Please forgive the clarity of these pictures, I am too short to be taking pictures behind all these parents but we had to sit far enough back that Cohen couldn't see us.
Cohen's class dressed as stars for their program and sang "Twinklw, twinkle, twink." It was such a cute performance from all the kids. Cohen got a little shy up on stage and scooted herself behind a little boy for some coverage.
She had her first solo!! They asked her, "Cohen, where are the stars at?" We practiced and practiced her little line. She was supposed to say "Up High!" At home she was about 50/50 if she would say it and the teacher said she did betterwith a food incentive (Imagine that!). But she put her mouth up to that microphone and in the sweetest little voice said "Hiiiigh!" She has such a souther drawl so it was sooo cute!
Needless, to say momma shed a few tears during her performance and for many of the other performances too. These kids have overcome so much and these teachers put soooo much into them and it really showed!
They came back out with the whole school and sang "Happy Birthday, Jesus!" Cohen had enough of the crowd so she did not let her teacher get far away from her. We love Mrs. Mary!!
This is the whole student and teacher body at Magnolia. We are so blessed to be surrounded by such a loving group of people!!
A small update on Cohen-- We have seen the Endo since the last post and she actually grew 0.33in over the last 6 weeks. They adjusted her medication again based on her labwork that has risen to 175 (the dr would like her at 240). She also has some bloodwork done for her immune system that indicated she was slightly deficient in subclass4. It only signifies that the drs will be a little more agressive with small things such as colds and sinus crud to ensure it can't progress due to her low immune system.
I have monthly meetings with her teachers and we met this past Thursday to discuss the last few weeks. Receptively, Cohen has excelled and surpassed most of their goals for her this year. They said she can match, scan, and identify pictures after being showed once in a group of 15-20. We are beyond thrilled to hear that cognitively she is understanding. However, expressively she is demonstrating small progress but not at the speed they would like. We started weekly Auditory Verbal therapy back in October and through that and some testing done by the speech therapist, They are suspecting that Cohen has oral apraxia. It is where the brain is understanding what it wants to say but somewhere in sending the message to the mouth the signal gets mixed up and the muscles that are used to talk seem uncoordinated. We have known that she isn't "talking" as quickly as we thought so this does help with identify some reasons why. Beginning in January, Cohen will begin being taught by the "Association Method." Half of the school, is hearing impaired and half of the school is language disorder. The "Association Method" is the method they use to teach the language disorder group. I am not very familiar with it so I don't want to risk explaining it wrong, but I do know that it has proven to help many, many children who have graduated from Magnolia and we are thrilled to be somewhere that they feel like they understand and can help Cohen. I will explain it further as istart to understand it more. If anyone has any experience or knowledge on it, I am a sponge right now-- just soaking up all the knowledge I can! My coworkers are so tired of me bugging them about speech stuff :)
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