Thursday - Speech Assessment and PT

Gracie had a great night and slept in until about 6:30 a.m. Then it was time to get up and get ready for our appointment at the clinic with the speech therapist. Gracie was in heaven because she got to go watch the fish in the big fish tank in the waiting room. Personally, I think of it as the germ tank or the petrie dish. It's the perfect breeding ground for all the sick kids to share their germs. Add to that our little Gracie is a thumbsucker, so she touches the tank and then the thumb goes into her mouth. I cringe.

Gracie's speech assessment went very well. In April 2009 Gracie was assessed at a 9 month level for her comprehensive language skills...today, just 9 months later, she was assessed at an 18 month level. Gracie's expressive language skills were at a 13 month old level back in April and today they were assessed at a 20 - 22 month old level. She is making great gains and we were thrilled with the assessment results. Gracie was very happy during the assessment, very interactive, and our dear sweet girl who has recently learned how to blow her nose, decided to show off these skills. She walked over to the kleenex box, helped herself, put the kleenex up to her nose/mouth area and began blowing on her own. I think the fact that she got attention while doing this made it last longer than need be. She also must have felt the room was too bright as she took it upon herself to shut the light off on all of us. I was concerned that Gracie didn't articulate her verbal words very well, but the speech therapist said that was not the case at all, that she was doing very well with articulation. She gave us some great ideas to help Gracie continue to progress and will recommend speech therapy as part of Gracie's school program.

After that we headed home, ate lunch, played a little and then took a nap, a 2 hour and 15 minute nap. She awoke about 15 minutes before her physical therapist came to work with her. Gracie was very happy to see Sandy and was very cooperative. We got some new things to work on with her to help her balance get stronger. Sandy was very pleased with Gracie's progress.

The rest of our day was spent just playing. We really didn't work on anything else. I thought she had done enough work for the day. She had a great time taking her bath and splashing away and then requested that we push her around in her old stroller. So we did. She loved it.

Gracie was such a good girl today and once again was so fun to be around. She was definitely mommy's girl today.

Love,
Lisa, Jeff, and Gracie