No Thank You!

Mayer has been in speech therapy for several months now. He has done really well! We are able understand most of what he says. Last week, his speech pathologist finally gave him initial /k/ and /g/ to practice. We had been bugging her to concentrate in the /k/ because when he said "castle" it sounded like he was saying "asshole!" We all laughed because he's so cute and it was so innocent, but it sounded pretty bad when he was referring to Tate's castle or the king's castle. I am proud to say it no longer sounds like he is swearing when he talks about castles. :)

 

He has also recently started adding "thank you" every time he says "no." Here are a few examples:

Me: I need to get shower and get dressed.

Mayer: No fank you.

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When he didn't want to eat the oranges on his plate, Mayer said, "No fank you, oranges!"

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Tate: Mayer, I was playing with that!
Mayer: No fank you, Teat!
(PS I didn't misspell Tate, that's how Mayer pronounces it.)
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And he always says, "no fank you" when you ask if he needs to go potty.
(Potty training update: he's potty trained... when he can go sans pants! As soon as you cover his bottom half, he forgets to go on the potty frog.)
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#freefromtrash Magazines

Day 8: Magazine
Tate is really into reading lately. Mommy Brag Warning: He even wrote his first word (besides his name) without help yesterday!!!

 "POTS"... except it is supposed to say "STOP" but he did it all by himself! :)

So I have been gathering activities to promote reading and early literacy. One of his favorites is a busy book I made to take with us on vacation for an eight hour car trip. I printed off various activity and coloring pages from a lot of different websites, slid them in sheet protectors and put them in a 3-ring binder. He is able to write on the pages with dry erase markers, erase it and do the activity again.

 Step 1: gather magazines... I could only find 2 magazines.

 I found some catalogs and journals at work, but not very good sources for pictures.

 Apparently, I needed to ask my husband because he came up with A LOT more!

 Step 2: cut out simple pictures

Step 3: find some printable alphabet tracing pages (i.e.: alphabet tracer) or make your own

 Step 3: use your magazine "clip art" and have your child glue or tape the pictures on the back of letter they start with. This may require some help. Tate picks a picture and identifies it. I ask him, "what letter does b-b-brush start with?" When he answers with the correct letter, he glues or tapes it to the back of the tracer. I ended up writing the word under the picture for an extra visual.

This is a lengthy process! You may want to sort it and just do a few letters at a time. This is also just one idea. There are plenty of variations! Mix up the clip art and have the child circle the ones that go with the corresponding letter, etc.

 Step 4: slide them in a page protector or laminate them

 Step 5: put them in a 3-ring binder. Now your child can practicing tracing their letters on one side and they have pictures on the other side.

Mayer also likes the activity pages. At 19 months, he just likes to color on the tracer page. The picture side is good for promoting his vocabulary. He can talk, when he wants to, which is rare. So when we look at the pictures, I identify them and if I know the sign, I use it. I try to use the speech tools we learned when Tate was in speech therapy, but they seem lost on Mayer. He either ignores it and moves on or just looks at you like, "You just said the word, why do I have to?" He will be re-evaluated in September to see if he still has a delay and as of right now, I see more speech therapy in our future...

Mr. Chatterbox

Tate's speech-language pathologist has started his final evaluations. They are releasing him from services so he can attend preschool in the fall. He will finish his evaluation next week. In the last eight months, he has made AMAZING progress!! His vocabulary has gone from about 20 words to uncountable. In honor of his accomplishment, I thought I would share a few stories.

Tate climbed up on my lap and said what sounded like,  "s'up?"

Michael says,  "say 's'up, G?'"

Tate: "s'up, Jeep?"

"Mayer's eating his fist bump."

Me: Why do you call me Sarah?

Tate: Because it your name, Sarah!

Tate lingo: stunk = skunk, yummies = food/ something to eat (We cannot seem to get him to say he's hungry.), launch chairs = lawn chairs, choke up = threw up, Jewy-Nana = Julianna (cousin), JaceGage = Jace and Gage (cousins), GrammaPa = Grandma and Grandpa he calls Pa

His space knowledge: "Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong goed on moon first. Michael Collins (or sometimes he says daddy) orbited moon." 

Discussing why the recent space shuttle launch has been delayed. He was going to the Cosmosphere to watch it: 

Me: "Oh no, Tate, they can't launch Endeavor today!"

Tate: "Why?"
Me: "Because they found a problem with one of the thermostats on a fuel line and they want the astronauts to stay safe."
Tate: "Why?"
Me: "So Endeavor doesn't have an accident and the astronauts don't get hurt."
Tate: "Haves accident?" Then he thinks about this for a while and says, "Challenger blowed up." (He knows this because he and Daddy checked out several books on space disasters at the library.)
Me: "Yes, it did, when Mommy was a little girl."
Tate: "Co-wombia blowed up too."

"These boots just decided to jump on my feet today!"

His progress has been amazing and I'm so proud of him! We definitely have to be careful what we say now because he will repeat it. It may not be right after we say it, but he will surprise us with it later. Those little ears are always listening!

My Big Boy

I haven't done an update on Tate in a while. He's growing up so fast! It may be a little premature to say that Tate is potty trained, but for the last week he has been wearing training pants and underwear. He still has accidents, but only because he's stubborn. Most of the time it is adult directed. We make him sit against his will. Nine times out of ten resulting in him going. Then there are the times that he runs to the potty chair himself or tells you he needs to go. Most of the time he does really well, except when it comes to poop and of course we still have nap time and bedtime diapers. Other than that, most of the stash downsized to a small setting for Mayer.

