Cute Aveism

"Need lolly with ice cream" to refer to a dilly bar.

Back to the Old Plan for Ave...

Had Ave up at the Child Development Centre for her speech/physio/OT appointment today. After talking with her speech therapist about her upcoming dental surgery and her lack of improvement in putting together sentences since her last appointment in March, she is going to reassess Ave to get her preschool funding for September. That means that Ave will be headed to school for a few hours each afternoon, five days a week, with a class that will include all the speech, physio and OT aid that she may require.

In addition, we need to work on stretching her hamstring on her right side to get it looser. If we fail to do that, and her tendon stays tight for an extended period of time, she would have to start getting her leg casted to modify the way she uses her legs. Hmm...curious to see if she lets us do it!

Lastly, I think I will try to find her a more supportive chair (like the one in the picture) for when she works on fine motor skills or reading. She tenses up so much without support and as such, she is not giving 100 percent attention to the task at hand.

Oh my! There's always so much to think about for that little girl!

Avery's Chatting Up a Storm

Avery had her preschool assessment last week (i.e., her speech language pathologist and physiotherapist gave her a series of tests to see whether she would get funding for special ed preschool). Well, Avery's language has improved so much that she is now in the 15th percentile for expression (which is almost in the typical range for her age). She won't get funding (so sadly there will be no preschool this coming fall) but she is doing gangbusters (using words for commands and putting together three and four word sentences from time to time)!

• What she started with: mom, dad, more, done, no, out...
• What she has moved on to: 
• Repeats a great deal of words when pointedly told. 
• Knows all the family names and will tell random people who we all are. 
• Calls out "Skipper" in a super-loud voice (esp. when she decides to give him treats or water out of the fridge spigot...she makes a big mess but she likes being in charge of him. She tries to feed him water out of a cup like her "babies". It's all very cute.)
• Knows "drink", "juice" and "milk". Favorite words are "cookie" and "yogurt".
• Still has to be prompted most times to say "please" and "thank you" but Jing is drilling it into her.
• Puts together words for certain scenarios (e.g., when going out, she says "jacket", "backpack", "boots" and "outside").
• Mimics most words in all songs she knows even if they aren't always close. She loves music!
• Knows all of her alphabet and numbers to 20 (and never misses one!).

I'm sure there is lots more that I am forgetting but she is really starting to keep up with her peers in vocabulary and following simple directions. And, even if she doesn't know the words, she still bosses around all the kids her age! She rattles on and they just let her (I guess she likes to hang around the passive kids!).

Avery Practices Talking

Avery's Words

I am gonna post Ave's speech development here and update as we go...

• Words in the last two weeks: "mdra" = raindrop, mom, dad, hi, bye-bye.

Yesterday at speech therapy:

• meow and ball

Today:

• kiss noise and the word "hug"