Great Day at Therapy

While Stacia was in both speech and occupational therarpy today I decided to run a couple of errands. Ok it was just running over to the inlaws to pick up Bridget's sunglasses, watch, and doodle roll that she had left there last night and then stopping at Panda Express to get myself an egg roll and a water.

I got a great report on Stacia that she had sat nicely and worked on her work, she said, bus, push a couple of times, hi to people, and she said bye bye.

It's amazing how far she has come.

The really interesting thing is I had warned her therapists that she might not be too cooperative since she woke up crying at 5:30 this morning. Larry was still awake so he went in and checked her. She was soaking wet and not going to put up with it for one minute longer. Now if we can just get her to the point where she wants to stay dry all the time and get her convienced to start using the potty.

Tammy

Stacia's Latest Word Count

I was just going through the list of words that Stacia can say that we can understand her at least 75% of the time.
Milk
More
Fish (fish crackers)
Cookie
Push
Bye
Papa (Grandpa)
Aba (daddy)
Mama
Oma (grandma)
Popcorn
Ba  with short a sound(bath)
Ba with long a sound (sheep)
Pooh ( that lovable character Winnie the Pooh)
Me
Bebe (Baby)
Banana
Up
Ni (Night)

Hopefully we will see the list grow as she adds new words to her speaking vocabulary. She has just taken off in the last 6 months since getting her DynaVox.

She is starting to put some words together like Bye and names and she is working on saying Hi and we are working on her saying Nana without the Ba in front of it, but there is no conviencing her of it. Of course she drops a lot of the sounds in the words but at least those around her all the time can understand her words. Example Popcorn comes out like Pop k n and Cookie is Coo ke though it's hard to write what she sounds like.

We are in the process of planning a walk for Children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech for our area. The date is Saturday October 6. More information will be coming soon. Stay tuned.

Tammy

6am and wide awake

Mama got woken with a start this morning. Stacia out of the blue started crying. It was 6 am. We don't know if she was crying because of a nightmare or the fact that she was wet. I attempted to let her cuddle in the chair with me in hopes that she would go back to sleep. HA HA you have got to be kidding. We played puzzles, memory, and uno on my phone, ate some of last night's homemade mac and cheese, watched some cartoons on tv, read a couple of books, and about 7:45 she wandered into Bridget's room and woke her up. That got another cry out in our house this morning. Bridget wanted Stacia out of her room and the door closed.

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Rough Times

Yesterday I had a chance to find out how Stacia did at camp during the week. She did not do well at all though she did go from hiding in cupboards and under tables to at least participating some as long as she had one on one attention.
She came home each day and was clingy to me (mama) especially though she would accept being right on top of daddy and older sister if I was not right there. She did not want to go to bed at night and would keep giving me kisses and hugs trying to get me to stay. She cried herself to sleep at night.
Last night was the complete opposite as she didn't have camp yesterday. She was able to play some by herself for her normal amount of time without having to have one of us with her and she indicated that she wanted to go to bed when I had lost track of the time. She even picked up some of her toys without having to be shown to pick up each one and put it away. She was pushing me (mama) out of the door and turned out the light. This is the behavior that is normal or at least closer to normal for her. What I saw Monday-Thursday nights was not.
The hardest thing looking back was her not being able to tell me how she was feeling about things and not being able to talk things out with her. The guilt over my thinking it was because she didn't get enough sleep as she is used to sleeping till about 10 am especially in the warmer months when she doesn't get to bed till later. She has never been one to go to bed with the sun still up even as a baby.
While the craft things she did were cute and she had a smile on her face when I dropped her off and when I picked her up each day I am not sure that we made the right choice to send her to camp this week.
We are looking at sending both her and her older sister to Princess Ballerina Dance Camp later this summer. Hopefully that will go much better though with that one I will be able to stay with her and she will have her sister there with her as well.

How Camp is going

Stacia has done 2 days of daycamp ok it's only 2.5 hours a day. She has 9 kids in her group and there are 40 kids total. She is finding the number of people so overwhelming. Her SLP has reported that she is getting nothing out of it. She has taken to hiding in the cupboards to get away from everyone. At least her SLP is realizing that it's because she is very much an introvert like her Daddy.
We are having to make the tough decision as to if we keep sending her for the rest of the week or if we keep her at home. After talking it over we have decided to keep sending her. I am going to let them know if she seems overwhelmed to please call me and I can come and get her since I do stay in town and can be there in 10 minutes from where I usually go and hang out.

Stacia is a Camper

Stacia has reached the milestone of being able to attend Day Camp. She is going to a language and socail interactions camp this week. The interesting thing is her speech and occupational therapy place has moved to a new building. This is the first week in the building so the kids are getting to see it before the parents.
The report today was she was well behaved but did not want to engage with the other campers. When we got home she laid on Larry's chest on the couch and we thought she was going to take a nap.
She fooled us. Hopefully I can get her to go to bed and asleep a bit earlier tonight. In order to make it to camp at 9 am we have to leave by 8:35 at the latest so it means she is having to be gotten up at 8 am. Considering with the light (ok sun not setting) till later I am lucky if I get her in bed by 9:30.