Speech

We were all sad when your Pre-School came to a close. Its been more than a month and you still ask to go back. We miss having Ms. Aubrie come to our house and play, and for all of her helpers. You always had a good time, and you were always sure to hang every single art project on the fridge immediately following each and every class. Some day you will love your summer break, but for now, we are missing your friends.

Right before you turned three you were tested again to see if you had made any improvements over the last six months and to see if you qualified for next years early intervention program for three year olds. I was a little nervous for you to be tested. I worried that you would not like the pressure, or the new speech pathologist, I worried that you would fall apart like I find myself doing in these kinds of situations. Fortunately, you didn't seem to realize it was a test at all. The moment you walked into that room you had all the Speech Pathologists laughing. You even were quick to joke around. When it was time to do colors they laid our several blocks. After asking you to find the red one, you started from the far right, and moving to the left, pointing at each block individually, you said " no, no no, no...there it is, I found it!" On a few occasions you got bored and decided playing under the table, it seemed like more fun. Your dad and I could not stop laughing.

During the tests I had very mixed emotions. I couldn't help but be so proud of how well you were doing, I was amazed with your confidence and impressed how well you did on various puzzle, you excelled on sections that we had never worked on before. You really are so bright. But at the same, I worried so much that you may not make it into the program, I worry that I might not be able to help catch you up developmentally on my own like I hope to. When we finally received the results it was amazing to see how far we have come. You had tested less than the 7th percentile in logic months ago, and now you were in the 80th. You fell completely within the normal range for 2 year olds.

After months and months of working with these specialists there are a few things that we have been able to identify, you are not lacking in problem solving or logic in any way. You can speak very well, in fact most people question why you are working with any specialist to begin with. You do however seem to missing one element of communication. Even though you can tell us anything and everything in some way or another, and even though you understand commands reasonably well, you don't seem to be able to understand questions, or understand that you are suppose to respond to them anyways. It is difficult for you to even give your name when asked. No one has quite been able to figure out this disconnect. In most situation you simply repeat the question being asked. I can't help but wonder what long term effects could have come from the trauma your little body may have suffered when you had surgery. Even though you physically are on track, could it have effected your speech or your ability to understand? Is there a coincidence that you seem to be nearly 5-6 months behind most kids your age and you underwent your surgery at nearly 5 months? I guess we will never know. For now we wait. We wait until September 13, 2013 to see if again another 6 months will have made any difference. If no difference has been made, you get to go back to pre-school, which you seem pretty excited about.

six months makes a big difference

Six months ago your vocab consisted of mostly farm animals. These days

• Frog is "tree frog"
• Whale is "humpback whale"
• Bird is "duck" "goose" "chicken" "rooster" "turkey" "macaw" "penguin" or "flamingo" depending on what you see
• Your favorite animals of course are pretty exotic "rhino" "hippo" "camel" "jaguar" "rhea" which is relative of the ostrich, and of course your most favorite of all the "elephant"

Six months ago you had 3-4  one worded commands. These days

• "need help"
• "more milk"
• "snack please"
• "Look, snowing!"

Six months ago you could not put words together to make a sentence. These days

• "uh oh, it broke, fix it!"
• "ok, we are coming"
• "I so happy"
• "its stuck, pull!"
• "need drink, thirsty"
• "help I falling"

My new favorites: any man with a beard is "Santa," anything with antlers is a "reindeer," all snow is a "snowman" and of course you fake sneeze just so that you can say "bless you"

12:12 12/12/12

Pretty special day, 12:12pm on 12/12/12. It will only happen once a century, and this century you spent that special moment in your first day of Preschool!

Miss Aubrie (SLP) was going to have you wait to the new year to come, but she decided that making a friend or two before the new year would be great. Funny thing about your first day of Preschool, you were the only child that wasn't scared to leave momma and daddy to go to class.

Your played with sand, read a book, played some games, made a very glittery craft in which you are super proud of and insisted goes on our fridge, and you even got to snack on some popcorn and hot cocoa! Needless to say, you didn't want to leave.

