Speech, Updated

I feel like Ellie's been a little overlooked on the blog lately between all of Sadie's end-of-year stuff and the milestones Avery's been reaching. I hate to resort to stereotypes, but I guess that's what happens when you're the middle child.

Ellie's been in speech for a year now and she's been doing so great that I wanted to make a note of how far she's come. I credit all of her progress to her teacher. She has pretty much the world's best teacher and it's not just me saying that - the more I talk to other parents whose children have had her, the more I think she's just really, really good at her job. And Ellie adores her.

When she first started, Ellie substituted the t sound for lots of things. I have to admit that it always made me smile to hear her say "Tadie" instead of Sadie and "tar" instead of car. But now she says her s sound almost 100% of the time. She also says her k and g (like grape) sounds almost always, although I do have to remind her about those more often.

I've also noticed that she just slows down and speaks with more clarity. Before, she'd kind of run words and sentences together so that even the stuff she was pronouncing correctly was difficult to understand. But now she speaks up and enunciates just a little bit more and it has helped SO much.

I love speech and I'm so glad we have a great program here that can help Ellie so well. But I'm dreading the new school year. We enrolled her in preschool - which is three times a week - since she'll (most likely - I'm still a bit on the fence about it) be going to Kindergarten in just over a year. And with speech being three times a week as well, it's going to be a crazy year.

So here's to a nice, relaxing summer before all the craziness starts. Yay for summer!