A big reason to be thankful

Today I'm thankful for all those who have helped in Max's journey to speak. Today after almost three years of working on his speech, Max has graduated out of the speech program.
Max has had 5 speech teachers in two counties and two school districts. He has come a long way from the "ga" we started with.
He’s great at animal sounds , Ja and ga. We still use signs for some things . We think we are hearing No, but are not sure yet.  You can click on the links to take you back to the post about Max

Our first Goal was "ma-ma" It took from Jan until july for that to happen. We loved our first speech therpist. she did so much to set the foundation for Max. we were so sad when we moved and had to transfer teachers.

Max loves baby signing time. He picks up the signs quickly and will relate them to items in the house. It so cool to see him pick them up, wish I could learn them as quickly.
We switched to working with sign language to take the pressure off of talking. It worked like a charm. Max loved signing and the whole family learned more about sign language.

As we switched from Birth to three into the school system, Max started picking up and was willing to say more words.
click here to hear Max speak.

Once Max started talking, he got frustrated quickly and would just scream! So the next goal was to get him to learn to slow down and use words.
I managed to find some comparison videos from starting speech to a year into it.
a year in

Max switched teachers between school years last year. He struggled in the beginning with the new teacher. Life was also crazy with Josh's cancer returning. He entered preschool and that helped a lot. Having a wonderful teacher, who's willing to help remind him to use his words instead of screaming at kids, paid off. he also was able to start hear other kids say sounds. His speech teacher decided to go for the "s" sound and then work back to the other sounds. He naturally nailed it, because that's what max does.
 We were saddened when we had to change schools and speech teachers again, but this time around he got evaluated and discovered he's at the top of his game. He has some fine tuning to do, but that will come with age.

Update/catch up

From my last post you know its been crazy, but that’s life, right? So here’s kind of an mini update about all of us.

Mom’s group started up for me and Max. It’s a great group of moms that meets at school for bible book study and support. Just a great time. naturally I have to miss the 2nd week due to work.  I”ve also been working more, starting work three days a week at 1130am. While it’s fun to be with the kids, it’s leading to some long days and shorter nights it seems. I’m feeling a bit better about things as a bunch of loose ends from last year are finally fixed. I am still excited to see what will happen this year. Max did come with me one day and that was more of a struggle then I thought it would be. I do enjoy when Bella can stay with me for a while and catch up with her.

Josh is doing ok, maybe even good if you take out the cancer stuff. He’s been able to get some fishing in, doing some “farming “ stuff and getting some of the projects in the house done.  The cooler weather has helped out a lot, and we are eagerly awaiting for it to be cooler.

Bella is loving school. She adjusted to 2nd grade so far with no troubles. They have an online system to earn points through out the day for being behaved, helping other, staying on task, participating, ect. Whoever earns the most at the end of the week gets a prize. They also get a character to customize based on how many points they have earned. The system works great for Bella. We had one slip up on her spelling test, but now know going forward what to do. Her reading has found to be in the higher level (no surprise) but we won’t know more of how she is really doing until conferences in October. Bella also started a class via our support group. It will be interesting to see how she handles that. We haven’t told her yet that Poppy has cancer, but it’s coming, so  at least she has an outlet to express those feelings too.

That leaves us to Mr. Max. He started preschool, and is a pro at school. I get more updates on him since I work with his teacher closely. He’s doing really well, and quickly learning how school works. I did worry about him since he’s a boy of “my idea or no way” But he plays ok with the other kids and listens to the teacher. He’s also been able to stay all day a couple times and does good with lunch and quiet time.  He also started speech again. I almost didn’t say anything about it , as he freaked out with his new teacher. Same place, but new teacher and he couldn’t handle it. Well I talked to this new teacher and realized that she didn’t know where Max was, and since then we have had another visit, which was his speed, and he did great!  She’s impressed with his vocabulary, but noticed he drops syllables so that’s what we have t work on.. he also can’t make the “s’ sound so I hope that will come soon too.

Bella got to cantor at church last week. She was so excited!

Max at treatment with Daddy

I lvoe that I get to hang out with my kids at school

 

Max talking about tractors

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walking with daddy

Bella singing:

Saturday June 6th

What a day we had.. We didn’t tell the kids anything until it happened, so the kids were both up by 6am. Josh made breakfast. Afterwards we all got dress and packed to go. We wanted to make it a fun family day…and that we did.

First up was the zoo! The kids had so much. We let them take turns picking where we went and what we did. We played on the playground, train and carousel. Well max did the Carousel. We are pretty sure it was his first time, as Bella always boycotted it at the zoo and he was sleeping at Disney. We got see the Polar Bears a lot! We also had a snack at the new Glacier Grill. IT was just a great time at the zoo.

Next up was a trip around Madison to go to Ella’s Deli for lunch. The kids weren’t sure what to make of the place other then they too had a carousel. Max was cranky because he was tired, but he managed to make it though.

 

Next up was a stop at a friends house to pick up some books. Which worked as a good distraction for Bella until we made it to our next stop, Cabela's . We finally made it to the new one where Josh picked out his father’s day gift. Bella got new bobbers, Max a paint your own John Deere Tractor and cinnamon pecans for me. I”ll admit it’s not as impressive as the one in Richfield and I think has less stuff then the Prairie du Chien one, but it’s the closest for us now. I do like they have a café in it. 

On the way home Max fell asleep, so we let him sleep once we got home. Poor Josh was in pain with his pain so he tried to ice and heat that before he headed off to church. He went tonight because I sing tomorrow and he had a big house project to get done Sunday.  Bella and I just relaxed until Josh got back home.

We had a “whatever you can find” supper. Seemed to work well for the kids. Then Josh suggested doing a bonfire. The kids loved that idea. So we all went down to do chores and get a bonfire going.  The kids had fun looking for sticks to for the fire. Then they would go off and play with toys. We roasted marshmallows and made smores. Max preferred plain marshmallows.  Once it go darker Bella asked for sparklers.. so we said sure! The kids had a blast with that. But we figured out why we had them left from last year..they smoked like crazy!

 

I also got a video of Max talking about our day