YAKKITY YAK

Hollyn is finally talking back! And yes! That's a good thing!!! After more than a year of weekly Speech Therapy sessions, Hollyn is finally talking and talking and talking! We are so excited to see her progressing! She has soo many words and is using full sentences, asking us for things, and telling us stories too! Like "me fun at church Mama! draw and slide!" and "uh oh!" and "no way!" and "oh man!" and "come on! peas!" (Can you tell she has a 9 year old brother! ha!) Anyway, it has been so great sharing Friday mornings with her AMAZING speech therapist whose name is also...Shelley.

She plays lots of fun games with Hollyn and each of them have a purpose in helping Hollyn to form speech sounds and develop her vocabulary. Hollyn has trouble blowing bubbles and forming the "b" sound, so Shelley brings bubbles for Hollyn to blow and Hollyn thinks it is fantastic to blow bubbles inside!

She is so fun and is teaching Hollyn and Jessa Li so many things. Jessa doesn't need therapy, but Shelley is so nice and let's her "sit in" and play too. Although, I have to remind Jessa that it is Hollyn's turn to answer otherwise Jessa would answer all the questions. She has so much language and knows all her colors already. Hollyn is still trying to learn the basics. For some reason she decided to remember Black and Yellow first and can recite them the most. (Purdue Fan??? hmmm... could be!) So now we are working on Red, Blue, and Green. She almost has orange down too. For now she can recongizne that buses are yellow, Big Bird is yellow, Elmo is Red, and Cookie (Monster) is Blue, and the grass is green. We are signing the colors too as we say them out loud. That seems to help her remember words when we sign the word too. The funniest thing is that when I ask her what color her bowl or shirt or whatever is (and it happens to be red) well she doesn't hesitate to answer me! She smiles really big and shouts as loud as she can, "ELMO!" LOL! Oh well, we'll just keep at it!

Still - AMAZING progress! So proud of her and so fun to hear her say things like "bbbb ... bubbabee!" (bumblebee). It was a long time coming, but finally! She can talk back to me and we can actually have a conversation! She loves to play Legos and with her Dora House and she is coming up to me throughout the day now and asking me "you play Momma...peas!" So cute! And tell me, how can I say no?! Just look at that adorable, precious face!