La Porte, Giddings, Austin...

My, oh, my, how time has flown by! Well, it seems like it has today! Other days, I'm not so sure! My Little Bear is 18 months old today! A year and a half old! 6 months until his SECOND birthday! Scary! Maybe I should start planning it now. Hahah.. just kidding! We have lots of time to enjoy our little 18 month old. :)

I have been so bad about keeping up with my Tuesday-Thursday posting schedule so I am going to start posting once a week. I'm going to switch it up a little and start posting on Wednesdays. We don't have a lot going on on Wednesdays so it's a good day. :)

He was smelling the flowers

 Saturday, I drove to La Porte with Auggie to see family. My Aunt Louise was in town from Toledo and then Jamie, Zoe and Nathan were in town from Krum, so it was a great time to go visit. Tim was working all day so it made it even better.

 

Sunday evening, we went to Giddings to see Sherwin and Jane. Auggie got to play with Jacob for a bit and got to ride with PawPaw on the Gator! He loves riding around with PawPaw. Wednesday we stopped in Giddings on our way home from Austin and Auggie said "PawPaw"! It was so cute hearing him say it when Sherwin would walk away or when they pulled up in the driveway. He's getting more and more vocal every day.

Auggie has some weird sleep positions
Sunday May 6

 Wednesday, Auggie had his speech assessment in Austin with the speech therapist through his Craniofacial team at Dell Children's Hospital. We've had this appointment scheduled since November and we've been looking forward to it. At least I know I have been! Ashley, the speech therapist, was really nice and had toys for Auggie to play with so he could get comfortable in the doctor-like room. He had been very talkative the past few days so we were really hoping he'd continue it. He did! He was so good about imitating our words and following directions. His nap was cut short because the appointment was at 1 but he was very well behaved.

Through a few questions and observing Auggie, Ashley figured his expressive language was at 24 months, receptive language was at 18 months and his speech was at 15 months. The expressive language took into account his 52 signs and approximately 12 verbal words. The receptive language took into account how to follow directions and understand simple commands like "where's your nose?" or "where's the ball?" The speech section pertains to how he makes certain sounds. Ashley was concerned about how he said his D's, B's, P's and SH's. Some of his B's sound like M's (sometimes it sounds like "mye-mye" instead of "bye-bye). His D's aren't as defined as she would like. And then the SH sound comes through his nose. The SH sound is best heard when he tries to say "fish." She tried to hold his nose while he said it and he actually couldn't get the word out while his nose was plugged. She recommended trying to correct it that way now instead of later. I was really surprised he lets us plug his nose! She referred us to a private speech therapist in town to help us with the speech and to get him in a more structured environment. She thought the environment change might help with his tantrums- he had a pretty good one while we were there.

We go back in November for a follow up assessment. We'll also see the other members of the craniofacial team then. Ashley thinks Auggie is behind in those sounds because he may not have been able to hear them correctly with the loaner BAHA he had originally. It could also be caused by a submucous cleft palate (

After the speech appointment, we walked over to Dell Children's Hospital. We let Auggie walk around for a bit and then stopped at this cute motion sensor projector. Tim and I were entertained by this quite a bit when Auggie was in the NICU. It was fun to see him being entertained by it, too.



On our way home, we stopped in Giddings again. Jane and Sherwin's front field is full of beautiful Black-Eyed Susans. Of course, I had to get some pictures in!

Auggie, where's the grass?

Running to Mommy