4 Years Old.

Snapped on her 4th Birthday!

Maggie was incredibly excited today.  If you've been reading the blog regularly for a few months you might remember how excited she was about her birthday and how, in the weeks before the big day she started saying Happy Birthday and was practically glowing on the morning of the 4th of July when she woke up, repeating those words over and over again.

Today during therapy I glanced over and saw that she had a cup of beans.  She had carefully brought the beans over to her little table and then filled the entire top of the cup with "candles" (crayons) to make a birthday cake (something that was completely and utterly unimaginable a year ago when she was first given the ADOS).

A while later I heard her therapist talking with her about how she was four years old.

I didn't think much of it as I went about doing school with Sadie and loading the kids in to the car to do errands.  I'd completely forgot about it a couple of hours later, when she looked at me with a small smile and then looked steadily at her left hand as she formed four fingers.

It wasn't easy.  They weren't all doing what they were supposed to be doing right away.  There were four fingers raised and then two and then three and finally four again and she smiled at me broadly as I said: "You're right!  That's so good! Maggie, you are four years old! Four!"

When Paul sat down with us I asked her how old she was and she smiled hugely and then looked down shyly, not quite ready for a repeat performance of her feat... but I couldn't help but be grateful to have seen her newest little achievement for the day and to have witnessed the look of accomplishment on her face as she held up her little hand to tell Patch and Sadie and I that she's now a big four year old!