The Weekly Review: Week Five

Blog Post I Appreciated Most:

You know how you sometimes you like hearing about someone else's misery because it makes you feel like you have some company? Well, Rude Cactus posted about the illnesses his family has experienced over the last month and although he has all of my sympathy, it makes me feel better about the fact that our household hasn't gone longer than a week without someone (or multiple someones) being ill for the past four months.

Apraxia Article of the Week:

This is a nicely done general introduction page about Childhood Apraxia of Speech. Note: It uses the out of date terminology "Developmental Apraxia of Speech" rather than using "Childhood Apraxia of Speech" which is now the preferred terminology.

Sibling Interaction of the Week:

This week Michael has started calling Ava by both her first and middle name. I tend to do that when I'm fussing at the children and it was pretty funny to hear Michael do it when he was fussing at his sister. Soon he started using both names every time he called her. Interestingly, it has apparently taught Ava her middle name. When a friend of mine asked Ava her name, she responded with both.

Quote of the Week from Michael:

Yesterday morning I was in a hurry to get the children out the door and to school so I gently asked Michael if he wanted another mini-muffin hoping to focus him on finishing his breakfast instead of playing. He replied in an annoyed tone of voice I completely recognized as my own, "I'm too busy working on my crane truck and I can't work with a muffin in my mouth!" I ended up letting him finish his crane truck and let him take a muffin in the car.

Ava's Song of the Week:

At the dinner table a couple of nights ago Ava started singing The Isty Bitsy Spider complete with hand motions and with an extra lyric about the moon going down thrown in for good measure. I almost wish I hadn't banned all cell phones from the table at meals because we didn't have a camera handy to catch it on video.

Project of the Week:

This week I'm working on adding a new section to my blog. I'm revising my reference posts and putting them all in one place so they can be accessed easily. It's a big project and I'm just taking it one bit at a time, but I think it will be a great collection of articles when I'm done. Hopefully people will find them to be useful. This is where you can find the ones I've finished so far.

The Weekly Review: Week Four

Viral Video of the Week: At least three of my "friends" posted a link to this video on facebook. There were news articles about it. I'm sure you've probably already seen it. This is a youtube video a mother posted of her 17 month old twin boys having a babbling conversation in the kitchen. Everyone loves this video. It's adorable. It makes people laugh. My reaction was different. It made me sad and jealous and I'm proud of neither emotion. It just really emphasized for me that I never had that in my household with either of my babies. They did not babble normally (ok, at all really). It wasn't until I saw this video that I realized exactly what I'd missed out on.

Sibling Moment of the Week There are so many little conversations to choose from. Yesterday we came in from playing outside and Michael told Ava, rather bossily, to take her shoes off. She said, "O-tay Mai-Mai," and proceeded to take her shoes off. It was cute.

Michael’s Surprise Accomplishment of the Week: I picked Michael up from school and gathered the art projects they were sending home. There was a page that was pretty much all orange scribbles (a map he tells me). In the upper left hand corner of the page he had written his name. It wasn't perfect, by any means. I could recognize the first two letters, and the last one, and the ones in between were just scribbles, but it was instantly recognizable. He had done it completely on his own. His teachers hadn't helped him. I haven't been working with him on writing his name. It just came out of nowhere. I was very impressed.

Ava’s Song of the Week: Ava will cradle a baby squinkie in her hand and sing Rock-A-Bye Baby to it. Well, she sings something like, "Ra a baba" over and over, but still. It's adorable.

Project of the Week: Our library system will let you log in online and place books on hold. They send you an email when the books are ready at your local branch. Then all you have to do is drive there, pick them up off the shelf, and check them out. I spent an hour choosing board books for Ava and juvenile fiction for Michael. I threw in a couple of CDs (Raffi and Tom Chapin) and DVDs (Handy Manny) for fun. Today I picked them up. New books and entertainment for free. I'm going to try to do it once a week. Kudos to our county library system.

The Weekly Review: Week Three

Blog Post I Enjoyed Most: Robert Rummel-Hudson is a father of a daughter with polymicrogyria (a rare neurological disorder) which effects speech in addition to many other things. He has written a book about his journey with his daughter, Schuyler. He also writes a blog and I particularly enjoyed his most recent post. This particular post has little to do with Schuyler but much to do with frustration. I also enjoyed the Office Space reference.

Interesting Apraxia Article: Here is an article I found on the Apraxia-Kids website about trying to get insurance coverage. I’m just starting to seriously research this topic so I’m sharing one of my first finds. I intend to do a full post on this when I get a little further in the process.

Ava’s new favorite phrase: I love this one. This week she’s started saying, “O-tay (okay) Mama.” I’ll say, “Let’s go put your shoes on.” and she’ll reply, “O-tay Mama.” It really is adorable. She says it in the cutest way and it’s a nice contrast from last week’s constant “no.” We still hear lots of “no,” but at least we’re hearing some agreeableness too.

Ava's second new favorite phrase: I don't love this one quite as much. "Na (not) Dada. Mama." This is repeated several times in urgent succession any time my husband attempts to help with Ava's care. I have mentioned the Mama stage she's going through?

Michael's Phrase of the Week: "Daddy, will you come play with me?" This request has been constant this week whenever my husband is home. I'll admit to a little bit of quiet amusement every time I hear it. Ava has been going through that Mama phase. I enjoy seeing the tables turned a little with Michael.

