Little Conversations

This afternoon I picked Peanut up from preschool (he goes twice a week from 9-12) and he came running up to me and hugged me.  Normally he says "mama home!" because those are the words that he has for "Yay, mama is here" or "Yay, mama came back just like she said she would".  But today he hugged my legs and said "Hi mama.  Baby nap today?"  I blinked a few times to adjust from what I had expected him to say and replied to him that yes, the baby had napped for me today.  Then he said "Good, that's good"

This was stunning to me.  He must have overheard me telling people that today was my coveted day when the boys were both at school and I didn't have to babysit anyone else's child from the preschool so I was hoping that the baby would take a long nap all morning to give me time to get things done.   He processed all of that and 3 hours later had words to ask me the question he wanted to ask me.  Oh and then he threw around all these new words in random order so I wasn't sure what point he was trying to make but obviously he had something to say.

Needless to say, it was a good talk.  I love being able to have good talk's with my Peanut.

I hate Apraxia

I don't use the "hate" word lightly.  But it is true, I hate apraxia.  It steals from my child and I hate it.  This week's speech therapy session went ok, but not great.  Peanut was a bit all over the place and hard to settle down to really work on his talking.  He flitted from one game to the next and if we tried to get him to work on words he didn't want to say he would just abandon the game and move onto something else.  But the reason that I just hate apraxia is having to watch him struggle.  We were playing a game and his slp asked him to say "take it" and he couldn't say it.  He kepts saying "tk it".  But the she asked him to say "take" and he said "take" perfectly but when paired with a simple word like "it" he loses the word.  This is because he has motor planned "take" but he hasn't motor planned "take it".  This is par for the course these days.  Peanut's vocabulary is constantly expanding but his sentence structures revolve around his motor planning.  So he will say "Sit you Mama now?" meaning "Can I sit with you now Mama?"  But if I ask him to say "Sit with you" just adding that "with" completely disintegrates his ability to motor plan the words he does know and he can't say the sentence.  I know that he is doing great and I know that he is just amazing in all that he has overcome but I hate what apraxia steals from him.

So needless to say we are still working on Who, What and Where but we are also trying to get the articles and prepositions into his sentences and into his motor-planning.  It is harder these days because if he doesn't want to say something he just skips that word that I have asked him to say and moves on.  We will prevail and I can't wait to say that Peanut is Apraxia resolved....we will get there.

2011 Northern Virginia Walk for Apraxia

These people are all heroes to our family.  We had a team of 23 people walk in the Northern Virginia Apraxia walk today and a bunch more who walked with us in spirit but couldn't actually make it this morning.  It was chaos and fun and exhausting and exhilarating.  The kids ran and walked and moved from stroller to wagon to stroller again.  We didn't walk the full 4.8 miles around the lake because we kind of thought that was quite a distance to tackle when 13 of our 23 team members where children and all under the age of 7.  Our team raised almost $400 for CASANA!  You are all Logan's Heroes today and forever.  Thank you all for the support and love that you showed our family.

And this guy, well he is the world's best biggest brother.  Peanut doesn't know it yet, but he has a protector, a friend and a teacher in his big brother.  Little Man ran and ran and ran and played and played with his friends and cousins while on the walk.  He was a champ about it not being all about him for a few hours and other than a brief fight over not getting to wear fancy clothes today he was an angel.

My personal hero is this sweet guy.  He walked and ran more than he rode in a stroller and was excited to finally be at his walk.  I don't know if he knew we were all there walking for him, but he knew that he was surrounded by people who love him.  He has so many words and has worked hard for each and every one of them.  He has the sweetest voice and an infectious smile.  Everyone that meets him walks away with a smile on their face because he is so genuine in his love for life.  

Speech Therapy - 9/12

Peanut was very energetic in his speech therapy session today which does not always lend itself to a productive session.  He was all over the place but his SLP is wonderful and just ran with him.  He would say words incorrectly but fix them easily and allowed his SLP to prompt him when he needed some extra help.  She worked on "come" and "money" and a lot of prepositional work like "on top" and "in basket" using our laundry basket and the Hi Ho Cherrio game.  Like I said, was all over so we didn't stick to one task for more than 5 or 10 minutes.  She is still amazed by the difference in his talking and how clear his words are now.

