welcome back.

On the heels of such great news about our insurance coverage comes other good news. It is news that we were not expecting to hear this soon. News that we hoped we would hear someday...

We are in the middle of the "transition" from Early Intervention to preschool. There is alot of jargon that I will spare you with, but basically the state intervention services stop and the state school system takes over. All of this is federally mandated. So when I say "state" it really is state and federal...but that's really beside the point.

Because of that transition, the school system requires a renewal of all the prior assessments. That means the EI team comes out again with their big bag of toys, along with speech or OT or PT...and they do the same testing that they initially did on your child to see where they are. On top of that, they ask for assessments from any other sources like the SLP they see on a more frequent basis.

Bottom line. It's alot of testing.

So when the SLP came out to reassess Maddy, something was quite obvious. Maddy.

And after her testing, she looked at me and asked, "so what concerns do you have with her speech now?"

And I looked at her and looked at Maddy and I was baffled. "um...none. I mean, sure, it'd be great if she spoke more often in full sentences but she is quickly getting there and she is well within the age range."

Then I kind of stopped. Wait. I have no concerns? No viable major pressing issues?

I thought, wow. How did we get here?

Shortly after their visit, we had a meeting with Dr. MAL. The main issue was Maddy's sleep and how amazing it had changed in the last 2 weeks. Shorten a nap and reinforce a wake up time and suddenly, she's sleeping a heck of a lot better. Wild.

Dr. MAL paused for a moment and said, "I've never gotten to say this to anyone before, but I think it's time that we start decreasing her ABA hours."

Welcome to uncharted territory.

We were just starting to introduce peer play; finding the peers and the times to do it and now suddenly we can take that ABA time and cut it in half and replace that time with functional peer play. We're going from 20 hours weekly of ABA to 10.

She's doing that well.

She has managed to master in a matter of nearly six months what most "good" ABA students accomplish in two years.

Did you catch that?

2 years worth of learning in 6 months.

Dr. MAL has never had a child phase out of ABA like this. Usually, she told us, they are phasing out ABA because the child is going to be starting school and they have to cut back in order to make the time for kindergarten.

She is academically over the requirements for preschool.

Socially...she is learning. And as usual, Maddy is a quick study. We have hopes of potentially letting her "try out" preschool in May for a few sessions at a time.

Now before I get too ahead of myself...let me say this, we're not out of the woods yet. There are still things that we need to work on.

But I can say this...we're at the edge of the forest. Instead of being fully engulfed in a sea of autism, we are in shallow waters with our eyes focusing on the ever increasing shoreline.

To take a child who less than a year ago, would not look you in the eye, would not respond to her name, would not even acknowledge your presence in the room, would never request anything from you....to suddenly a bright brown eyed girl who walks into the room and says while waving, "Hi guys! I'm Maddy!" and "Mama, come here. Open gate. Me in. please."

The last two weeks we have been experiencing "twin moments" to the point where it is almost daily now. Maddy and her twin, Maelle, playing tiny little games together. Making pretend snow angels on the carpet in Maddy's room, doing puzzles on their play table while sharing the pieces, running from room to room while dancing to their little music boxes, and making funny faces at each other in the window at the hospital. Suddenly, this friendship is erupting. Granted, they still fight. ALOT. But to see them socially playing together and finding the companionship of having a twin sister....brings me to tears.

Last Friday I took them into Rehab therapy without the stroller. Without the backpacks. Just two little 2.5 year olds holding each of my hands. And they were great. They walked with me. They listened to me. They took turns going potty. They washed their hands. They walked right with me in all the little steps they had to do in order to get to their speech therapy. It was a wonderful moment. I finally felt like I had a handle on this. This "twin" thing.

That finally my hopes and dreams for my little girls are beginning to form again. It's not that I ever lost them, they got blurry for awhile. They got lost for awhile. I got lost for awhile.

If you can look at all of that and see how amazing she is. How extraordinary her story is. You cannot deny the presence of God in all of this. I'm sorry but you can't. These are unreal results. Unreal. Everyone is speechless. In awe of this beautiful little girl.

She is so bright and so is her future. Welcome back to the world, my sunshine. Welcome back.