Little Drummer Girls

Noa's cousin Elektra came to visit last week - here is a little clip of them playing together.

Noa has only recently started to truly relate to other kids and engage in interactive play. In this clip, her chief form of interaction is of the bossy kind (which is kind of her M.O.). She seems to think that by making Elektra trade drumsticks with her, she can avoid being hit on the hand... of course that doesn't turn out to be the case (as she found out shortly after I stopped filming). Ultimately, we convinced her to put her hand on the side of the drum to feel its vibrations, but by that time I think Elektra had had her fill. Still they had a few nice play-time exchanges and Noa really loved hanging out with her.

Now Repeat After Me...

A lot of new stuff here: 2 posts from yesterday and 3 today!!!!

But I had to post all three of these today - I think that taken together these videos demonstrate why we're so excited about Noa's progress. The clip above includes a lot of repeating of sounds and things that sounds sort of like words. Sometimes she seems to say whole words pretty clearly, but those are rare - almost otherworldly moments, like when Jess thought Noa said "applesauce" yesterday. Or Saturday when she told Ben that she wanted to "go" clear as bell (he was pushing her around in a shopping cart - highly motivating).

In this particular video (and the one follow) when I ask Noa to say her name she says something that at the time sounded like her "yes" to me. But watching the video, I think she was trying to say "Noa" and it came out something like "oya."

I don't know that I much to say about these, except: watch them. I think they speak for themselves... pun intended.

Noa Knows Nose

I love this video for a couple of reasons - both of which have to do with Noa not just repeating stuff, but taking stuff in her own direction.

Not only does she try to say "nose" she also points to her nose - so she is not just repeating the sound back, she is getting what the sound is referring to.

Then she points at her chin and mouth, which comes from a song we do which has to do with touching your ears, eyes, nose, chin, mouth -- the last words of the song are "that's Noa," and she pats herself on the chest for that. But here, not only does she go through the whole rest of the song (which she started in the first place, not me) - she uses the sign for "Noa" that they taught her at school: tapping her chest with 2-fingers (the "n" sign).

So, yeah, this is pretty cool.

Ben and I went to visit a potential school for Noa last week (she has to "transition" next year which is a whole other story of evals, mtgs, trying to figure out where she might fit - I won't get into it now) - all the students were visually impaired, cognitively and usually multiply disabled as well. When we told the staff that Noa signed, they asked is she initiates signs. We kind of laughed and said, "yeah, she's really bossy." And they were so impressed and surprised. I realized later that this may indicate that this isn't the best place for her - it's really hard to evaluate the cognitive ability of a kid who can't see or speak or walk, etc... but it made me realize that the fact that she initiates communication to this degree is probably very meaningful in assessing that. Just something we'll be keeping in mind as we look around...

Mmmmmm Ma

What is amazing about this one is that Noa gets that I'm trying tell her the difference between Na and Mmm by putting her hand on my mouth. She gets it right after I do the Mmmm on her hand, but then goes back to Na and REALIZES it! When she puts her hand on her own mouth she is doing it just the way that I do it. It doesn't quite work so she reaches out so I that I'll do it again - and she gets it.

I mean wow. Really. This is some kind of thinking and reaching and struggling with how sounds are made that we just have not seen until now.

A kid playing with playdoh... no biggie, right?

Wrong!

Here's the thing, until a few weeks ago if you handed Noa a chunk of playdoh, she'd push it right back to you and sign finished. She didn't think to play with - or even touch - things that were slimly or sticky or wet or in any way challenging. So this is a big deal for Noa.

Last week at the open house at her school, they had a pumpkin and all the students were playing with the squishy, slimy pumpkin seeds and pulling out the insides of the pumpkin and much to my surprise, after just a bit of resistance Noa was picking up the slimy seeds and handing them to me one-by-one. She even stuck her hand in the pumpkin and pulled some out and handed them to me. It was a real first!

Noa continues to make great progress with sounds. I'll try to get some video of that. A lot of "singing." Yesterday she sang for nearly an hour straight while we were out running errands. It was a little like a cross between a battle cry and a memorial to Ed McMahon (the song pretty much went: heeey - ooohhhhhh... heeey - ooohhhhh).

She will try to say almost anything you ask her to say. She mixes up a lot of sounds: P and D, or B and T, or N and M. I don't know if its a matter of what she is hearing or just her unfamilarity with how to arrange her mouth for the sounds. But she'll keep trying and sometimes will mysteriously say something like "I did it" or "applesauce" or "go" so clearly that you think you're losing your mind.

More Toy Doggie Binky Piano

Haven't shared any video of Noa at the piano for a while, so I thought I'd share this one. As you can see, she still enjoys playing her songs - and she's trying out all kinds of new moves. One of the nice things in this video is at the end she asks for "more toy doggie binky"... then a sign she made up (the thing where she twists her finger). This is a habit right now - lists. We haven't quite figured out how to get her stop making everything into a list yet, but we're going to have a meeting at her school this week and we'll talk to them about it.

Also, as you will see at the end of the video, I ask her if she wants more piano and she immediately signs "more piano" - which means that I should change the sound the piano makes. The important thing to notice here is that she hears me and understands me and responds appropriately. This is one of those things that is wonderful... and always causes some trouble - it's one of the reasons we've had such a hard time getting sign language services: she clearly hears and understands us.

Say It Proud!

You may need to turn the volume way up to hear this one... but it's really really REALLY exciting for us. Just in the past couple of weeks, Noa has started to say things that approximate words (see our recent post with her saying "lunch") but now she's had a real explosion of - not just sounds - but also the desire to imitate sounds. This is really huge for a number of ways:

1. Noa has always loved it when we imitated her, but she has only rarely imitated us - and only when we make a sound that sounds like it might feel fun to make (spitting, vibrating sounds). But now she is trying nearly every sound we ask her to try - with varying success. For example in this clip she tries "drink" which she really hasn't gotten the hang of yet, but she makes a few attempts trying to find the right way to make some of the sounds.

2. Noa has never been able to really combine two sounds. In the past we've had "e-e-e-e" and "b-b-b-b" and even "shhhhhhh" but nothing with two distinct sounds like lunch which come out as "L-ch" or yes which comes out "ja-shh." Apparently she got "ha ha ha" from a book at school that has a vampire who says ha ha ha.

3. She seems to really understand some of these sounds and trying to use them as words, for example: yes and no (she says "na na na") and lunch (which she always does with the sign for food, so she clearly associates the two).

4. This one is soooo hard to quantify but there is a big difference between the sounds she made previously and these sounds because she is playing with the sounds, rather than the sensation. Her old "D" sound which sounded like d-d-d-d-d seemed to be about the feeling of her tongue on the roof of her mouth. But tonight we were working on drink (which she really doesn't have hear) and she was really trying to figure out how to make the sound "da" with her full voice.

The change has been so dramatic that her teachers at school and her music therapist have all be contacting us just amazed at this new, exciting development. It really has been, for us, quite a spectacular couple of weeks!