Silly Hannah!

Hannah has the type laughter that is whole-body laughter. The kind that just doubles a person over. I've said since I first met her in China that her personality is "intense". When she is sad, it is intensely sad. Mad is intensely mad. And, happiness is intensely happy. She does nothing half-heartedly. Her sad and mad have gotten a little less-intense over the last 5 months, but I'm so thankful her happiness is just as intense. Here's some pictures from us playing this afternoon. The one of her bent over is one where she just laughed so hard she fell over.





In other news, Hannah had a speech evaluation at the Univ. of Montevallo on Friday. She did wonderful and cooperated with the students who were doing the evaluation very well. They, in turn, did an amazing job with her. I was very impressed. She will hopefully begin receiving services there in January - probably twice a week. We still have to work out the scheduling and all, but they seemed very willing to work with me to get her a time-slot that was after school. Her scores on the tests were a bit of suprise to me. Her articulation (speech sounds) was very low - which is to be expected from a child who has just had a cleft palate repaired at 3 years old. Her expressive language was somewhat low - also to be expected for a child who was adopted from another county 5 months ago. But, what stuck out to me was her comprehension score. She scored completely average. According to that assessment, she performed as well as any typical 3 year old who had spent those entire 3 years hearing English. I expected her comprehension to be the highest score of the 3, but didn't quite expect it to be that high. The child has only heard English for 5 months!! I'm so proud of her!