Cathy got Maria this duck which quacks “Peter Cottontail” as he dances and flaps his beak. Maria was pretty indifferent to it at first but has gotten interested. She used to grab his wing to activate him (one of her other toys is activated by squeezing his hand) but has learned to grab his foot instead. Today while he was singing, Maria was gazing intently at his face…then started moving her lips along with his! She did twice more when I’d reactivate him. It was very funny.
Before you ask, no I didn’t get it on video. I considered it, but if I put the duck close enough that it would be clear what was happening, Maria couldn’t focus on him well enough and stopped doing it.
When the vision therapist arrived, Maria raised her hand in what looked an awful lot like a wave. She has sort of waved at people before, but until she does it consistently I’m reluctant to call it real.
Cathy filled out Maria’s skill evaluation for preschool and that was a bit depressing. It is a list if increasingly difficult skills broken out into sections. So the speech section might have a couple of dozen skills such as “makes any kind of vocalization”, “uses crude sounds (ba-ba for bottle)”, “uses single words”, and “uses full sentences”. You mark always, sometimes, or never and when you mark 4 nevers in a row, you skip to the next section. Some sections she scored quite poorly. We know her limitations, but it’s no fun to have your nose rubbed in it.