Since a good chunk of Grace's waking hours are spent in some type of therapy, we'd thought we show you what happens in speech therapy.
The speech therapist Laura (or the Blonde Princess in Grace's eyes) comes over twice a week and spends an hour helping our babbler trying to put her thoughts into words.
The two work together with a vibrating wand to try to get Grace to verbalize her "OO" sounds. Grace is getting better at putting a consonant and vowel together, but it's still mostly dada, mama, baba, with an occasional random consonant-vowel combo that surprises everyone. What's a "sizzo"?
Grace is really grasping the meaning of words. Laura will pull out two items from "Grace's Box of Everyday Things" and ask Grace to pick out, for instance, the shoes.
She's pretty good at getting things right, as she continually increases her vocabulary. Grace can now sign 17 words (at least that we can interpret) and can say a handful of words (like bye bye, and "clean up").
But the second half hour of speech therapy is what Grace really looks forward to. Feeding time!!
Laura is working with Grace on using utensils without running up our dry cleaning bills too much. With a little guidance, she's getting pretty good with her spoon and fork. Grace used to think she could throw her spoon on the ground and it would magically reappear, but she's actually handing her spoon back now, or even showing interest in dipping the spoon in herself for her next bite. And bite she does, as the teeth are coming in. Her front top teeth are mostly in, but the solo bottom chomper is still looking for its friends.
She can say clean up, but doing it is still a few lessons away.
Um-Um-Good - that is what Grace likes! Keep up the good work. It won't be long until we will get to see you and play with you! xoxoxo
ReplyDeleteGosh, Gracer, I can't believe how much you've learned in such a short time! You are one smart cookie. I miss you a ton!
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