Nadia

Nana.  Nadiekins.  Love of my life.  She turned 4 in December and is growing into a sweet, strong willed little girl.  Nadia is so mysterious to me at times.  We are still dealing with the selective mutism, but seeing progress even if it seems incremental at times.  I have a friend in the ward who works with autistic children and is working on becoming a behavioral therapist.  She took Nadia under her wing and started with small sessions at her home and then started helping her at church and preschool.  The results were instantaneous and I wish I could just take her with us wherever we go.  Nadia now speaks at school and church, not a lot, but enough that I feel encouraged and relieved.  I'm glad she has another year to work on speaking before entering kindergarten.

Nadia is very much unlike her brother when it comes to learning how to speak.  There are times when she will forget words she's known for years.  For instance, one day she came to me telling me about these sticks with little circle things on them that her teacher likes.  It took a long time before we realized she was taking about stick pretzels and was describing the salt on them.  This happens pretty often.  Just today she forgot the word feather and was substituting "leaf" for it.  I don't know if this is typical for a 4 year old, but it doesn't seem like it.  It can get really frustrating for her when she is trying to tell me something and I just don't know what she is referring to.  Luckily she can describe things pretty well, but I still find it unusual.

We've been keeping steady with playdates and trying to stretch Nadia to come out of her shell.  She's making such progress and I'm so proud of her.  I'm so grateful that we have been able to get cracking on this early.  If we end up staying here next year, there's a fantastic preschool run by the elementary school here that she would qualify for.  I think it would be great for her.  I've also heard good things about the preschool at BYU, so either way I'm hoping she will continue in her progress. 

Nadia loves the color red, kitties, fruit, dessert (except rice pudding she tells me), her baby sister, and dancing.  She is SO brave!!  I took her to get her last 3 shots at her last doctor's appointment and she didn't even cry.  Rowan would have been running for the hills.  Anytime we are play fighting, Nadia is the one in front trying to protect her big brother or volunteering to fight the scary monster.  As long as talking isn't involved, she is there, ready and able.

Sweet, precious girl.  I love you so much!

In true holiday burnout fashion, we didn't wrap Nadia's presents.  It's a good thing Elsa wasn't born around this time.  She'd be lucky to get a granola bar with a lit match in it.



This was staged, but they love this chair.  I first saw one at the family that I used to nanny for and Nadia saw it in Ikea a long time ago.  It's been on our wish list for a while.

I need to get a better shot of the dollhouse and table that Steve made on here sometime.  It has a secret room in its tower- very cool.  Just like the girl in the picture.  Love you girlie!

Nadiaism:

Nadia:  What is that building there?
Me:  It's a church.
Nadia:  No, it's not a church.  It's a school.
Me:  No Nadia, I'm pretty sure that is a church.
Nadia:  But it has a slide!  Churches don't have fun stuff. 
Me:  ...