Monday, August 19, 2013

Progress Report, A New Therapist, and New Friends

Progress Report:  The kiddo attempts to communicate with us a lot more.  His newest favorite words are Didi for Disney and Dididi for Dvd.  He's really into Pixar movies lately: Cars, Monsters Inc and Toy Story and so I hear those words often throughout the day. ;)

He also has to tell me what color everything is.   Everything.  A conversation we often have goes like this:

Kiddo: Gee.  Tee.  Gee.
Me: Yes, the tree is green.
Kiddo: Boo. 
Me: Yes, that's right, the sky is blue. 
Kiddo: Boo.
Me: Yes, blue.
Kiddo: Ba.  Re.
Me: Yes, the ball is red.
Kiddo: Re.

But, notice I said conversation.  He's sharing with me things he notices.  Before I had no idea what went on in that little head of his.  And apparently colors are a very important part of his world.

Gee!  Ewo!  Re!

Monday, August 12, 2013

Little Brother Turns 1!!

Kiddo helps decorate the cupcakes.

The decor.
The crazy family photo. 

The presents.

The cupcake.  Or what was left of it.
And just for fun comparison sake: Kiddo on left, little brother on right, both at age 1.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

A Guest Posting and The Official Diagnosis

I had the absolute honor and privilege of writing a guest post about our time at CHAMP Camp over on one of my all-time favorite blogs, Jake's Journey.  It was intimidating to write for a blog that has brought me so much information and encouragement, but I am excited to be able to share some of the things we learned with other parents struggling with apraxia.  Feel free to check out the post here, though if you've been following my blog, it won't be anything new.

Also, we got the official diagnosis from our evaluation at George Washington University.  Kiddo has severe verbal apraxia and a mild to moderate receptive (comprehension) delay.  The apraxia I already knew, the severity I had suspected, and the receptive delay I also had my suspicions about, but seeing it on paper is a different story.  But, now that I finally have it on paper, I can send the eval to insurance and they'll (hopefully!) consider speech therapy a medical necessity and give us more than the 20 sessions a calendar year, which we've already used up.  And hopefully the county will also provide more than once a week speech therapy services, now that they have this information in writing.  We shall see.

Starbucks date with the kiddo after speech therapy.  :)
Stay tuned for my post next week about supplementation we've just started doing with the kiddo (other than the fish oil).  We got some awesome recommendations from a doctor who works with children with autism and apraxia and I can't wait to post about it.  :)

Happy August everyone!