If you're happy and you know it

Phoenix has finished off her first year of preschool! I'm a little sad for her that her structured activities have ended for the next 2 months, but happy that we aren't ruled by her schedule for a while. We have an amazing developmental aide working with her 3 afternoons a week, so she isn't totally work free for the summer. Jen is working on a variety of skills with Phoenix including eating with utensils. Phoenix seems to think that the way the world works is that parents feed their kids, so we are trying to disabuse her of this notion and encourage her to feed herself. It's slow work with a lot of bribery. "Do you want to watch your iPad? Then take a bite with your fork." Thank goodness, it frequently works. We are also getting her to try a wider variety of foods, with bribery as well. Baby steps, but definitely steps in the right direction.

Phoenix was treated for an infection recently, and right after she was, something incredible started to happen. Her hair started to grow back. She's currently sporting about 8-10 patches of hair on her head that is growing. With her type of alopecia, this scenario is really unlikely. I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that she would be bald her entire life. But who knows? Maybe it will grow back?

We have also gotten Phoenix to start wearing her glasses more often. She was wearing them in school regularly, so now it isn't as difficult to get them on her for large portions of the day. And she looks REALLY cute in them.

One thing that is unique yet concerning about Phoenix is her complete inability to admit she feels anything other than happy. She can be bawling her eyes out and if asked if she is sad will shake her head and say and sign "no, happy". It's funny, because she is obviously not happy, but concerning because I hope she doesn't grow up suppressing her emotions. It's not something we taught her to do either. She hates to see others upset, hates it when her sisters cry or her friends are sad, and doesn't like to be sad herself (even though she often does feel sad and will cry). I'm not sure what to do about it. I don't want to push her to say something she doesn't want to say, but I also don't want her to suppress how she feels. I think this is something that we are just going to have to keep our eye on.