growth

when I came back from my weekend away, you greeted me the most enthusiastically of everyone, not to my surprise. you missed me, and boy did i miss you (and your siblings, of course). but your joy in seeing me wasn't the best thing that morning. while I was gone you seemed to grow. not physically, but in your 'you' ness.

between school and therapy and developmental assessments, progress is often discussed. are you progressing on your IEP goals, are you progressing with your fine motor skills, is your speech progressing... yes to all of those, most of the time - you are progressing. what I witnessed the whole day after i returned was different. it was not simply progress.

the definition of progress is a movement toward a goal or stage, where growth is defined as development from simple to more complex, and is described as change in size.

what i've seen since returning is your speech growth: you're giving me so many spontaneous complete sentences, formed solely by your thoughts. you're showing me executive functioning growth with your completion of multi-stepped tasks that were more complex than usual. your focus and self-control is mature in a way i've not often seen for such long stretches of time. your thought process in what you choose to do and how you choose to execute it is deeper in ways that i can't quite put my finger on, let alone put into words.

what i'm seeing right now, ruby, is growth, and it is amazing to watch.