Happy 13th Birthday, Luz!

After feeding the baby (birthday gift, Luz loves "babies")... a big cuddle!

Luz, November 2014

:-)

"Swift fly the years"

new teeth

Luz started growing her upper front teeth a little before spring, now they are fully grown or so we hope, because they are quite big... but she looks gorgeous anyhow and what better for biting into those apples she likes so much!

cats, always.

cats are still her one and only subject, but getting good at it!

drawing!!

This is so exciting for us!
Luz has been drawing cats for a week now, but we've been drawing cats for her for a lot longer than that. She loves it when we do it, and now she's having a go too! (she's a cat fan). When I draw a cat I say as I'm drawing "This are the ears, and these are the eyes, and here is the nose..." etc. I draw the head and ears with one stroke, and this is what she tries to reproduce, as you can see from the pictures. Also, if we draw the head and no body, she will add the body herself!

teeth

Luz has lost 3 teeth this summer!
A bit early for she's not even 5 yet...

still pedaling!

going faster, but no steering...

pedaling!!!

it's slow but steady right now, and no steering yet... but she's pedaling!

colours!!!

Luz has surprised us last week with her little game of coloured pegs. Initially I bought it to practice fine motor skills, since we have tried to show her colours before and she didn't seem to be ready yet. But one day she just started choosing the blue pegs and only when she was running out of blue did she choose some other colours, but then mainly light blue and green... we were very impressed! she continued with this the next day and that's it... she's never done it again... mysterious children!

more puzzle

Luz is now aware that completing the puzzle is something to be proud of!

champion!

Zöe is a super nursery nurse that used to work with Luz on home visits when we lived in England. She used to bring with her a lot of different toys some of which became Luz's favourites. Favourite number one was "cookie puzzle". She liked it so much that we decided to use it for her first "computer game"... Luz loves computers but working out the mouse was an obstacle. So two months ago we finally got her a touchscreen and Roberto started creating little softwares for her. The first had to be the cookies, we had that idea waiting for sometime. We started using "backward chaining" with it about a month ago but we had never seen her actually fit any of the pieces without prompting... until today! She just fitted all of them! I was so surprised!... She loves to move things around on the screen so until today I thought she was just concentrated on this little pleasure, without really caring where the objects where moving to.

sleep, or lack of...

For several months now, Luz has been sleeping more irregularly than usual. Waking up several times, sometimes crying unconsolably, sometimes going back to sleep right away, once we've come to her to snug her back to bed (she will otherwise stay sitting up, waiting for us).A couple of weeks ago we started treatment with melatonin. For the moment, this helps her to fall a sleep at a decent time, but she's still waking up several times per night (ranging from twice a night, on rare occasions, to six times a night... not so rare).
Mom and Dad are quite tired by now, and she seems undisturbed!

paris

Settling back in Paris hasn't been easy. The main issue is education. We haven't found anything adapted for her. At the moment she's going to a "Halte Garderie" were everybody is nice and caring but the place is tiny and we don't feel it's the kind of structure that will help Luz make much progress.
Then there's outdoor activities which she's missing a lot. At the beginning we took Luz to a park with a great sand pit which she enjoys a lot, but as the weather is turning cold and wet we haven't been going as much, and she's clearly needing more outings.

Pelota

Luz just loves to play ball.

shoes and stickers

Luz has been very interested in putting her shoes on lately, she mantains her balance quite well while doing so. Of course she mixes left and right half of the time but she is obviously happy to be able to do it. She will try on any shoe that crosses her path. The other thing she's recently taken pleasure with is stickers. At her nursery children would be often rewarded with one (star shaped) and I had, up to now, thought Luz wasn't interested, but just few days ago she picked up a yellow star her brother had cut from a piece of paper and she gave it to me showing that she wanted me to stick it on her. "you are a star!" I told her as they would say at her nursery whenever a child was "awarded" a star sticker... and did my best to tangle the star clipping in a fold on her dress. She was very proud of herself (and so was I... so happy she could relate her brother's cut-out with the nursery's star stickers!).

signing

Luz started signing again, after almost a year of havng stopped she "recovered" the sign for more following her very first sign for bottle (milk, actually). As if asking for her bottle and seeing our reaction triggered something that brought the other sign back. So she's using two signs now, though she will sometimes just sign for milk because she wants something, even if it's not related to her drink (and there goes the guessing game)

sleep

A couple of months ago Luz went through a long period of very very bad sleep. She would wake up in the middle of the night and stay awake for hours. This pattern went on for about six weeks and it didn't seem to disturb her. Mum and Dad were, on the contrary, forgetting things and bumping into everything, totally exhausted. It went as it came, with no obvious sign of any external factor that would give us a clue as why she wasn't sleeping. Dad has been doing some research and found some interesting things about melatonin related to sleep regulation. It seems children with Luz's chromosome anomaly (and also children with autism) commonly suffer from sleep disorders and many have benefited by taking supplements of melatonin. We haven't tried it but we'll give it a thought if Luz goes through another terrible sleeping spell (it's natural and has no side effects).

Link
"Melatonin, the sleep master" http://www.autism.org/melatonin.html

shadows and reflections

Luz has always been captivated by her own reflection. Any shiny surface will do. She has a plastic mirror at her level and she will continuously bring objects in front of it to have a look of herself with them. Or calmly take position and watch herself munching an apple. And when we're lucky to have a sunny day... she'll have a go at playing with her shadow... she'll get all excited when someone comes to join in the shadow projection show. But try to go for a walk with the sun in front of you... she'll turn around to walk in the opposite direction, looking at her shadow of course... you wanted to go somewhere else? are you in a hurry? you'll have to wish for a cloud!

circles

We are very happy to announce Luz is drawing circles! it started only two weeks ago; Luz was scribbling and I took her hand and showed her she could make circles. This highly interested her, she started to ask us (body language) to hold the pen with her to make more circles. She was very concentrated whenever we held her hand to do it, and she would move her arm to change where the circle would be drawn on the paper. Eventually she started participating in the movement required, enough for her father to slowly let go of her hand until he was barely touching her; and yesterday she drew these magnificent circles all on her own!

pinching?

The picture shows Luz delicately (and dreamily) pinching her aunt's thigh, while having a rest and a cuddle on her lap. She used to gently pinch somebody's cheek if approached closely, but as a sign of affection, really, because if she wasn't interested she'd just push you away. Over the past month or so, she has gradually stopped "pinching" and passed to hair stroking and picking on some strands as if to look and feel them (sometimes pulling a little in spite of her friendly intentions).She particularly likes to stroke her brother's hair and though he's not always willing, he does enjoy the new attention.