A few days ago, we put Lyric in a t-shirt that had a local band on the front of it. She looked at the name of the band, pointed to the letter T, and said "T!" Then she said "Teeee tee tee tee tee tee" - which is what is said when you're moving the letter T in the app Endless Alphabet. This has happened with multiple letters, on various occasions. She loves to repeat after the letters when she is playing the app, too. Things like this just reconfirm my choice of allowing her to use an iPad. A lot of Sanctimommies scoff at the idea of allowing a child to do things like watch TV, use a computer, or use an iPad because "they just can't be educational." Pretty sure that the way Lyric has been improving lately proves that this kind of statement is bullshit (pardon the language). I'm not saying it's a cure all, or that it's a replacement for the valuable things that we do to work with her in speech therapy sessions, or in other ways - but it's definitely one more thing in the arsenal that is helping to foster her rapidly expanding skills.
Another positive of this week - Debby, the Occupational Therapist came over. She has only seen Lyric one other time. She brought a pressure vest with her for us to use, which I will address in a moment. The positive that I want to touch on occurred when Travis, Debby, and Lyric were playing with a ball that we already own. Lyric caught the ball every single time it was thrown at her. Debby noticed this, and mentioned that she is a really good catch. So Travis mentioned the fact that she can hit a baseball with a bat that is pitched to her. Debby got a surprised look on her face and said "She's not supposed to be able to do that yet...." to which Travis responded "I know!" We've always suspected that this particular skill was an advanced on, so it was nice to have confirmation. Not only that, she's been able to do it since the middle of last year - so it's not something that is new for us. Overall the visit with Debby went well.
The pressure vest looks like this:
One last item of amusement before we get to the irritation is that Lyric has been picking up on Stephen Fry's accent in Pocoyo. Despite the fact that we speak very American English, she insists on calling a ball a "bowl." It's actually really adorable, but it also shows you just how easily young kids pick up on things.
On to the irritation. I'm going to disclaim this by saying that I love Early On, and I love everything that they have done for us. I like everyone that comes to help Lyric, and I have very few complaints in that respect. However, they can be so disorganized sometimes. I'm a pretty disorganized person, so I understand how it can happen - but when you're coming to someone's home to work with their child, disorganization is a little less forgivable. For example, last time our speech therapist was here, she was wanting to come over this week but realized that we were getting a visit from both Debby and our coordinator, and didn't want to cram 3 into one week. She said that she would get back to us about when she would come over. I got an e-mail this morning that was sent last night about how she would be coming over at 11:30 today, but would have to leave early to do an IEP meeting. I called her, because our coordinator also rescheduled to next week, to let her know we had no idea she was supposed to be coming over today. She's going to get back to us about coming over next week. We'll see if that happens. It's not the first time the schedule has been confused like this. I get that they handle a ton of kids and appointments, but it's kind of frustrating because I want her to be getting her help, and I feel really bad cancelling. It's just difficult to keep everything straight sometimes, I suppose.
Our next visit is on the 16th. Hopefully we get more information on transition then, because her 3rd birthday is coming up quite fast.
Our speech therapist has called and cancelled quite a few times due to being sick or whatever. She's also called same day to say she will be 30 minutes later. I have tried to be patient, but at the same time, it's kind of like, how is this helping Azrael? If she's inconsistent enough he will pick up on it and not be as willing to work with her. She's the therapist and the adult, so ultimately she is the one that has to be the first one to show consistency. We've never cancelled for any reason! Understandable that there are a lot of kids that need therapy, but then it means these therapists need to take on only what they can handle, instead of cramming sessions or cancelling sessions.
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