The Weekly Review: Week 30

Blog Post that Made Me Laugh

I can't help it. I laugh at these kinds of situations while simultaneously being profoundly thankful that it wasn't me. Amalah had a solo parenting evening that could have been taken right out of a comedy.

Blog Post that Made Me Cringe in Sympathy for all Parties Involved

Problem Girl does a wonderful job of helping her little girl celebrate her sixth birthday, but nothing is ever simple.

Weekly Ticking Time Clock

In nine weeks Ava will be evaluated to see if she qualifies for services from the schools. In 20 weeks she will no longer be eligible for early intervention because she will turn three.

I feel like this timeline is the huge "but..." in our life right now. "Ava has great therapists, but..." "Ava is making beautiful progress but..."

I need to remind myself, yet again, to focus on today's blessings rather than on tomorrow's potential problems.

Weekly Pleasant Surprise

Jourdan at futureslps did a post about my free articulation picture cards. That post was seen by someone at Pediastaff which posted about the cards on their blog. Consequently my site traffic tripled for a day or so and, hopefully, the card sets have found their way into the hands of many more therapists who will find them to be useful. Many thanks to Jourdan and Pediastaff for thinking enough of the card sets to mention them to their readers.

Ava This Week

Well, I don't know what Ava herself would be most excited about this week, but I am most excited about finally being able to fix her hair some. She's letting me put in ponytails and pigtails and will even sit still enough for me to get a bit more creative. She's still too sensitive to stand much brushing or tugging, so it's a bit messy, but such progress. I really do credit OT.

The Weekly Michael

Michael has become a preschooler. He's just not a toddler by any stretch of the imagination any more. He's becoming just as interested in his peers as his parents, possibly more. He wants his sister to play with him and wants to direct every bit of that play. Fortunately Ava is pretty agreeable. "Come on Ava, let's go play sleepover." "Come on Ava, let's go to my room." "Come on Ava, let's go on a ghost hunt." And off they go. He never stops talking, but she doesn't seem to mind. It's lovely.

More Flip Books On Sale

For those of you who thought the Phrase Flips book looked interesting, there are three more Flip books on sale at Super Duper this week. (No, I am not affiliated with Super Duper, I just like some of their products and I monitor their weekly 50% off sales.)

This announcement is just for your information. I haven't actually seen these books yet although I did order them. I'll do reviews of them when they come in.

The three on sale (50% off through Sunday, October 16, 2011) are:

• Say and Do Sound Production: This one focuses on production of vowels and consonants at the sound, syllable, and word level and comes bundled with an activity book with worksheets and therapy activities and a CD-ROM of reproducibles.
• Turn and Talk Early Sounds: This one focuses on initial, medial, and final /p, b, m, t, d,n/. Contains 600 illustrated words.
• Word Flips: This one contains three sets of identical picture cards for single syllable words. Sounds are sorted into sections by placement (bilabial, alveolar, velar, and palatal).

Speech Sample - Suspected Childhood Apraxia of Speech - 26 months

This is an audio clip from a video we took on 5-14-2011. Ava was 26 months old. At this point Ava was about four months into receiving speech services. Ava was asking me to get something down from a shelf.

In the last audio sample, three weeks prior to this one, Ava produced 10 utterances in a little under half a minute. Those utterances included seven different words and ranged from 1 word (two syllable) utterances to 4 word (five syllable utterances). In this sample, Ava produces 13 utterances in a little under half a minute. These utterances include 12 different words and range from on word (one syllable) utterances to 5 word (5 syllable utterances). The average number of words per utterance in the last sample was 2.2. In this sample it increased to 2.42. More importantly, there was significantly more diversity to the utterances in this sample.

Here is the new sample:




In this audio sample Ava's utterances were:
What that?
What that?
This there.
Uh huh.
No I think get down.
No get down.
I think down.
Not think up.
Down.
No think down.
Down.
I say down.