When You Least Expect It

Most of the time I'm not out trying to take the "perfect" picture. But yesterday, while we were scouting out places for some maternity/family pics, I snapped this and am in love! My two favorite boys (soon to be three!)...

The Important Things

We saw Ms. Julie (SLP) on September 8th. Then on Friday, I went to a parent conference that she hosted. Right now, I'm at work typing out my notes from both meetings so I can give them to Drew's school SLP. I'm trying to communicate with her everything that I think is important in order to get his speech moving along. And then I come to one of the last slides of Julie's presentation called "Thoughts..." and I realize that these are the things that really matter -- these are the important things!

• Try to stay in the now...


• No doesn't always mean no...


• Trust your instincts as a parent...


• Communication is important...


• Speech is not the most important thing in life...


• Being loved and loving is important...


• Health and happiness are blessings...


• Enjoy times together and create fun experiences...


• Snuggle and laugh...

And I think most of these can be applied to any situation! So when things get tough, I'm just going to come back to this list and smile real big, just like Drew :)

Happy Birthday To Me!

Saturday was my birthday! We had a pretty low key day and then Jon, Drew, and I went out to dinner that night. It was a perfect day with my boys!!

So here I am...33 years old and 36 weeks preggo!



And one of my big cheesin' big boy!

*Hope*

When I Googled the definition of hope, I found many different things. These were the ones I liked best:

…grounds for feeling hopeful about the future.
…be optimistic; be full of hope; have hopes.
…a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one’s life.
…the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.

Drew’s speech delay continues to be something that I worry about – especially as we spend more time with our friends that also have 3-year olds. I see how well their kids speak and carry on conversations and I see how hard it can be for Drew to interact with them and how he sometimes gets left out (which breaks his momma’s heart!).

I have continued to pray for guidance as to what Jon and I as his parents need to do. We have had him enrolled in speech therapy since before he turned one, we have set up special therapy sessions with the SLP on his cleft team, and we have tried to do everything possible to stimulate his speech at home. But I just didn’t feel like it was enough. So at the end of July, when I was going through one of my “I’ve got to do something right now!” phases, I emailed a former co-worker whose sister is an SLP to get her thoughts. She gave me the name of a lady who is a professor at St. Louis University that she studied under and one of her specialties is Childhood Apraxia of Speech (or CAS), which is something I had been suspecting. Ironically enough, when we went to Drew’s team visit at the beginning of August, his team SLP suggested we see the same lady – so it must have been meant to be!

Fast forward to yesterday – it was the day of Drew’s evaluation with Julie and I had such a range of emotions leading up to it. A part of me was so excited to meet with her and get her thoughts. But the other part of me was so scared – how would I react if she told me that he did have apraxia and what if it was something even worse than that??? So I just prayed that Drew would be cooperative, that God would give Julie the wisdom that she needed, and that I would be able to handle whatever she told us.

I’m happy to report that yesterday could not have went better! Drew was evaluated by Julie and 2 graduate students for almost 2 hours while Jon and I watched from behind a double sided mirror. He could not have done better or been more cooperative! He “said” and did everything they asked him to and even let them all do a pretty thorough exam of the inside of his mouth. Jon and I even had a few laughs while watching him! And then it was time for us to go in to see what Julie thought…

To get right to the point, she does NOT think that Drew has apraxia!!!! When she said that, it was like a huge weight had been lifted off of me! She does agree, however, that he has a very severe speech delay, BUT she said with intense and very specific therapy, that she saw no reason why he wouldn’t develop normal speech! Woohoo!!! It was literally the best news we had gotten in regards to Drew and his speech in forever! Of course we have a long road ahead of us, but I feel like Julie is just what we need to get us on the right path! (And I’m not saying that what we have done thus far has been a waste of time.)

We are going to have a conference call with her in a couple of weeks where we will discuss her report and suggestions. Then we’ll decide on what to do next. One option would be to go see her monthly for “marathon” sessions (since we live 2½ hours away…). She also said she could work very closely with his school SLP and that we will probably want to seek therapy outside of the school system since it is just 25 minute sessions.

Jon and I have some homework too. We are going to start doing more signing with him (but he must use the word with the sign) and making some picture boards so he can better express himself. We also have to come up with 10 to 20 “power words” and those will need to be worked on every day and at every therapy session.

I really can’t put into words how much better I feel about Drew and his speech. I am so full of "hope" for Drew's future right now!!!

Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

34 Weeks!