Update #4: Speech

Since we have been home, Kate has been receiving speech services through our state's early intervention program. We are doubly blessed because our SLP is my cousin, Jennifer. She services our county, so when we were applying I specifically requested her. Growing up I always followed around my big cousin, begging for attention. "Jennifer, do my hair, play Barbies with me, come swimming with me!" I would do anything! She even found an old picture of us where I am holding her by the face and she has an expression that says,"Make her leave me alone!!!" It is really amazing that she still speaks to me:)

Anyway, Kate thinks that she is the coolest thing since sliced bread. When she sees her coming up the driveway, Kate starts doing her happy dance. She thinks that Jennifer just comes to play with her, and loves to sit in her lap. And I am pretty sure that Jennifer was the first person that she said, "I love you" to. She was leaving one day and told Kate bye-bye. Kate replied, "Mye-mye. Wah woh wuh." Doesn't that sound like an I love you to you?* Jennifer can get her to do things that she won't do for me. For example, last week she got her to make a "K" sound and an "L" sound. Has she done that for me since then? Of course not.

Progress-wise, I have to admit I get frustrated sometimes. We are all working so hard! But Kate's lip and tongue muscles seem fairly underdeveloped. We now do exercises to strengthen them, and we are seeing some progress. I just have to accept that this is a process, and it may be years before she is able to discontinue the ST. I think that even though I knew this going into the surgery, I had this naive expectation that Kate would be the exception to the rule. I hoped that she would start making all kinds of new sounds immediately, but it has been much slower.

As far as new words, she learns them all the time, but I am pretty sure I am the only one who understands her. And sometimes she just chatters on and on to me and then will laugh like she just told a funny joke. So I laugh like I understood her. But, I can now tell the difference between "ABCs" and "Twinkle Twinkle", which I think is impressive.

We continue to teach her sign language. She can now use about 100 signs independently (of course, she made up about 5 of them). We are also trying to teach her to put the signs into multiple word phrases, which is an important part of language development.

Pray for us as we continue. She is worth every ounce of work we put into this. And she is dying to talk to us. I can't wait until she talks so much I want to tell her to hush!


*Just have to say that after she told Jennifer, she signed "I love you" to me a few weeks later, and then to Aunt Sally's cat, and now she is signing it to the rest of the family...sometimes.