eye gaze evaluation

For a few years now, we've gloated about Leah's eyes. Not only are the beautiful, bright and blue, but they truly are the way Leah speaks to the world. I've been so happy to have a way to enable her to at least say yes or no or make some decisions for herself.

And this week, we put a lot of pressure on those beautiful blues. 

Leah had an eye gaze evaluation. Sounds so official - because it was. A wonderful woman came to our home to watch our little Leah in action. She played games, made choices and sang songs with her eyes. And then, on two separate occasions, test drove two different eye gaze computers. 

If you haven't ever seen an eye gaze computer in person, you are missing out. The technology itself is amazing {and comes with a price tag to equal its amazing-ness}, but they are incredible in a way that is completely indescribable when that simple computer opens up a whole new world of communication to someone who has never had that kind of freedom of expression. 

I was nervous to say the least. What if Leah was having a bad day? What if she couldn't get the computer to calibrate to her eyes? What if she was too tired? What if she couldn't quite figure it out? What if the evaluators thought an eye gaze computer just wasn't the solution for her? What if, what if, what if. 

Well, all those worries were for naught because Leah blew their minds. The first day she was Wild with a capital W. The girl would not sit still. But she still figured out a way to get her little body over to the computer to make her choices and that was pretty impressive! The second day she was tired, tired, tired. So she sat, which was good. It took a minute to calibrate, but she was going strong long after we asked her to perform. She sat and colored a picture with her eyes {choosing colors and icons to add to her blank computer screen canvas} as I chatted away with the adults. 

For now, we wait for the actual written evaluation, but we are all pretty certain she'll get a trial - a time to test out hopefully two different computers to see which suits her best. There are pros and cons to each, but either way, we feel blessed to get this ball rolling and to hopefully hear, for the first time ever, what our little Leah has to say with those beautiful blues.