Favorite Project of the Week: My favorite this week was definitely the eye dropper art with the kids. It was a lot of fun.

The Weekly Review: Week Two

Blog Post I Enjoyed Most: I really liked this post on Balancing Everything. I’m a teacher and an SLP so education themed posts always interest me. I’m also fascinated by the idea of homeschooling. I don’t think I could do it, but I admire the people who do it well. This is a post by a mom who homeschools four children. She describes the activities they did during a week of science exploration. She includes great pictures of some of their projects.

Interesting Apraxia Article: Speech and Language Development in Infants and Young Children by Caroline Bowen. This isn’t actually an article about apraxia. It’s an article about speech and language development. You have to know what is typical before you can decide how worried you need to be.

Sibling Moment of the Week You know the kind of awkward hug you give an ex-boyfriend when you encounter them on the street and you aren’t even sure that’s the appropriate way of greeting them? Well, I missed the very beginning of the interaction, but I walked in on Ava and Michael giving each other a very awkward hug. Then they just kind of stood there for a second. So, I said something to the effect of, “Oh, are you guys wrestling? How fun!” They immediately started giggling and kind of pushing against each other. Michael promptly pushed Ava over and fell right on top of her. They both busted out laughing and scrambled back to their feet with Ava pleading, “more, more.” So they go through the awkward hug process again, and again Michael topples Ava right over landing on top of her. Much laughter ensued. This went on several rounds until the game was ended by Michael’s head connecting with Ava’s check hard enough to leave a bruise. So, it didn’t end well but it was still a beautiful five minutes. Those moments when my children are playing with each other (not both playing with me, but truly playing with each other) captivate me. I love watching them bond as siblings.

Michael’s Question: We were reading Mouse Soup at bedtime. Michael knows his letters and a lot of sound correspondences, so I’m doing a little pre-reading skills work during our reading time. For example, I’ll point to each word of the title as I read it. Then I’ll ask, “Which word is mouse?” Then I pointed to the “m” and said mmmm, the “ou” and said ow, and the “s” and said sssss. I just kind of skipped the “e” since I figured that explanation was a bit too complex for now. He never misses anything though and interrupted the beginning of the story to ask, “Mama, why is that E there at the end of mouse?” To be honest, I didn’t quite know how to answer him. I said something about how sometimes “they” add a silent e to the ends of words even though it really doesn’t make much sense. I was so proud that he thought to ask the question though.

Ava’s new favorite word: No. (and not) She loves using it in the typical toddler defiant fashion. She’s also using it in a large percentage of her sentences. She’s obviously exploring the concept and testing it out. So, she’ll say something like, “Ava pink shoes. No mama pink shoes.” Or, she’ll say, “Mama no tickle.” Now imagine a negative attached to most of our conversations and you get the idea.

Birthday of the Week: Happy birthday to my wonderful husband. It was the first year the children could understand and participate in celebrating the birthday of one of their parents. They had a great time blowing up balloons and “helping” me put the letters on the cake. We were getting ready to surprise Daddy when he came home from work, but the kids managed to let the surprise slip before he got around the corner to where he could see the kitchen table. It didn’t matter though. He loved it anyway.

The Weekly Review: Week One

Blog Post I Enjoyed Most:  I loved this post by Swistle.  Technically, I’m cheating here because this post is over a week old, but I didn’t have a weekly review last week so I figure I get a pass on posting this one late.  I laughed out loud when reading this post.  Then I overheard my husband laughing out loud when I made him read it.  It’s such a human mistake and Swistle does a great job of telling the story. 

Therapy product I would buy if I weren’t on a budget:  Word Flips.  This is a great therapy product for apraxia.  Ms. J. loaned it to us to use for our homework for the current two weeks.  It’s great for apraxia, because you can work on the words individually, or mix them up to add complexity if your little one is ready for that.  The words are separated into sections by place of articulation.  You can combine individual words to make two syllable words or phrases (sew and pea make soapy). 

Interesting Apraxia Article:  Apraxia: Speech Therapy in Toddlers and Young Children by Sharon Gretz, M.Ed.   This is a nice article about apraxia diagnosis and therapy with very young children. 

Michael’s Mystery Question:  Did he really eat a blue crayon at school as his teacher claims?  Her evidence:  blue mouth surrounded by crayon crumbs and missing crayon.  He denies it, but the evidence seems pretty conclusive.  He’s never, not once, tried to eat a crayon at home.  In fact, he pretty much never eats anything that isn’t food.  So, who knows?  Maybe another child talked him into it?

Ava’s new favorite word:  Hide.  Whenever she can’t find something, she pauses and then says that it is hiding.  So I ask her to find her shoes, and instead of looking for them she’ll just look at me and say, “Shoe hide.”  So many things have been hiding this week.  It’s been pretty cute actually.

Something I’m proud of:  Coming up with the idea for Ava’s pillows and actually following the project all the way through.  I think they’re adorable and Ava loves the pink one (just because it’s pink).  She’s given the other one to Michael and so far they’ve had at least one pillow fight.  Watching them learn to play together is a joy.

To give credit where credit is due, I was inspired to do a weekly review by the one posted every Friday morning on this blog. (Hmm.  His webpage actually seems to be down at the moment, but it's the first time in the year or so I've been reading him that it's been down so I'm assuming it is temporary.)