Speech Assessment

(Here's a post I wrote weeks ago, but forgot to change from draft to post, duh...)

Went up to UCSF a couple weeks ago for Lulu's post-surgical and speech assessment at UCSF. All's well there. There looks to be no need for further surgery for speech improvement. The palate looks long enough and there is plenty of movement. She can make most sounds, just not consistently at the beginning, middle and end of words, so speech therapy is all that is prescribed for now. That's really good news! Interesting results too indicate that while she's about 40% unintelligible to the untrained listener (I'd say there's only about 10% of what she says that I don't understand) she's testing at the mid kindergarten level for language use. Pretty amazing for 10 months home and only 3.5.

In preparation for the upcoming post placement visit by the social worker, I did a little cleaning in Lulu's room. The girl loves her shoes and has so many pairs it's ridiculous. When we got home from China, she had a pile of three or four near a set of bins. Well that pile has grown to 20+ pairs and I finally got one of those shoe holders that go in the closet. While she was with her grandparents one afternoon, I put most of the shoes in the closet, leaving out the two or three she wears most often. When I brought her home, she called me into her room. "Someone stole all my shoes! They are all gone." When I asked who did it, she said, "maybe Grandma." So we called grandma and she held the phone up to where the pile of shoes had been and said, "hey, look what happened!" God, it was hysterical. She wasn't at all upset, but just amazed that they had all disappeared.





We went to the monthly FCC gathering at a local park and Lulu fell in love with my friend's little girl Ryleigh. She's exactly the same age as Lulu's foster sister would be now and she had a great time pushing her on the swing and going down the slide with her. Truly, every time Lulu sees a baby, she asks if she can touch it and then if she can hold it. She really is a little mama!