Extended Family

I grew up in New Orleans, LA. My mom is the oldest of five siblings all of whom lived within about 30 minutes driving distance of each other. Every weekend all the aunts, uncles, cousins, and assorted family friends would gather at my grandparents house to watch the Saints play football and eat my Pa-pa's Cajun cooking. It was boisterous, crowded, and loud but we were family. It was fun. To this day we are all close even though we are significantly more spread out around the country. My closeness with my extended family is a big part of who I am as a person and of the values I hold as important.

I am blessed to live only about five minutes away from my parents. We have them over for dinner once a week, and one of the kids spends the night at their house every weekend. It's wonderful for my children to have such a close relationship with their grandparents. It is a gift to the children and to my parents and watching those relationships develop and deepen is incredibly important to me.

It makes me sad though, that my children rarely get to experience the huge extended family gathering that I grew up with on a weekly basis. They don't know what it is like to be in a room crowded with family all talking at once. They haven't had the opportunity to become close to our extended relatives simply due to distance.

We prioritize visits. Many of my Louisiana relatives travel to us once a year and we go to them once a year as well. As the children get a little older, they remember those visits and begin to anticipate the next one. We also visit my dad's family in Arkansas once a year and my husband's family in Oklahoma once a year. My husband's parents are wonderful and come to us several times a year. They're here for both kids' birthdays and often for at least one bonus visit.

So we try to find different ways to stay close to family. And it works. But if I could only convince everyone I love to move into my neighborhood - that would be perfect. Weekend gatherings would be so much fun.

Complacency and Marathons

When I finally accepted that I needed to get help for Ava, she tested so low, and the label Childhood Apraxia of Speech was spoken out loud it had a huge, profound impact on me. I was very depressed. I had difficulty thinking about anything else. My mind constantly circled around questions that simply cannot be answered right now about how much progress Ava will make and what will the impact of all of this have on her childhood and future.

After a few weeks I passed through the "this has rocked my world and not in a good way" stage and into a more productive stage. There was a flurry of research, self-education, setting up appointments, starting therapy, getting hearing checked, surgery for PE tubes, learning and using sign language, making and setting up communication boards, IFSP meetings, considering and trying nutritional supplements, and blogging about all of the above. And, it was all worth it. We saw changes in Ava's ability to communicate - dramatic and celebrated changes.

I began to breathe a sigh of relief. Yes, the disorder is still there, but it is responding to treatment. I relaxed. I gave myself permission to stop pushing Ava so much at home. To be honest, she didn't respond well when I tried to sit her down at home and do structured therapy with her myself and so I stopped even trying. I switched to a more indirect method of working with her through books and songs and correcting the many utterances we get each day as a natural part of our daily life. So much positive change had taken place so quickly that I began to think that we were "okay." Perhaps we were lucky enough that Ava's apraxia was so mild that we could get her "caught up" in a 1-2 year time frame rather than a much more extended time frame.

Then, our first standardized articulation test was a bit of a reality check and I realized how she is still very far behind her same-age peers. I had become a bit complacent. The progress Ava had already made was such a relief that I forgot that there is still a long way to go. I haven't quite decided what to do about that yet, but over the next couple of weeks I'm going to be thinking about ways I can focus on Ava's speech more here at home again. I'd like to build in some speech time every day in a way that hopefully she and I can both enjoy. I need to remember that this journey is something of a marathon and that I cannot just simply hope that we've come far enough that the rest will magically take care of itself.

Memorial Day, Birthday, Visits

I hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day. It was the last day of our family visit. We had a great visit. It was a nice balance of activity (zoo, restaurants, outdoor play) and just hanging out at the house (lots of erector set building, good conversation, and general horseplay with the children). Ava joined in the conversations with everyone else. It was really the first time we've had houseguests since Ava's started talking so much. She did a pretty good job of communicating. Most of the time, our guests were able to figure out what she was trying to say. I took comfort from that.

We spent some time outside in the sprinkler. Traditionally, my children are extremely suspicious of sprinklers and treat them with great caution. Today, we seemed to break through and the kids started to run through the sprinkler and laugh and giggle with glee. I loved watching them play. As I looked back at the pictures I realized how similar in size the kids look right now. I understand why people occasionally ask us if they are twins. There were many things that were difficult about having children 15 months apart, but it is starting to pay off now. I love watching them play together and talk together more and more as peers.

(Yes, Michael does indeed have his swim pants on backwards. He did that after a trip to the bathroom. When we pointed it out to him he said, "I like them that way." We just let it go. It gives the pictures that special, unique touch.)

Yesterday was also my birthday. We didn't do anything spectacular to celebrate, but my husband made sure my day was special in little ways that all added up. First, he let me sleep in. Several times during the day he took care of things (lunch, putting the kids down for nap) letting me have a few quiet moments to myself. Those things sound little, but around here they are much appreciated. It was a nice, quiet birthday.