What’s This?

Piper’s new favorite phrase is “What’s this?”  She asks it about everything.  I mean EVERYTHING.  Even if she knows what it is, she wants you to tell her.  The minute she gets up in the morning she walks around pointing to everything and asking “What’s this?”  Now Henry has started asking, too.  I can see how this may be annoying to some people, but after working on speech for as long as we have been I just don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing them talk!

One thing that Piper does do that is slightly annoying is call me, “Mom.”  Not “mommy” or “mama” but just plain old “Mom.”  What is she, 13?  I hear, “Hey, Mom” from her all day long, and now Henry has started calling me “Mom,” too.  I guess I’m not going to have much say in what they call me and that I may as well get used to it.

Rosemary’s newest phrase is “I want not!”  I finally figured out that means “I don’t want to.”  It’s pretty funny. 

It’s been a little over a week since the girls got their ear tubes.  In general, Penelope seems happier (except for yesterday when she was really teething badly).  But Piper and Rosemary. . . .  The improvement in speech is pretty shocking.  It’s been really noticeable this weekend.  The girls used to regularly mispronounce things.  For instance, I’d say, "blanket” and Piper would repeat with “wookie.”  Then I’d say “blanket” again and Piper would definitively repeat “wookie!”  And we’d do that a few times, then move on.  This weekend, I never had to do that.  I’d say something, and everyone would repeat it back – usually perfectly.  Sometimes they would speak so clearly that I would assume there is no way that they were saying what I heard, but they were.  Henry has been speaking pretty clearly, but now he is saying a lot more words, probably because the girls are talking so much now.  Before they got ear tubes, Rosemary would usually only speak when you made her, but now she is saying things “spontaneously” (as the speech therapists say). 

Speaking of speech therapy, Piper and Rosemary had their assessment with the school system on Friday.  When it was over, the speech therapist said that she believes that Piper probably will not qualify for services and that Rosemary probably would, but that she had to do the actual scoring to see where they end up.  Apparently during the assessment Piper was using clear three-word phrases spontaneously.  Rosemary didn’t speak much.  At all.  The therapist said that she’d ask Rosemary a question such as, “What do you use to drink?” and Rosemary would stare down the cup but refuse to say “cup” (even though she could say that even before ear tubes).  The speech therapist said that she has no doubt that Rosemary can speak, but that Rosemary is a bit “stubborn” and “lazy.”  I don’t disagree with that at all.  Rosemary is certainly stubborn, and she definitely doesn’t see any reason to do anything that someone else can do for her.  What is really funny is that while I was talking to the speech therapist about how Rosemary was not speaking spontaneously, Piper took Rosemary’s stickers, and Rosemary yelled, “NO!  Those are MY stickers!!”  Ah, Rosemary. . . .

Henry’s speech assessment is next Friday, then later this month we will meet to find out who qualifies for speech therapy.  Based on Friday, I imagine that Piper and Henry will not qualify, but Rosemary will.  We’ll see. 

I can’t believe our weekend is already over.  It seemed to fly by.  I’m really having a hard time not thinking about the tornadoes last week.  That storm is always in the back of my mind, and I keep thinking that I’m hearing the sirens.  I feel on edge.  Life for us hasn’t changed much, but then it has.  The destruction and deaths are not far away.  There is probably not one person here that I know that doesn’t know someone who has been horribly affected by these tornadoes.  I don’t think that most people outside of Alabama or the South understand just how extensive the damage is, and how last Wednesday we didn’t have “just another tornado” and that the normal precautions really just weren’t enough for many people.  Here we’re definitely not new to tornadoes, but we are new to the type (and quantity) of tornadoes that we had last week.  I hope that we never see anything like that again.