Two Pictures

These two pictures show two sides of Janey, two very different sides that co-exist every day. One is her sitting on a bench at school waiting for "Mr. Ken", her ABA therapist. She likes him very much, as she does almost everyone at school, and she likes the mornings when we get there a little early and we can peek into the before-school program and watch the kids play as we wait for him. The other picture shows her before school this morning, as I was trying to get her going to get in the car. It's her serious face, the stoic look. When she is happy, it shows all over. When she's sad (and someday I should take a picture of her crying, but it just seems mean to be taking pictures at a time like that), she is very, very sad. But often, instead of being a little happy or a little sad, she is inward looking, stoic, hard to read. When she looks as she does in that picture, she doesn't talk often. She talks more at the emotional extremes. I don't know if that's her processing time---the time she uses to figure out the other times. I wonder if that's a state I should try to make there be less of, as I do with the crying, but I do think she needs it. I wish she had more times when she is alert and talking but not over the top excited or happy, but I don't know quite how to evoke that. For now, I'm just trying to figure it all out.