The Weekly Review: Week Sixteen

Best Blog Posts of the Week

• All and Sundry. Again. You should just start reading her blog yourself. First there are pictures of squirrels. I think squirrels are really cute. And then there are bonus pictures of a duck. On a roof. I kid you not. But it is her writing in between all the pictures that makes the post hilarious and ties it all together.
• Swistle writes a post that is short, but oh so true. Well, all true except at my house some of the messes are mine.

Weekly Wish Me Luck

Tomorrow morning we are going to depart on a road trip to Arkansas to visit my soon to be 80 year old grandmother for her birthday and the rest of the AR relatives for the 4th of July. Any suggestions for how to entertain a two and three year old for 7-9 hours trapped in a moving vehicle? And then keep them happy for three nights and two days in someone else's house. Followed by more happy during the return 7-9 hour trip home. Right now we're planning on making it up as we go along. That never ends well. So, wish me luck.

The Weekly Michael

We have a semi-regular playdate with my friend and her four year old daughter. Until recently, Michael has mostly done his own thing. They simply were not interested in the same things. This week they disappeared upstairs to his bedroom. Half an hour later, I noticed they were still missing and wondered what could possibly be keeping them occupied. I turned on the video monitor and all three children were in his bed filled with toys just happily playing and talking. 15 minutes after that they all came tromping downstairs asking for snacks for their "sleepover". By the time I finally halted the completely magical independent play it was an hour past their usual naptime. Altogether they had played by themselves in his room for an hour and a half. Turns out the "sleepover" involved snacks, blankets, pillows, flashlights, toys, and three children all stuffed in the bottom of his closet.

Ava's Cuteness of the Week:

My husband shared this one with me. He was singing that little children's song, "One, two, three, four, five. I thought I caught a fish alive." to Ava. Instead of saying "fish" though he replaced it with "Ava". After he sang the line about throwing her back again Ava interrupted him and said, "No, no Daddy. Ava hair get all wet."

Projects of the Week:

• I am continuing to work on free speech therapy articulation cards. Two more sets will be posted this weekend: Initial /b/ and Final /b/.
• I made a page of Toddler and Preschool Online Activities that I'm pretty pleased with. I'm going to add more to the page as I have time.

Another reality check.

Another piece of information I picked up this weekend from Ms. J. was the results of the test of phonological processing she did with Ava. Ms. A and I had already given Ava a basic articulation test several weeks ago and she did pretty poorly. I also wanted to give Ava a phonological processing test because that gives you a completely different set of information. Ms. J offered to administer the test and she had the test scored by the weekend.

I don't have all the specifics, because she had forgotten to make a copy for me, but I did get the bottom line. The test scores fall into one of five levels. The best is in the normal range, and the worst is a profound phonological processing disorder. Ava scored one tier higher than profound. Her score fell into the very severe phonological processing disorder range.

Sigh. Again, this isn't a huge surprise. Six months ago she had so little speech we couldn't even have administered the test. But it definitely puts things into perspective to realize that compared to other girls her age, the phonological processing patterns in her speech put her in the very severe range.

I'm looking forward to seeing the detailed results because that is where I'll get more clues about what exactly is going on.

K is here!

This past weekend was one of Ava's twice a month therapy sessions with Ms. J. When I walked in the therapy room at the end of the session, Ms. J very matter of factly told me that we'd be adding final /k/ to her list of things to practice because she can do it now. Then she said to Ava, "say, /k/." And she did. I was completely surprised and so pleased.

It is hard for her. She still substitutes a /t/ for the /k/ the vast majority of the time. I always feel mean when I tell her, "No baby, that's /t/. We need a /k/." and I have to ask her to say the word again. In order for her to even have a chance of getting it, I need a slight pause between the first half of the word and the final /k/ sound. So, I say, "boo - k". And when I make that final /k/ sound it has to be really guttural. If I just make a regular /k/ sound she'll repeat with a /t/ every time.

But /k/ is here and we can finally start to work on some back sounds. Progress!