I Was Blind But Now I See

Happy Year of the Ox, Common Year Starting on Thursday (what Pamela calls today)!

I went to bed last night praying about the food fight between Time Warner Cable and Viacom. Yes, praying! Can you imagine how early in the morning Pamela would have woken us up if Noggin and Nickelodeon were not on the air? I came downstairs at about eight in the morning and spotted her happily watching Blues Clues. She had no idea of the bullet we all dodged. Ignorance is truly bliss. I smiled and told her, "Pamela, prayer works!" She had no clue about what I was saying, and I gladly left her in ignorance . . .

Today, I saw Pamela playing with a white handkerchief. In this photograph, she had wrapped up some plastic toys in it and shook it to hear the sound. The video below shows the other things she did with it, including pretending to be a blind person who was quickly healed.


This week, several things happened that have confirmed Pamela on making progress through RDI.

• Two elementary-school aged boys hang out at our house whenever they visit their grandmother. Today, they suddenly made comments about Pamela out of the blue:
  
  "Miss Tammy. Pamela's not as shy as she was."
  
  "Yeah, she's more friendly now."
  
  "She never talked to us before, but now she does."
• Last night, we hung out at my parent's house. A couple there had not seen Pamela since last February. After Pamela and Steve went home (they are the early birds in the family), the wife told me that she could see definite progress in how Pamela related to us.
• Two days ago, my neighbors and I fell into a conversation. Pamela came up to me to ask where Steve was (he was making his visitation rounds in the neighborhood). During the course of this conversation, Pamela did things like pay attention to my face, shift attention from me to the neighbors when they spoke, nodded and pointed, followed my eye gaze and point, hugged them good-bye, etc. They were very impressed by everything Pamela was able to do spontaneously without an adult prompting her.

Lately, we are seeing things that make me think of a three-year-old:

• Pamela never went through the "why" phase of development. I have been waiting for sixteen years to hear questions like "why" and "how come"! When I ask her why, I crack up when she says, "Because I said so!" While most parents are annoyed by this, especially getting questioned after telling a child "no", I feel like cracking open a bottle of champagne every time I hear those magical words . . .
• Pamela wants to share things with us. It is not enough to discover something (like magic) or be healed from blindness, she has to share it with us. Even if I am in another room, she will find me and say, "I did it." And, many times when I ask what she did, Pamela is able to explain it to me . . . more champagne moments (and I bet I drink less than a bottle of any form of alcohol a year).
• Pamela is much more able to have impromptu, spontaneous conversations without me acting as a translator. Often, I can step back and let her do what she knows to do with minimal explanation.
• Pamela thinks of her babies as members of the family. The only gifts she requested for herself were presents for her baby: a Loonette doll (from The Big Comfy Couch) for Baby Alive and a Duplo Thomas Starter Set for Baby David. Pamela sprung this on me before Christmas but the doll is hard to snag and I finally won an auction right before Christimas. The Duplo set is out of stock and will not arrive for a few weeks. Pamela was delighted that we ordered them and is patiently waiting for the surprises for her babies to arrive in the mail!