She's Nine!

Last week, Rachel turned nine!  I cannot believe my baby is nine.  It is so cliche, but the time really does just fly by.  There have lots of changes with her the last few months.  She has started using a lot more words and sometimes will even put two or three words together.  She has become very bossy with her sisters and does not hesitate to tell them to turn off the TV or go to bed  :-)   She is also playing with her sisters now.  She has spent years contentedly playing alone in her room and asking anyone who entered to leave, but in the last two months or so she has spent a lot of time playing with Leah.  Not only is she playing with Leah, but she is initiating the play and asking (well, actually, telling) Leah to go upstairs to play. 

 

In August she started at a new school.  She had spent the last three years at our neighborhood school.  She was in the Varying Exceptionalities (otherwise known as special ed) class and spent some of her day in a regular classroom.  We had her in a regular classroom for almost 50% of the time last year.  I was hoping that she would develop some social skills with her regular peers, but at the end of the year she still would not talk to her classmates, even when they talked to her first.  She was not progressing in her reading and math at this school either, so we decided to make the change to a different school setting.  She is know in a special ed classroom 100% of the time.  It is not a VE class so the kids in her classroom are more like Rachel in their learning challenges than the kids were at the last school.  She really seems to be picking up things better in the new setting.  We were at the grocery store this week, and while we were standing in line, she pointed to the register number and said, "Three!"  She was right!  She would not have done that last year.  Parent conferences are next week, so I am looking forward to getting to talk with the teacher and really see how things are going in the classroom. 

 

Below are some pictures from Rachel's birthday.