __________" (to school) (to the store), etc. And, I guess she transferred the 'I am going' to the picture of her going around on the carousal! The next amazing thing was tonight when I was pulling up pictures for our first post placement report (can you believe it's that time already?!) I pulled up a family picture and she yelled out while pointing at the computer, "Jill's family!" Wow! I know at school they do a lot with 'family'. Like we've gotten several projects where she'll for example glue on five teddy bears in a house and they'll label them with our family members names, or that they have a prayer book with a family picture of each student and they take turns praying for each family, etc. So I guess she is learning what family means because she didn't say that for any of the other pictures I pulled up, but said it again when I clicked on the one of the five of us! The social worker tonight asked me to tell a favorite memory of time with Jill and that's the one I picked-it brought tears to my eyes that she realizes she has a family, and seems to know what that means, and that our family is now complete because of her!

Jill at Soccer

Fall Leaves

Jill's First Halloween