Speech

The days of answering Ellie with a "huh?" or a "what did you just say to me, kid?" may not last forever!

In all reality, I know she probably would have outgrown her little speech quirks eventually. But you know what? With a fantastic - and free - speech program right at our fingertips (our entire school system is really, really incredible here), we figured it couldn't hurt to try and see if she qualified.

And she did qualify. I had mixed feelings when they delivered the final verdict that she did, indeed, need some speech therapy. Part of me was elated that she would finally get the help she needed. The other part of me was cringing at all the words they kept throwing at me like "disability" (seriously!) and "special education plan." Ellie's about as far from disabled as you can get, but apparently the special needs lingo is still associated with speech therapy in the school system.

The speech pathologist also confirmed all the sound substitutions I had picked up on. Some of them are normal for a 3-year old, but most of them are definitely not typical. And she drops a lot of sounds, especially when she's telling a story and talking fast. She confirmed that she could only understand about 50% of what Ellie says, which is what I had guesstimated as well. Average comprehension when you're listening to a 3-year old should be about 70-80%, so our girl has some definite room for improvement.

Unfortunately, adding in this new speech class has made our schedule kind of hectic. Ellie goes to speech three mornings a week and she's still doing preschool the other two mornings. Had I known she'd be doing all this, I totally would have registered Sadie for morning Kindergarten. But I definitely did NOT know all this back in April when we reserved our Kindergarten spot, so our days consist of Ellie being gone for a good part of every morning, and then the two of them switching spots and Sadie being gone for the afternoon. They miss each other terribly and it also means not a single minute of kid-free down time for me. But on the bright side, I get lots of one-on-one time with each kid - something I'm trying to treasure before baby girl comes.

This kid may not be perfectly articulate, but she is most definitely full of personality! And those big hazel eyes...