You are here: Home |
All about Heather
Heather is 17 years old and joined our family on January 31, 2000. Her adoption finalized on June 9, 2002.
School
Heather is a 11th grader at Cherry Creek High School in Greenwood Village, Colorado.
CCHS is a huge school.(There are as many kids in the high school as there were in the entire town Carrie grew up in.) There are more kids in Heather's special ed program than there were in Carrie's graduation class. Heather's school program is going very very well, and she is learining new skills every day. We are very uneasy about what happens after high school because the waiting lists for services are so long.
Interests
Heather has some very diverse interests. She is a car racing fiend. She loves car racing of any kind and any sort, Nascar, Formula One, Indy, etc. She gets very irritated if we interrupt her Sunday races.
She loves bowling and is on the Cherry Creek Special Olympics bowling team where she does very well. Last year she placed 2nd in the regional tournament for her division. She averages over 100 per game. She is much better than Carrie.
Heather's other spectator activity is the ballet. She loves the ballet and is enraptured by it. She loves taking Dance class in school. She may be the only CCHS grad who has 4 years of dance on her transcript.
Carrie learned that Heather loves space and airplanes when they were on vacation in Washington, D.C. in October 2003. Heather loved the Air and Space museum. She would pull Carrie and her aide's arms to go look at things she wanted to see. Heather had never done that before, and it was so cool to see. Heather was also very fond of the jewelry at the American History museum. Heather loves shiny things (just like her Auntie Tanis). Heather's bedroom is decorated in a space theme she picked out. Heather picked the paint color (midnight blue) and has planets hanging from her ceiling and glow-in-the-dark stars painted all around the room.
In the Summer of 2003 Heather had a summer job! She worked at the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition as a summer intern. Heather was the youngest intern, but she held her own. She made lots of friends, and really did an awesome job at work. She finally realized that when she communicates, people respond, and she communicated really well all summer.
Four years ago Heather took horseback riding lessons and LOVED the horses. She got to ride again last fall. Heather also loves amusement park rides, especially rides that go fast.
History
Heather's forever day is January 31, 2000. On that day she came to live with Carrie. Carrie's commitment to Heather was memorialized in July 2002 when Heather's adoption was finalized. Heather has progressed by leaps and bounds since she came to live with Carrie.
Heather has developmental disabilities. Her primary label is cri du chat syndrome. When she was young, Heather did not have enough early intervention services, so she has had a lot of catching up to do.
Heather uses a g-tube to eat. She has never been very fond of eating by mouth. However there are some exceptions. When we were in Orlando we discovered how much she loves to eat ice cream on a stick. Carrie got an ice cream bar and gave Heather a taste, and Heather at the whole thing. Heather now tastes lots of different food, eats ice cream like a champ, and loves to drink champagne and margaritas (don't ask).
Heather's communication skills are where she has made the most progress. She is consistently using sign and gestures to communicate. The problem is that sometimes she is subtle and the people around her don't realize she is communicating and they don't respond the way she thinks they should. As more and more people in her life are learning and using sign around her, she is using sign more and more to communicate. Heather is deaf and is legally blind. This impacts her ability to communicate as well.
Heather has shown time and time again that she is much smarter than she leads people to believe. Because she experienced so much neglect in her life, it is hard to find things to motivate her to accomplish more. The great news is that she is starting to express her wants and needs to the people around her which gives us an opportunity to respond appropriately, although not always the way she wants us to.