Look Who's Talking

So in April I asked for prayers for an unspecified situation, and in this blog post I shared that Rachel was in private therapy for her (lack of) speech issues. This is the post in which I share that Rachel finished her last session of therapy last week and her therapist J. (pictured above) reassessed her. I am thrilled to share that Rachel was assessed at a normal speech level for her age!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Whoo hooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Over the summer Rachel had a forty-five minute therapy session once a week with J. (whom we loved) and we could see such a huge improvement. It was startling. I think Rachel just needed a push from people who weren't us. J. was able to interact with Rachel and insist on things we couldn't get Rachel to do. It was awesome!!! Of course, Miss Rachel's independence and stubbornness got in the way just a little bit :)

I would like to give a huge shout out to Dave who worked on Rachel's homework with her consistently, as opposed to me, who didn't work on it with her at all. Oooops.

Also, remember the "free therapy" I was frustrated with in my last post. Well guess who called us last week offering to assess Rachel?!?!?!? They are going to check in this week to see where J. assessed her at and then discuss further options. However at this point I don't think Rachel will qualify for anything. We still feel so good about our decision to pursue the private option for speech therapy.

Everyone who sees Rachel has commented on how well she is doing. And last week J. said she seemed like a different kid from the one she had seen two months before. But don't just take my word for it. Here is a video of Rachel sharing her exciting news for this week. And also displaying some of the silliness which comes along with being two. Ha ha ha!!!

Note: For "Sam" Rachel can't really say "S" yet, which is normal for her age, so she either calls him "Bam" or "Dam" both of which we find really funny! Also, one of the things J encouraged us in was that if Rachel can't say a word properly, it's better to get the beginning consonant rather than a good ending. So for awhile Rachel was calling Sam "Am" which isn't as good as if she were to call him "Sssssss" as she does in the video.