Working Hard

Yikes! It has been way too long since I updated here for McKenna. The holidays were so busy, then gearing up for my brother's wedding my health kind of fell apart and we are under the gun to finish choreography for the show this summer with our dance students . . . I also make Jimmie's blog a priority over this one. I really want to update this once a week though, so I'm making that my goal again.

McKenna has really made good progress. Especially in the last 3 weeks or so. It seems like something has clicked (on a McKenna level) and she is having an easier time getting words out. It has been super exciting. This week we started our new plan which includes speech therapy twice a week now. Tuesday she had such a good session I was tearing up. I'm not sure why the tears come. It's just very emotional to hear her being successful with her speech. She worked so hard! She made good attempts over and over and probably about 70 percent of these attempts ended in success with the word or 2 word combo that she was working on! She is even starting to work on 3 words together.

She still has a lot of work to do because probably 90 percent of her speech in unintelligible to listeners who do not spend A LOT of time with her. She does still show decreased motion with her mouth in general. Sometimes she kind of sounds like she has marbles in her mouth while she's speaking. Right now she's whining at me and saying, "cmiiiiie mom, cmiiie" the "cmiiie" is said with an nasal emission . . . She's saying, "come on" or "come here" mom. We call her speech- "McKenna speak" . . . (-:

One of my bigger concerns for her has been her self confidence over this. She is super aware and self conscious about her speech especially when she is put on the spot about it. Ms. T. has suggested that she might do better in therapy if Cole and I were not there. We will look into to taking her to Ms. T.'s clinic later this year. For now I have sat back a few feet away and not overtly participated and that really has seemed to help. McKenna has made more attempts and been much more focused in the sessions where I'm there, but trying to look like I'm not paying attention. (-:

In play with her peers she's never had the opportunity to play with other children without Cole. My suspicion is that it would not go great. She quickly becomes confused, frustrated and discouraged when someone can not understand her. I have listened and spyed while she and Cole play with other kids and Cole (bless his heart) translates for her and includes her the whole time. While I was in Canada- David's brother and girlfriend watched Cole and Kenna for most of Saturday. Rachel (girlfriend) told me that by the end of the day McKenna was extremely agitated and upset. She kept trying to communicate her wants and needs but was not being understood. Cole was there, but playing with his cousin and not paying attention. Rachel finally called Cole over who did help translate, but at that point McKenna was just on overload with her frustration.

We met with the school district on Monday to talk about transitioning from "First Steps" when McKenna turns 3 this summer. Dave and I were impressed with everyone we met, with the facility and the obvious care and passion they put into the kids who are struggling a bit. McKenna will have to go through a process to determine if she qualifies or not for their services. They told us that unfortunately because of funding (or lack there of) they can only take the more severe cases that qualify on a strict criteria. I can't imagine McKenna not qualifying, but we'll see.

Love,
Amber