Speech at Home!

Today was Maria's first home-based speech therapy session. Home-based speech therapy is incredibly rare in Phoenix. I am so grateful that Maria charmed him into coming.... It went very well. The therapist is a big guy with a strong voice and Maria really takes to him. Only 23 months old and already she's boy-crazy (takes after her mom). He was making kiss sounds then gently squeezing her cheeks and it really seemed like she was trying to pucker and kiss back! He, like the new music therapist, seems to be in tune with her subtle cues, so he'd switch positions and activities as she got bored. I'm pretty excited about the new guy; he really seems to care and thinks he can make some progress with her. He looked at the list of goals I typed up from all the various sources, so he worked on some sitting and other aspects besides just speech.

Our homework this week (for speech) is to keep signing to her, keep trying to get her to imitate us, give her her chewy tube or nuk brush to chew on if she bites herself, and keep saying Maria's name to her.

My sis and I are off to Baltimore tomorrow to the Hydrocephalus Conference. It will be my first time away from Maria, (gulp) except that unfortunate 29-day hospital stay when she was born. She'll stay at her local grandparents' house. They have a pool, so she'll get lots of swimming in!