Another Speech Therapy Opportunity for Audrey

As if Audrey's schedule is not full enough as it is, I had to go ahead and enroll her in the speech clinic at the university. It all came up rather quickly when I was talking to one of my professor's after class last week and I just couldn't pass up the opportunity. It hardly costs a thing and even if Audrey doesn't benefit much from it, I'm happy to have the grad students get some experience working with a child with apraxia.

So, for the rest of the semester, Audrey will have a 1-hour therapy session on Thursday mornings with 2 grad students. We already went last Thursday and Audrey took to one of the grad students immediately, whose name also happens to be Audrey! This first meeting was just to get to know each other and to gather a bunch of background information from me. We'll see how it goes this week but I'm excited that Audrey will now be receiving therapy, in varying amounts, 5 days a week.

Aimee loses another tooth!

Boy, just look at that gap! She has now lost 4 teeth and has begun negotiating with the Tooth Fairy. Not for more money, but more time to keep her teeth to show other people before turning it over to the Tooth Fairy. So far, the Tooth Fairy has been very understanding, but I think Aimee is starting to press her luck.

Good news -- she's still able to whistle!

Jean Update

Hmmmmm....where to begin? About 6 months ago I got the crazy idea to go back to college to finish up my bachelor's degree. But, instead of taking the easy route and continuing on as an Accounting major (boring!), I decided to switch to Communicative Disorders. So, although I have enough units to be considered a senior, I'm pretty much starting all over...or so it seems.

Last fall, while I was going through the re-admission process with Cal State Long Beach for the Spring 2007 semester, I took an Interpersonal Speech class through Long Beach City College because I knew that was a General Ed requirement I was lacking that would transfer over and would cost much less to take at City vs CSULB. That class went well and this semester I'm taking 2 classes at CSULB: Anatomy & Physiology for Speech, Language and Hearing (not as bad as it sounds) and Introduction to Language Acquisition. I still need to get together with an academic advisor to see where I stand with all my GE requirements but I'm afraid they're going to tell me I have to take most of those classes again because it's been 20 years (!!!) since I was last in college. I'm choosing to stay in denial for a little while longer.

It's interesting to find that my dedication and motivation for school is quite different at 41 years of age than it was in my early 20s. Going to classes, doing the readings etc is all so much easier now than it seemed to be way back then. Must be that maturity thing. Anyway, for now, I'm really enjoying being back in that environment. Although, juggling school, work and kids (especially the demands of Audrey's speech problem) is proving to be more difficult than I thought it would be.

I'm still working from home doing programming as an independent contractor for an insurance company based in Phoenix. I couldn't ask for a better arrangement as it allows me ample flexibility for school and kids. I can't imagine having to drag myself to an office rather than down the hallway...

I've been volunteering in Aimee's kindergarten classroom every other Friday since the school year began. That's a lot of fun and I know Aimee likes it when I'm in the classroom. This Friday I have the opportunity to go into Audrey's classroom as well to read a Dr. Seuss book to the class. Aimee's excited about coming along and meeting Audrey's classmates.

That's about it. I'm not exercising AT ALL and I've gained back all the weight that I lost 10 years ago. That's the next thing to tackle....any day now...

Audrey rides the bus!

I forgot to post some pictures of Audrey taking the bus to school!

Aimee Update

Aimee started kindergarten last September and turned 6 in December. Wow, the time really has gone by fast. She's doing really well in school and math seems to be her strong suit (takes after her father that way). She's made several new friends and already doesn't like sharing the details of her day with mom and dad. That does not bode well for the future!

We recently signed her up for a self-defense class. She wears a uniform and is a white belt. Although she complains about going to class, afterward on the walk home, she jumps all over the place, kicking and yelling "Kee-ah!"....so, I think she likes it.

Aimee is eager to go camping again with Joshua Tree being her location of choice. She loves to scramble over the rocks and scare her mother with how high she can climb. It works out best for everyone if Gary takes her on some of those hikes alone. Hopefully, we'll get something scheduled for early this spring.

So, that's the quick recap on Aimee. Here are some recent pictures of her!

Aimee with her cousin, Alyssa, at Aimee's Princess party.

Celebrating her birthday at Grandma Brandt's in Oregon

Just goofing off

Audrey Update

I thought I should start out by giving a quick update on each member of the family since it may have been a long time since we've been in touch with some of you reading this blog.

So, Audrey turned 3 at the end of December. She's smart, funny, outgoing and sometimes very stubborn. She and Aimee are really starting to butt heads these days now that Audrey will no longer accept Aimee running the show all of the time. Typical 3-year old and sister stuff, I imagine.

Audrey has been receiving speech therapy for over a year now for a disorder she has called apraxia (for more information on this please visit http://www.apraxia-kids.org). As of the beginning of the year, she attends a special day class preschool at one of our school district's elementary schools. She goes everyday for about 2 1/2 hours a day. She gets picked up at home by the bus and LOVES riding it to school. She's so proud of her backpack and eagerly gets on the bus everyday.

Her progress has been slow but her prognosis is good. In January we had the opportunity to attend a workshop in Las Vegas on treatment strategies for Apraxia where Audrey was a demonstration child. I learned a lot and was able to bring home some new ideas and techniques to use with Audrey to boost her verbal production. Audrey got to spend 30 minutes with one of the nation's leading experts in treating Apraxia. All in all, it was a great experience. And my thanks go out to Aunt Glo and Uncle Joe who accompanied Audrey and me on the trip and took Audrey on a 2-day tour of Vegas (including face-to-face encounters with show girls!) so that I could attend the entire conference.

Audrey is now stringing some words together to make littles sentences such as "I want more milk, please". Although her pronunciation still has a long way to go, her ability to start putting some of her words together has made a tremendous difference in our interactions with her.

Here are some pictures of her first day of school:

Wind - © i See the Moon Photography

This is a picture from a photo shoot Aimee did last weekend for our friend, Martha, who was competing in a photo contest. Martha often names her sessions and this one is referred to as "Tea by the Sea". There will be more pictures later that will make that title more clear!

If you would like to see more of Martha's work, please visit i See the Moon Photography. As always, we feel very privileged to be her guinea pigs!!

Initial Blog Post

Well, there ya go. My friend, Martha, talked me into creating a blog. Don't know how much I'll use it but this could be a good way to keep family and friends up to date with the happenings in the Newkirk household. We'll give it a whirl!