Simultaneous Relief and Sadness

Oh my goodness is she talking. The other day Ava commented that, "Daddy put peanut butter on Ava's really really big pancake." That's a 10 word sentence coming from my little girl who's only 27 months old. It is such a relief. 6 months ago she had only three words in her vocabulary and couldn't imitate. Now she's talking in multi-word sentences. Obviously her language is fine.

However...

More and more, I can't understand her at all. I'm pretty good if she's talking about something immediate and in front of us (like Daddy and the pancakes). If I have some context and we can see and point at it I can understand most of what she has to say. But if she's talking about anything else I'm clueless. You often can't understand a word of what she's saying. If she starts rattling off her opinion of a tv show I haven't watched or telling me about something she did at her grandparents' house I often have no idea.

As you would expect for Childhood Apraxia of Speech, the longer the utterance, the less you can understand. It's killing me. She has so much to say. Her little mind wants to tell stories. She wants to engage in back and forth conversation. Instead she says something which I hear as, "Garble, garble, garble, garble, garble" and I just look at her and reply, "Uh huh sweetie." And then I try to change the subject. Sometimes I say, "I'm sorry, sweetheart, Mama didn't understand you. Can you tell me again?" But I only do that when I think I have some chance of getting it. Otherwise, she just gets frustrated at trying to tell me over and over unsuccessfully.

I know we're working as fast as we can. I know she's made phenomenal progress in a relatively short time. I know she can communicate so much more than before. But honestly, I feel that it is terribly unfair that she's worked so hard, she's finally got so much to say and is actually trying to say it, and she still can't communicate successfully much of the time with her loved ones. That sucks.

The Weekly Review: Week Fourteen

Best Blog Posts of the Week

• Linda at All and Sundry writes an online column at CafeMom. She wrote an incredibly brave and honest post that is definitely worth reading.
• To continue with the more serious theme of the best blog posts of the week, Rob Rummel-Hudson at Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords wrote a post this week about an outing his family had at the pool, the connection his daughter made with another child, and the feelings and observations he and his wife made during the experience.
• To finish with something lighter, at the end of this post, Swistle links to a site where people are posting really cool pictures. They take a picture from their past and go to that same location. Then they line the old picture up with the real life background and take a picture of the picture and write a caption. Hmm. That description doesn't make much sense, but the pictures are really touching somehow and you should definitely check out the site. It is Dear Photograph.

The Weekly Michael

"I'm going to get you with my slapula!" - Several hours earlier I had taken the toy spatula from the kids' play kitchen and was poking Ava with it making her laugh. Apparently Michael was unfamilar with the word spatula and given the context, interpreted the name of the device as Slap - u - la. My husband's parents were in town at the time and we all laughed long and hard. We made jokes about it for the rest of the visit.
• "Mama, are you making a baby?" - Wow, that one came as a complete surprise out of nowhere right before bed a few nights ago. Last week, Michael and I had a brief conversation about how you can't buy a baby at the store because mommies have to make babies in their tummies. In response to his question, I told him that, "No, Mama is not making a baby right now. Mama is probably done making babies. I have a Michael and an Ava and that is enough babies for Mama." At that point he promptly began begging, "Please Mama! Please make a baby." Ava jumped right on the bandwagon also chanting, "Please Mama, please!" Don't think I didn't hear my husband laughing as he eavesdropped from the other room.

The Weekly Ava

Ava is counting everything. She'll just randomly burst into sequences of numbers. They tend to go something like this: "one, two, three, five, seven, eight!" Eight seems to be her favorite ending number. So, we'll be climbing the stairs, or I'll be putting grapes on her plate, or there will be five (eight according to Ava) frogs in a book and the counting will begin. It's adorable. The teacher in me wants to correct the counting, but the Mama in me just smiles in adoration.

Project of the Week (or month, or year):

The card sets are definitely the obsession of the week. I do not use the word obsession lightly. I have been pretty much been spending every spare minute on them. I'm pretty sure that I will not be able to maintain this level of intensity for long, but I'm hoping to do about one new card set a week indefinitely. Let's do the math. There are 24 consonant sounds and theoretically I'd like to do an initial, medial, and final card set for each one where appropriate. (Not all of the consonant sounds appear in every word position so there will not be three for every one of those 24 consonant sounds). That's approximately 65 card sets. Hmm. Over a year's worth at one per week. We'll see.

Busy, Busy, Busy

This month we have had two sets of out-of-town visitors. My cousin (Michael's godmother) and her boyfriend came to visit from Louisiana first. It was an amazing visit full of our introduction to Erector sets, a trips to the zoo (the baby elephant was my favorite part), and lots of play.

After a brief, one weekend break, my husband's parents came into town. Their visit was perfect. The weather was beautiful. We went to the Botanical Gardens which has an absolutely amazing Children's Garden full of grand play structures, small creeks, and a water play area. We went to the Magic House which is a local children's museum.

Grandpa introduced Michael to the concept of building Erector Set cars purely for the purpose of an Erector Set Demolition Derby. Michael was also introduced to the fine art of "trash talk". The boast, "I'm going to crack your axles!" has been immortalized. After 20 minutes of each competetor designing and building their car, someone would play announcer and set up the battle scenerio complete with silly car names like "Roller-skate car" and "Derailer." After some trash talk, the furious 3 minute battle would commence and the competitors would bang their cars together until one fell apart. The car that managed to stay together would be declared the winner and then repairs would begin.

My husband has been rebuilding our old rotten deck. Demolition is complete. A contractor put in the new support posts and beams. We were able to salvage the old frame. In the evenings and weekends my husband is rebuilding the stairs and rail posts. Then he'll move on to the new floor boards and eventually the new rail. Of course, that means that the children and I are getting extended quality time together as I am watching them on my own during the evenings and weekends in addition to during the day. But the deck will be beautiful someday when it is done.

I've also been working on restarting structured speech therapy at home with Ava. It is going well, but I've been frustrated with the lack of materials that fit my needs perfectly. So in my spare time I've been making new card sets. That has pretty much been sucking up every last bit of available time.

And now you're caught up.