Amazed!!!

We had our weekly speech therapy appointment this morning. SLP was very impressed with Jesse's vocabulary growth over the past couple of weeks. In the two months since we started speech therapy, Jesse has gone from being about 14 months behind (12 month level at 26 months of age), to being just 4 months behind (24 month level at 28 months of age). I'm over the moon!!!

Put yer feet up....

...this is gonna be a long one!

Tomorrow is Jesse's Individual Support Services Plan (ISSP) meeting. It'll be here at the house, so I don't have to find a sitter (thank goodness). There will only be a few people in attendance - the Autism Program's social worker, Jesse's senior therapist (ST) and her supervisor, and myself. Jesse's SLP can't make it, but she emailed me a progress note. Steve can't make it either, since he's already at his max vacation time this year. He helped me write up our own contribution to the meeting anyways. It's basically just a sheet of paper with the heading "strengths" written on the left and "needs" written on the right. We came up with the following...

Strengths:
-non-verbal communication
-growing vocabulary
-will attempt new words
-imitation
-high energy
-great fine motor and gross motor skills
-likes to be around adults and other children
-transitions easily from one place to another and from one activity to another.

Needs:
-to work on increasing vocabulary and phrases
-to work on decreasing toe walking
-to work on interactive play with other children
-to work on not running away when out in public
-has difficulty breaking certain routines 

Jesse's SLPs progress note also listed some strengths and needs, none of which were a surprise to me. It was very encouraging though, that she seems so pleased with his progress thus far. It will be interesting to hear what his ST and her supervisor have to say at the meeting tomorrow.

I'm also really looking forward to this, because the funding for Jesse's home therapy program will be approved. We'll actually be able to pay whoever (whomever?) we hire to be Jesse's home therapist!

Speaking of which, we have an interview set up for Wednesday night! I'm very nervous about interviewing someone. I've never really done that before, aside from sitters for Jesse. I suppose this shouldn't be that different though. I definitely need to prepare for it though! I also have to go through the rest of the resumes and try to find a few more candidates to interview. I'm thinking 5-6 interviews should be sufficient. I really want to find someone who's high energy, friendly, creative, and dependable.

Also, I figured now would be as good a time as any to share an update on Jesse's vocabulary. It's growing so much! It's very difficult to keep up with now too, since he'll at least try to imitate almost any word you ask him to say.

Imitated/prompted words:
Koko (the daycare owner's dog)
ears
hair
knees
toes
on
out
boots
shoes
go ("doe")
duck
gone ("don")
ball
arm
god
mouse
purse
pee
cheese

Spontaneous Words:
Mom
Da/Dad
Nan
Pop
Josh ("Dosh")
Jesse ("esseez")
Anna ("Nana" - daycare owner's daughter)
no
this
up
nose
baby
hi
bye
juice ("dooce")
bees (refers to nursing)
boo
uh-oh
off
eyes
poop ("doot")
hot
beep
more ("no")
ta-da
night-night
hop
ding-dong ("ning-nong")

Jesse also has a handful of two-word phrases now too, including "bye bees/Mom/Dad/Nan/Pop/Josh," "my baby," "no, Jesse's!" and "uh oh Da!"

It's quite a bit better than the list from March 11th, which was the last time I did this. And so, so much better than the 5 words he was using when we had our first speech therapy appointment with his current SLP on March 8th. That was only 6 weeks ago! His non-verbal communication has also come a long way since then, which is very helpful. He's much better able to communicate with us what he wants (to eat, for example) and when he wants us to play with him.

There's so much more to tell, but it's getting late and we have an early rise tomorrow. Speech therapy is at 8:30 and the ISSP is at 10 am! Hopefully I'll get a chance to update tomorrow.

Holy crap!

No this isn't another poop post. LOL

Jesse said a TWO WORD PHRASE!!! I'm beyond over the moon about it. This morning when he woke up he climbed in bed and nursed, as per usual. When he was done, he pulled my shirt down and waved at my chest and said "Bah bees!" Translation: "bye boobies." I'm just so thrilled!

"esse's!"

In case you can't read the title, that would be "Jesse's!" without the "J." Our awesome kiddo is saying his name again! He's dropping the J, but we still understand him. And it's quite obvious that he's referring to things as being his.

And not only that, but tonight he really blew us out of the water. Nearly literally. Tonight he added another...oh, six words to his vocabulary!!!


In case you didn't that, it's "nose," "eyes," "ears," "hair," "knees," and "toes." They weren't all that clear in the video, but he did say them all more clearly at some point this evening.

And yes, I did a dorky little celebratory dance. :)

Words

Jesse is now 26 months old. Time sure flies. Since Jesse's vocabulary changes so much (gets larger, then smaller, than larger, then smaller....you get the idea) I thought it would be a good idea to document what he's saying every month or so. It'll give me an written record of his progress. So here goes:

Mom, Momber, Bamber  (refers to me)

Da, Daddy (refers to Steve)

Josh (in reference to his cousin and his uncle - sounds like "dosh")

hi

baby

up

juice (sounds like "dooce")

pop (both in reference to  popping bubbles and a couple of times to refer to his grandfather)

bubbles (sounds like "babas" - this is new as of today)

thank-you (sounds like "ah-su," which doesn't really sound like thank-you, but we're convinced that's what it means)

no

this

oh

boo

uh oh


This list has grown nicely in the last week or so actually. Juice, pop, bubbles, no, baby, and hi are all pretty new. (Though he has had some of these in the past and lost them for a significant period of time.) It's still a far cry from the 200+ words he should have by this point, but it's progress, right?


***Don't mind me if this list changes over the next day or so...I might have missed a couple