He is still obsessed with space ships, rockets, astronauts and even cosmonauts. Last week, he went to the cosmosphere with Aunt Taylor and his cousins. He should be really excited here, but we are pretty sure my sister captured his face as he realized he was having an accident!

Tate's vocabulary has been expanding in leaps and bounds. So much so that we found out his speech therapist is going to be releasing him from the program just in time to start preschool in the fall! He will have to have a final evaluation. The main focus now is to get him to refer to himself in first person rather than third.
Here's an example of just how far he has come. On Saturday mornings, we usually go to garage sales with my mom and brother. One garage sale had a picture of Bigfoot. They thought it would be fun to teach him to say, "sasquatch." He gets a little tongue-tied, but it comes out fairly well!

We are all ready for spring. Tate keeps saying, "springtime coming!" Every time he hears the term, "Eastern time," he thinks it is, "Easter time" and gets really excited. He is convinced the Easter Bunny is going to bring him some more Thomas trains for his track. One of his favorite spring activities is to visit chicks, ducklings and bunnies at the local farm stores. Michael keeps him on one of his day's off during the week and it is a special treat just to go look.

 I am always afraid he's going to jump in with them!

Just a few random pictures:

His hair is getting kind of long.

Reading to Mayer.

This box was a basketball goal, space ship and jack-in-the-box.

Speech Update

Tate has his third appointment with the speech- language pathologist this week. Since we started, his vocabulary has at least quadrupled in size. He had even started mimicking more. Some days he says so many new words, I have trouble keeping track! We have been keeping a list and if we are in view of he list, he will point at it wanting you to write it down. Yesterday, he even got a hold of the list and added to it himself.
The biggest change had to come from those of us around him. Even though he was communicating with us, we were giving him the easy way out by asking yes or no questions. We have all had to change the way we ask the questions in order to present the model we would like him to say. For example, we would usually ask, "Tate, would you like a drink?" But now, we try to say, "Tate says 'I would like a drink please.'"
We have also had to change the direct approach. Instead of telling him, "Say 'drink,'" we would again model what we would like him to say, "Tate says, 'drink, please.'" I guess it doesn't seem as demanding and our stubborn toddler will at least say one of the two words. Sometimes if we repeat ourselves again we will get the other word. I have even found myself telling him that he can say something. That usually works too.
It is so exciting now that he is finally using words! I have always babbled on and on talked to him about the most random things and now he actually answers back. The other day he actually answered, "What?" when I asked, "Do you know what?" I started laughing, which really encourages him! Another example: he likes to shut himself in his closet and knocks to get out. The door sticks and I have trouble getting it open, so I yelled, "Michael!" The little voice in the closet repeats, "Michael!" He had done it before, but my mom was there and had never heard him say it. Tate could hear her laughing, so he had to repeat it about five more times. He is learning the power of using his words. I have even gotten the dreaded toddler word, "Why?" a few times, but it has been random occurrences.
We have also officially had Tate tested for a dairy allergy. He had blood drawn a week ago. Michael said he didn't even whimper when they stuck the needle in! He was really proud of his bandage and was mad at me when I took it off. They had to send the sample to Kansas City to have it tested. We are trying to be patient waiting for the results and are optimistic that maybe we have just been overly cautious. We are really hoping the results will be negative. *fingers crossed!!*

Mommy guilt

We took Tate in for an infant/ toddler screening at our local Early Education Center yesterday. They check his hearing, vision, motor and language skills. Last year he tested right on track with everything. This year I knew it would be different. They tested his hearing, which was good. In June, we had his vision tested through the See to Learn program, so they skipped that part of the screening.
Once we got into a screening room to start checking his motor and language skills, they basically stopped the screening. We were discussing his language or virtual lack there of and based on what I was saying, she knew we were going to have to come back for a more complete evaluation. I know his language skills are nowhere near where they need to be. He has no trouble communicating his needs and wants, but very rarely uses expressive language to tell us. We have become very good at directing questions so the answers will be yes or no.

We will find out more Friday when we go in for a more complete evaluation; but based on what she saw yesterday, the speech pathologist estimated that his language skills are about the same as a normal 15 month old. That is a delay of 9 months and I feel horrible! You never want to think that your child has a developmental delay of any kind, but I should have known better. I just kept thinking, "he's focusing on his motor skills first." I should also mention that I have two college degrees, a Bachelor of Arts in history and a Bachelor of Science in Speech-Language Pathology. 

Tate's regular vocabulary is only consists of about 30-40 words. That includes his sign language and expressions like "ruff ruff," which is what he calls the dogs. Sometimes he will randomly say a word and then won't repeat it, no matter how many times you ask. Occasionally he will parrot or mimic what we say, but it is rare. He doesn't combine two words to make phrases/ simple sentences. You can't really count "wacko," which seems to be a thank you/ you're welcome combination because it's really just one word.

Today he has been walking around saying a new word, "happy!" It makes me smile because sometimes after he says it, he mocks blowing out candles. On the other hand, it makes me sad because he should be saying so much more. I should have taken him in a long time ago so he could have started receiving services as soon as possible. I did call in late May or early June, but they don't do any screenings during the summer. I know after Friday we will have a plan in place and we can start to move forward. Still, there is nothing worse than a mommy's guilt that she has somehow let her children down.