If you were to ask me what Jennifer's favorite thing to do is, I would have to say, "reading." Both of my children have a fabulous love for written words. Their Mema definitely gets the credit for first introducing them to the wonderful world of books.
When Jennifer was just 14 months old, I can remember her crawling across the livingroom floor after some books that I had gotten for Christmas from my mom. There was definitely nothing interesting on the books that caught her eye. These were more like text books. My new guides for helping Jennifer through her early development.
Fast forward eight years and she's still going after books. She reads in the bath tub. She reads before bed. She reads in the car. She reads walking into school. She reads in the grocery store. She reads signs we pass on the road. She reads clothing labels. She reads to her pets. She reads to her baby dolls. She reads anything and everything she can!
This weekend, while attending a Winter Wonderland birthday party, she heard the story
Snowmen At Night. Later, when most kids were up running around playing in the "snowbox", sipping hot cocoa from snowman mugs or eating yummy winter desserts, I looked up to find Jennifer curled up in a chair reading. She didn't care if any of the other kids were interested in her. She just wanted to read.
And...Yes, she can read! She's reading on a first grade level and picks up more every day. There are times when she grabs up a book and just wants to take a picture walk, making up her very own story. But she CAN read the words on the pages.
She knows how to use the skills she's been taught to figure out word unfamiliar words. She looks for picture clues, uses her letter sound knowledge and context clues to help her when she's struggling. If she still can't figure out a word, she simply asks.
Today, her new word is "daily." She found this on the front of her reading bag. When she read it, she knew that the word didn't make sense to her. So she looked at me and said, "Daily?". I responded with a simple explanation of the word and then used it in a sentence. Jennifer immediately gave me her own sentence with the word. "Daisy goes camping daily." While our boston terrier doesn't go camping daily (unless you count her time in her kennel), it was a great sentence!
Never under estimate any child. I can't tell you how many times I've heard "children with Down syndrome can do the same things as other children, it will just take them longer." That's true, but...Who cares when little Johnny learned to skip or when Susie said her first word? All that matters is that I have an eight year old little girl that reads, writes, runs, skips, sings, dances, has distinct likes and dislikes. The best part is that she's learned these things all in God's perfect timing for her!
My little one has been sick since Wednesday! Here we are five days later and she's still got a throat that's so sore, she doesn't even want to swallow. The good news is that with pain medicine she's fine and she's had no fever since Saturday!
