Dinosaur Dreams

Today Hannah woke up from her nap muttering. I went into her room to find her stretched across her rocking chair covered up with a blanket. She turned her head when she heard the door open and whispered, "I don't like the dinosaurs." After some questioning and several serious insistences that she indeed DID NOT like the dinosaurs I have come to the conclusion that she had a dream about dinosaurs being at McCalisters (the restaurant where we eat at after church most Sundays). She's never expressed any fear of dinosaurs before. We have several books that portray them in humorous roles and have never discussed them being scary at all, BUT last week at preschool the theme was dinosaurs. I can only surmise that it was mentioned that dinosaurs were terrifying beasts (probably by one of the little boys in the class) and that overpowered all previous experiences she's had with dinosaurs. It's interesting to me that this fear manifested itself as a dream instead of her mentioning it after preschool one day. Other than recounting her dream, she has made no mention of dinosaurs after school or any other time pretty much ever. I wonder if she's been having other dreams that are scary that she hasn't told me about and this is why she has all of a sudden started insisting that she sleep with the light on. Something for me to think about I guess.

We finally got Hannah's appointment with the developmental clinic set up. It's not until February! I knew it would be a long time, but I guess I kinda hoped that somehow we'd get in sooner. We also have a meeting set up for December to begin the transition from the early intervention agency to the local school system's special education department. Tonight was Hannah's six month review with the early intervention agency and she blew her case coordinator away by reading dozens of words to her off of flash cards. Hannah's therapist just smiled one of those "I told you so" smiles and gave me a knowing look. No one ever believes us when we say that Hannah is reading. It's made even more unbelievable when they know that she's receiving special services for sensory problems. Unfortunately, this will probably continue and make our fight to get Hannah access to the services she needs and deserves difficult. Because her challenges and gifts tend to cancel each other out, it often appears that she's just average and that she has no problems and also isn't exceptional at all academically. This fact could keep her out of gifted programs AND out of special education services to ensure that her sensory needs don't prevent her from meeting her potential academically. I often worry that when she enters school she's going to be bored out of her mind, socially frustrated and anxious, and not have anyone who is willing to help her succeed. I suppose we'll cross that bridge when we get there (although it could be sooner than we think!), but at least this meeting will be a good start.

Hannah's been learning more and more words lately and now has 20+ sight words. Tonight she read me another book. I'm always so proud when I see her stop at a word she doesn't know and attempt to use the context, pictures, and what she can decode to figure it out.

Last week while Kyle was in Puerto Rico, Heather came to stay with Hannah and I to keep us both from going insane. I'm so thankful that she did. Things went so much more quickly than they would have otherwise and Kyle was back before we both knew it. Heather brought her two dogs (Heinz and Maverick) with her so we had 4 dogs, two cats, two adults, and a toddler in the house! It was really quite a full house. Hannah really enjoyed having Aunt Heather stay here. Most of the time she didn't want me to do things with her. She wanted Heather instead! She even tried to convince my non kid person sister to give her a bath! That would have been a sight to see! It was pretty funny to watch Hannah pushing around and ordering around Heather's dogs too. We have little dogs, but Heinz and Maverick are dobermans (103 and 60 lbs respectively) and lately Hannah's been a bit leery of big dogs. However, after a few hours you would never know it. She'd just go up and push them right out of her way.

The other day I was eating M & M s and Hannah wanted some. I gave her my standard answer about not being able to have them until she was older. She then told me very matter of factly, "I can have them at Mamaw and Papaw's though." I guess the old saying, "What happens at Grandma's stays at Grandma's" doesn't apply with Hannah. This isn't the first time she's told us that she's done something at another person's house that she knows that she's not supposed to do or eaten something she knows she's not allowed at home. She's also started "arguing" when we tell her she can't have or do something by telling us that the other parent allows her to do it. This is usually her telling me that daddy allows her to do it. For example, she always wants to jump up the stairs or go up the stairs in some other unorthodox fashion like backwards or sideways. I don't let her because our stairs are steep, there is concrete at the bottom, and I don't have good enough balance to stop her from falling and keep myself from falling should she lose her balance and take a tumble. One day when she wanted to jump up the stairs and I told her no, she replied, "With Daddy I can do it!" and gave me a very defiant look. We're in for a real treat I'm sure once she's a little bit older and learns how to manipulate the system and pit us against each other!