As we celebrate our 8th Thanksgiving with Melody, we can not help but reflect on what God has done in her life. There is a song that we sing each Thanksgiving that says, “Count your many blessings, name them one by one, count your many blessings, see what God has done.” If we were to “name them one by one” we would surely fill a book with all that God has done in and through her life. I certainly will not claim it has been easy. As I have noted before, easy is not our goal. Love is. Often times the greatest blessings and the wonderful works of God stem from our greatest trials.
As we contemplate the blessings, one that we can not overlook is Melody’s intelligence. She continues to love learning, and she is demonstrating her understanding and knowledge consistently. Since the last update we have tested her on her sentences again. She always picks the right one. We are delighted that she answers correctly so consistently.
One day her sister held up a sentence that started with the word Daddy. Her sister was getting the sentences organized and before she even said a word Melody looked at the sentence and said, “Da Da”. Think about that one. Not only did she read the sentence and understand what it said, she processed the information and spoke it. She is amazing. Her shirt says, “Little Miss Awesome”. If the shoe fits…🙂
Melody is still quite motivated by her pink Porsche. She typically army crawls to it several times a day for a ride. When the weather is nice, she sometimes gets to ride outside. She loves that!
Melody has learned her music notes beautifully. Any time we test her on notes she gets it right 100% of the time (see video at the bottom of this post). She is learning her composers also. If we show her pictures of two different composers and ask her which one is Vivaldi, for example, she can tell us the right one. She listens to classical music and has definite preferences. She loves Chopin, but she does not like Bach!
Since music is vitally important to her, and she appears to know how to read notes, we decided to let her try her hand at it. Her hands are too little to play piano, so we bought her a xylophone. The first day we had it, she crawled over to it, sat up, and started playing on it. Some day if you hear about a world-renown xylophone player, you might want to check and see if it is Melody.🙂
Melody is one cuddly little girl who is so lovable!
Trisomy 18 babies are super sweet, cuddly, and lovable indeed. In light of how precious their lives are, we have created a new resource for those who find out they have a positive screening test for Trisomy 18 for their baby in the womb. You can view that page here. I encourage you to read it even if you are not in that situation. Trust me, there is little to no hope offered when a mom receives a positive screening test. It can be a very dark and devastating time for many parents. You may be the one who can offer hope to someone someday by sharing Melody’s story.
Note: We have updated several things on Melody’s site. If you have had trouble subscribing to her updates, you should be able to get that to work now. Her videos have been updated so you can play them, and the “contact me” should work now.
1 Thesselonians 5:18,
In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Comments 16
As I count my many blessings the Thenhaus Family is one!! Was just sharing on Thanksgiving day with a Mom who has an 8 year old daughter with CP about Melody and her progress. In both cases each daughter is far exceeding anything that the medical community said was possible. In both cases these precious girls have families that love, encourage and most of all have a deep abiding faith in the One Who fearfully and wonderfully made each life for His glory and purposes. Love,
As always Melody and her story has lifted my day. Just what I need during a sad time in my life. Blessings to Melody and all of you!
Happiest Thanksgiving, to Melody and family!!
Thank you for the update!
Praying for a blessed Christmas season….
May our Savior’s birth bring more light unto the world of today!
Hugs and blessings,
You read Da Da Melody!!!!!!! That is so awesome!!!!! My heart jumped for joy when I read that!!!! You are an amazing testimony for God and for saving babies Melody!!! We love you!! Keep up all the great work!!!
Love,
The Sullenbergers
Melody! You are such a joy and a delight❤. You look great in your pink Porsche!
NOTHING but a joy and a blessing. It fills my heart to overflowing to read if the Lord’s work in your precious family. Thank you for investing in the rest of us through your sharing. May our Father be praised❣️
Beautiful Stories about our sweet Melody. You all have so much for which to be Thankful and THANK YOU for sharing these joys with us.
Thank you for the update on Melody’s adventures. What a talented, sweet little girl! The posts are so uplifting. I always look forward to receiving them. Thank You!!!
I loved everything about this….except we should keep working on Bach!
Thank you so much for sharing her amazing accomplishments and all of your creative energy in teaching her. With gratitude. Be safe and well.
My heart swells with joy as often as I ponder the testimony of love your family walks in. Melody’s story is truly an inspiration, and it’s clear Little Miss Awesome is surrounded by a pretty A.W.E.S.O.M.E. T.E.A.M……!
Dear Family,
We count everyone of you a very special blessing from our LORD every day. Melody’s extraordinary accomplishments are the result of the efforts each of you put into each day on her behalf: that includes the countless flash cards and the special sentence cards you make, the special books you make for her to read, the exercises several times a day, the meals prepared and fed to her, her daily grooming needs met, and the showering her with endless LOVE and encouragement. The result is that Melody is one amazing little girl because she has a very amazing Mom, Dad, Sisters and Brother. So many blessings to be thankful for.
Love,
Proud parents and grandparents
I feel blessed to have known Melody’s story from very early on thanks to Dr. Hyman’s love and eloquence in telling it. I follow the blog posts religiously and they always give me goosebumps. The work you do for Melody and for all parents who read and follow Melody’s story is inspiring and so, so important. Thank you, and may you all have a blessed Christmas.
So lovely to see her progressing.
Thank you for the pictures
God Bless you all
Linda Dorough
Each and every blog brings us so many smiles. Melody and the entire family are so amazing!
Every life is a journey, but this one is exceptional! I can’t wait to hear what Melody tells us about how she has experienced all of this HERSELF. Just like Temple Grandin has taught us so much about autism, Melody will explain Trisomy 18! And Melody, Bach ism’t my favorite either. Happy holidays to everyone!
Once again, thank you so much for the post with Melody playing the xylophone. She is amazing and cute as can be.