Читать книгу Beneath Montana Skies - Mia Ross - Страница 16

“That drawing of Teddy looks great, Allie,” Morgan approved, patting her budding nature artist lightly on the shoulder. Her daughter still wasn’t fond of too much physical contact, but with the family exercising a lot of patience and gentle persistence, she was getting better at accepting it from people she knew well. Morgan hated forcing the gestures on her, but the occupational therapist had assured them that tolerating some tactile interaction was an important part of Allie learning how to function in the world outside her own home. And since the goal was to encourage her to be as independent as possible, they all kept doing it.

“Thank you,” her shy girl replied, adding a rare smile. “I think he had fun.”

As rewarding as the smile had been, her two-stage response made Morgan’s heart swell with pride. Bolstered by a fabulous teaching team in her special-needs classroom and plenty of good, old-fashioned prayer, Allie had come so far in the past year. While Morgan knew there was a lifetime of challenges ahead for her beautiful daughter, moments like this one gave her hope for the future.

And then, Allie surprised her again. Looking across the table at her twin, she said, “Hannah helped me with math. I get it now.”

Glancing up from her workbook, Hannah beamed. “That’s really nice, but you did the hard part. You’re way better at numbers than you think you are.”

Allie didn’t respond to that, but a faint dimple showed in her cheek as she fished around in the multicolored box of artist’s pencils and crayons Jessie had given her last Christmas. Morgan wanted to crush them both in a grateful Mom hug but out of respect for Allie, she settled for dropping a quick kiss on top of each curly ponytail. “When you girls are done, go up and brush your teeth and get into your jammies. Then we’ll cuddle in my room and watch your princess spy show until bedtime. Okay?”