Speech Update

M is 33 months old. We're looking forward to all that October brings...less humidity, cool evenings, beautiful trees, pumpkins, and birthdays! Both M and E celebrate birthdays in October! Also in October, M might begin school, if she qualifies for the county's developmental preschool. I am in the process of filling out paperwork so she can be evaluated. A while ago I kind of stopped adding to M's word list that we were adding to often on our family blog. I stopped because each day she's saying new words with prompting and sometimes without! She is now putting two words together on a regular basis. Today I am certain I heard her say, "I got it." I had asked her if she wanted me to put a dress on a hanger. She wanted to do it. Last Sunday I asked her if she knew where we were going (church). She said "library." It was out of context, but I still understood it!! It was clear enough that others would have understood it, too! We are so thrilled. Each day we have several situations when we still don't understand M. It frustrates all of us. Yet, we're still encouraged. To give you some perspective, we were told of a ten year old apraxic boy. Since he was diagnosed with autism (and it is normal for autistic children to struggle with speech), the apraxia was not discovered until he was six years old! M's speech development is ahead of his. Obviously, the late intervention has not benefited this young boy, but his apraxia is much more severe than M's. We know that we have a long road ahead of us with years of therapy, but we are thankful for each day with her and all of her progress. On a side note, it is now hard to distinguish M's cries from E's! Now that he has some sounds they sound very much the same, at least until we hear the words Mommy or Daddy. (Recently we have heard LOTS of crying at night...several times each night from both children.) To help M sit on the potty for an appropriate amount of time to say that she "tried," I sing the ABC's. I begin very slowly, but once I hear the business happening I speed up and get a bit silly. She loves this! She will even start singing the ABC's herself in a high-pitched voice if I don't! She is not able to sing the ABC song, but she does pretty well when she tries. She doesn't quite have all the order to the letters, but I love her effort! She's also been helping me to read books, especially short, repetitive books or rhymes. One book is a baby prayer book. The last line is, "Thank you God for everything." She will even say the word "everything," AND it is fairly understandable! We continue to pray for our sweet girl's speech. Now that the words are coming with less effort, we look forward to clearer articulation, but that isn't a focus of therapy until age three. If it's done before that more damage than good can be done.