Sentences - he does much better with sentences that he structures on his own.  When asked to say a sentence he will pick out the words he wants to say or can say easily and leave the rest behind.  If we push him to say all 3 or 4 words it usually messes with a word that he does say.  The pacing card is still helping with this but I have to get better about not letting him slide with a "go park now" and need to force the "go to park now".  I have let it slide because when you just add that little bitty "it" it turns a perfectly said sentence into "go to tark tow".  But practice makes perfect.

This was the last session that Peanut's big brother will be here for since school starts tomorrow.  This is a huge relief as it is a big distraction for him when his big brother is doing something in another room like watching a movie.

I am going to continue to work on the "what", "who" and "why" and make him say more of the sentence than he chooses.  I am looking forward to a less complicated and less energetic session next week.  I think it will involve more playdough play since that is some of his favorite stuff to do.  (good thing Santa knows this and will be delivering an ice cream making playdough maker thingy)

Speech Therapy - 9/5

Peanut continues to make astounding leaps and bounds in his speech. He is fixing his words well using mostly visual cues and his pacing card to help clarify words and sentences. He is delighted in how much more people understand him and so he spends a lot of his time telling and retelling stories.

Things we are working on this week:

-keeping prepositions in place. Peanut tends to drop the prepositions in a sentence knowing that he can be understood with nouns and verbs. We are using his pacing card to get those prepositions back in his sentences.

-who, what, where, why. Peanut continues to use voice inflection and body language to ask questions. We are working on using the words "what" and "where" and "why" because they are generic words that can be used often and will help him while in his school environment.

- getting the "t" sound and hard "c" sound at the beginning of the word. Table is bable and come is pronounced dumb. He can say it with the pacing card or if we break it down to two words so just giving him as much practice as we can so that his muscle memory will kick in.

We only have one more speech therapy session before school starts. This will bring some relief because I won't have to deflect and defend our precious speech time from an over-eager talking big brother but it also brings some anxiety about how Peanut will be in the classroom without me to interpret for him. We are hoping he continues to speak up and doesn't revert to silence in a new environment. Which ever way it goes, we will be there for our little hero.

Speech Therapy - 8/29

SLP -"Peanut, what do you want to do? Do you want to go to the park or go eat?"

Peanut - "Eat lunch!"

This is such a good example of how Peanut is changing. He is making two word sentences with words that aren't being optioned for him. And sometimes he will even throw a 3rd word in there just to impress us. It used to be that he would only put two words together that he was repeating directly after optioned but now he is taking the choices and words he hears and pulling out words that he knows to make his own statements. It is so awesome.

He sang Itsy Bitsy Spider and Twinkle Twinkle for his SLP and she was so impressed. They just played and talked for the hour and he was attentive and cooperative even though he is snotty today. His mood and concentration were where he needed to be to have a productive session.

We are still working with the pacing card and at the suggestion of the SLP I am going to see if I can make a leather bracelet that has three or four pacing squares on it so that he can use it whenever he needs it even if we don't have the card around. It really helps him to slow down his words and get them all out and clear. "iwannnannana" becomes " I want nana (banana)". The more he uses it, the better he gets.

His SLP continues to be impressed with the changes that have come over him in the last 3 weeks while on the HFCS-free diet and fish-oil supplements. I asked her if she really thought it was a big difference because I worry about the placebo affect and she pointed out that normally when he would make progress in one area, he would backtrack in another. He might get 4 new words but then lose 2 of the words he already had. This has been a different type of progress where it has been giant leaps forward without any sign of the backsliding we are used to.

We are working on putting together a word-book for him to use at school for people who aren't used to his pronunciations. We want him to be able to communicate well and without frustration as much as possible so giving him pictures to point to if people don't understand is one option for him. We will just have to wait and see if he needs it and uses it.

Pacing Card

We have started to try something new and it is exciting to be able to work with Peanut successfully on sentences instead of just words. When I ask him to say "Go to school" he will usually reply " Doe school" but yesterday he started saying "Go" with the hard g really well so I tried the sentence again and got "Go school". Then I pulled out the pacing card and pointed a black square for each word. "Go...To...School". Then tries it and points to a square for each word. As he does this he gets each word even if there is a pause between words. We did this for as long as he was interested. About 20 minutes later I asked him to say "Go to school" without the pacing card and he replied easily "Go to school". I only got all 3 words one time but I got it!! Success!

Here is what our pacing card looks like. Who knew that something so simple would be able to help him.