All the teachers were very impressed how much you would repeat, they say it is a good sign that you are interested in speaking. They were amazed all the animals you knew, and the sounds that go with each and every animal! But  they couldn't stop laughing when they asked everyone to clean up, without being directed you immediately began singing "clean up, clean up, everybody do your share" while picking up the chairs and stacking them. You made momma proud, even if i don't understand why you think the chairs were making the room messy!

The homework Miss Aubrie gave us to work on during the break was "Yes" and "No" questions. When I ask you questions like "is Gage a boy?" you like to respond "boy!" in stead of "yes!" Don't worry we will get there, you are catching on so quickly these days!

speech

If you can remember, at the beginning of summer most of your vocab consisted of animals, and the few commands you knew were only understood by momma or daddy. Dr. Schmidt wanted to check back at the end of summer, and if you were still not putting words together to make sentences he recommended we get a few things tested so we could get you caught up. When the end of summer came around, not enough progress was made, so the testing began.

You passed your Health exams with flying colors. Everyone seemed amazed that a kid so active and strong could have undergone a heart surgery. No surprise there!

Your Hearing exam was an interesting experience. I thought for sure you would be scared and unwilling to cooperate, but momma thought wrong. You sat on my lap in this little room cluttered with creepy animals and blinking lights. For what its worth, if I was two I would have been scared. Every so often little chirps went off in various corners of the room. You swung your head to and fro to figure out what animal could be making that noise. It was a a pretty fun game, so much so that you started jabbering all about the animals chirping and forgot to listen for the next one to make a noise that on one occasion I was asked to quiet you down. I love your enthusiasm, even if they didn't. After all was said and done you did amazing and have no hearing problems!

Later that week Jaque came to our house to do some tests. She worked on gross and fine motor skills. problem solving skills, social skills, responsive language, and expressive language. I bet you can guess on what you aced? You see, in order to qualify for Early Intervention, a program to help you get on track before you are three, you needed to test low enough in at least one area to be considered a severe delay. You aced all the motor skills and scored low enough in language to qualify for the program.

While you were being tested both mom and dad had a strange feeling of pride and fear. There was so much excitement for doing well on a section of the test and a also a fear that you may not qualify. Glad that it is all over, we couldn't be more excited that you get to work with Aubrie on your speech for the next couple of months.

the zoo

Only a week after leaving St. George and your cousin Sofi, you were able to re-unite and hang at the zoo. The zoo is something we do every summer, but this year was by far the best, after all, your vocab mainly consists of animals. You thoroughly enjoyed all the animals your recognized, and wanted nothing to do with the ones you didn't. To finish the day off you and Sofi rode the merry-go-round, and I hate to break it to you, your younger smaller girl cousin was WAY less scared than you!

interpreter wanted

You have a very extensive vocabulary, however, it almost solely consists of farm animals these days. I blame it on the fact that every book we seem to own takes place on a farm. If you weren't so good at making animal noises momma would sure struggle with the following words:

Free - means "fish"
Freo - means "sheep"
Frah - means "frog"
Fran - means "elephant"

See what I mean? Confusing. Can I tell you how long it took me to figure out that "god" actually meant "dog"? Dr. Schmidt says we need to work on putting your words together to make sentences. You can imagine how difficult this is when you only really know nouns and very very few verbs. Others would beg to differ, in fact your grandma is amazed how much you talk, she is convinced you are saying all sorts of things. However, we spend a lot of time wondering what it is you are saying. Sometimes I think it would be helpful to have an interpreter. For instance, the following words can be confusing out of context:

Mo - could mean "more" or "milk" depending on where you are standing
Doh - could be "door" or "down" depending on whether you are whining
Side - could be "inside" or "outside" depending on what side of the door you are on
Heh - could be "head" or "hurt" or sometimes both depending on what you ran into

As difficult as it can be to figure out what you are saying, we love that you are trying so hard to communicate.