Kaufman Day 4

Last day went great!

Speech: During our speech session Nancy and I both worked with Kiddo on his words/phrases, and Nancy gave me excellent feedback on working with him.  She gave me the list of words she's been working on with him and when I get home I'll make flashcards of each of the words so we can keep working on them.  She'll send us her eval and the list of goals to work on for the next 6 months or so soon, so I look forward to that.  I got the DVDs of each of the sessions, and I look forward to watching them with Hubster and sharing them with Kiddo's speech therapists.  Nancy says he has moderate-severe apraxia of speech, but she sees so much potential in him and would love for him to come back for another session.  Hubster and I are already talking about how to make that happen, we saw so much good come from this week.

She gave Kiddo a ziplock baggie full of cars as his prize for working so hard, as you can kind of see in the pic of the two of them below.  He was smiling like crazy about these cars until I snapped this pic, thanks Kiddo. Not the greatest pic ever, but better than nothing. ;)

OT: Kiddo did some fun work on a scooter board, working on his core and arm/shoulder strength.  Poor kid was grunting after a while, it was so hard for him to propel and steer himself using his arms while lying on the scooter, but he did like the game.

We did some more oral motor work, and Ms. Jessica had me do each of the exercises, so that I'd know how to continue the exercises at home.  She gave me a huge stack of papers to read with different exercises to work on with him, and some ideas of things we could buy to help him with his various sensory and oral-motor challenges.

All in all, an absolutely wonderful week.  God answered each of my prayers about this week: safe travels, health, that Kiddo would cooperate, that our therapists would have wisdom in how to best work with Kiddo, etc.  God is so very good, and blessed our trip abundantly more than I could have asked for or imagined.

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Kiddo has been saying new things this weekend, that have just blow me away.  My favorites:

• After going to the bathroom on a cushioned toilet he declared it a "sof poppy" (soft potty). 
• I asked the barefoot Kiddo if he wanted to put his socks on.  "No.  Fee ha!"  (Feet hot).  
• When I was telling him we were going to have pizza for dinner but he had to wait for it, he told me over and over again, (the tears and crying didn't help with my translation)"No wait.  Pizza now."   
• After going to the bathroom at a rest stop on our drive home, he told me "I dee, I go poppy" (I drink, I go potty).  I was blown away not only that he knew that, but it is his first 5 word phrase, whoo hoo!!  Actually, that's more than just a phrase, it's a whole sentence!!  Oh, and the lady in the bathroom with us washing her hands heard him say that and giggled and commented on how smart he was.  A total stranger was able to interpret what he said.  :)

When Hubster got to see Kiddo again, he was just grinning at all Kiddo had to say, and he told me "You brought me home a different kid.  I'm so proud of him."  

We can't wait to hear what else Kiddo has to say and I pray that we can get another opportunity (or several) to work with Nancy again.  She's pretty awesome, and so is our God who truly and abundantly blessed our trip.