Never Ever Brag - It Doesn't End Well

Late last week, my 5 year old son apparently got sick in the middle of the night. He took care of things all by himself, managed to throw-up in the potty, and put himself back to sleep. I didn't learn about it until the morning when he was mostly back to normal. We kept him home from school that morning, just to be safe, but other than fatigue and a lack of appetite it was the easiest 12 hour stomach bug ever weathered by a parent.

Now, instead of silently worshiping my good luck in the privacy of my own mind I may have mentioned to several people over the weekend how amazingly lucky we had been and how proud I was of Michael's ability to take care of himself. We also had the most social weekend we've had in the past 12 months with a playdate Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Oh, and the children spent one full morning at my parents' house where my mother is recovering from major surgery.

On Sunday, as I sat in the living room with Michael, Ava, and our guests, Ava threw up right into the center of all the fun. In waves. I'll spare you any additional details, but let's just say our guests left as quickly as possible as we were simultaneously trying to comfort Ava and clean up the impressive mess.

She laid pitifully on layers of blankets on the living room floor not even wanting to watch television for 45 minutes or so before begging me to put her to bed at 5pm. So I did. An hour and a half and one destroyed bed later we were right back where we started - on the living room floor on layers of blankets with a bowl and a container of hand sanitizing wipes nearby.

I spent the evening periodically rubbing her back, holding a bowl, and wiping her mouth before she fell asleep exhausted on the floor and I fell asleep exhausted on the couch. In the morning as I crawled out from under the covers on the sofa, instead of, "Thanks, mom - you were awesome!" I got, "Hey mom, your bottom is bare." For the record - I did have undies on.

Now I'm just hoping that somehow, miraculously, we will escape further fallout. I'd love to avoid the bug myself, but I super want my mom to manage to miss it this time. A stomach bug is terrible enough without dealing with post-surgical incisions at the same time. Wish us luck.

CEU Challenge: 15 Free CEU's in 7 Weeks

Background

Let's look back in time to December 29-30, 2012. That was the weekend after Christmas. You were all having quality time with your families right? You'd think I would have been doing the same, but no. Instead, I was sitting at my computer while my husband had quality time with the children. I had left my ASHA and state licence renewals to the last minute and still needed 5 more CEUs before I could ethically renew my licences. I logged on to the Linguisystems Free CEU page and dug in. I did get it all done. All CEU requirements are met and licences are current. However, I really do need a plan that doesn't involve frantic, last minute sacrifices of quality family time during the holidays.

The CEU Challenge

I'm going to sit down and earn CEUs every week (all of the LinguiSystems CEU courses are worth more than one) until I get the 15 I need this calendar year. You are welcome to join me. Here's my syllabus:

• Week 1: Counseling Theories and Skills for SLPs - 0.2 CEUs
• Week 2: Evidence Based Practice - 0.2 CEUs
• Week 3: Intervention Programming for Nonverbal Children - 0.2 CEUs
• Week 4: Introduction to Ethical Decision Making in Speech-Language Pathology - 0.2 CEUs
• Week 5: HFA, AS, & NVLD: Differential Diagnosis by the SLP - 0.3 CEUs
• Week 6: Reading Comprehension in Secondary Students: Assessment - 0.2 CEUs
• Week 7: Reading Comprehension in Secondary Students: Intervention - 0.2 CEUs

What You Need to Do

1. Get a free account with Linguisystems. If you're a member of the ASHA CEU Registry, have your ASHA account number handy. If you give them your account number when you register they will automatically report your CEU credits to ASHA each time you complete a course.
2. Enroll in the course of the week. I'll be doing Week 1: Counseling Theories and Skills for SLPs this week and reporting back next Friday (January 25). If you don't like that course, pick an alternate. I was somewhat limited in the courses I could put on the syllabus because I took several of their courses last year.
3. Read the course materials and take the quiz. Come back each Friday to hear what I thought about the course and give your own opinions.

That's it. In two months we'll all be done with our annual CEU requirements.

Just Released and Coming Soon at the Testy Shop

As you probably noticed, I just released a new /ɑ/ speech therapy kit in the Testy Shop. I wanted to specifically mention that this is not new content. Everything included in the new kit is included in the larger Simple Vowels speech therapy kit. So if you already own the Vowels kit you have no reason to buy this new one.

I had a request from a reader who needed just the /ɑ/ materials from the Vowels kit for her student and couldn't afford to buy the entire vowels kit right now. I'm offering the mini-kit for only $4.95 so if you've been thinking about trying a premium kit, but wanted to check one out at a lower price point, here is your opportunity.

I have started working on the next kit. It will be an /f/ Speech Therapy Kit and will include materials designed to let you teach /f/ in Initial, Medial, Final, and Mixed positions from a motor-speech articulation approach. I'm hoping to get it done in the next couple of weeks and make it available in the shop in early February.