Stephanie is getting to the point of winter that she is tired of the cold weather and this year the lack of snow. We've gotten a few inches of snow a couple of times but not much overall. I am ok with that but the kids all like the snow, as long as it doesn't get too cold. Stephanie has learned that if she goes outside for even a couple minutes she can get hot chocolate when she comes inside. She has been happy with the new healthy hot chocolate so thankfully that hasn't been an issue. She has asked to go skiing, "up the magic carpet to the big hill", a couple of times but I have been able to say there isn't enough snow. Really hoping she can go back to her adaptive skiing next year. Now she just wants to go for a bike ride.
Stephanie usually doesn't mind change. She actually likes it sometime. But just like everything else it's on her terms. When we moved to Elkhorn she loved it. We stayed 8 months in an apartment before we moved to our new house. She had no problem with any of it. She actually would ask to do it again. The same goes when we change things around the house. We switched bedrooms last year and didn't tell her until the day we did it and she had so much fun moving her stuff to her new room. Just this past weekend I moved where she was sleeping on the floor because she was covering up the vent in her room. She didn't see the change until she went to bed and she couldn't wait until she went to bed again tonight to sleep in the new place. Last week we also got a new kitchen table. She was so happy to help daddy put the chairs together. We are very thankful that she normally handles change well. We try to prepare her when we can, as close to the event as possible. That way we don't hear about it over and over and over again. And yes there is tinfoil on the new table because the cats thought we bought it for them.
I have trouble describing Stephanie speech to others sometimes. She is definitely not non verbal but she can't carry on a conversation or necessarily answer questions. She has always had a lot to say. Most days she talks all day. Like all day long. It can be the same thing over and over or it can be a guessing game of what she wants to talk about and you have no idea. You can keep guessing and hope you get it. Over the years there have been a handful of times I can't understand her and I feel terrible that she can't communicate her simple wants and needs. But in a FaceTime conversation tonight she was able to answer a question with a full sentence answer. It gives me a little bit of hope for her future.
Stephanie likes to play the Wii so we bring it out every once and awhile. So on another day off from school she wanted to bike and run. Her 2 favorite games on Wii Fit Plus She is able to do some games and loves the Balance Board. It is too bad they don't have more movement games for young kids. It is very outdated so there are no new games coming and she doesn't have the skill to try the new videos consoles. I thought about those VR things but I wouldn't be able to see what she sees and they don't have games for young kids so it would be to advanced even though I think she would like how real they look.
Besides playing the Wii she spent some time bagging up wristbands that we started selling on the website. I wanted this to be something she could do independently but counting and knowing numbers up to 15 is not something that she can do. But just a simple piece of paper with 15 boxes and she can put 15 wristbands in each square and then bag them up. She did all the wristbands we had and wanted to do more. We are working on more items like stickers, pencils, magnets etc. that she can bag in various packages.
There is no new song as she is back to some old ones, "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz and "When I Grow up" from Matilda the musical, and she's been back to watching Dora the Explorer.