Julia was taking it easy and watching some TV. She didn’t stay like this for long, but long enough for her Mama to take her photo. She does some pretty cute things these days.

We took Julia to visit her pediatrician to discuss her speech issues today. He set up a consult with an ENT at our Children’s Hospital next Tuesday. Also, we will be doing some speech testing with a speech therapist to see what her needs are. We are excited to see what is in store. Emily has been cute, she told me that she was going to teach Julia how to talk. It was very sweet that she was thinking of her sister.

On a side note, Julia measured at 26 lbs. and 34 + inches (mama doesn’t remember the exact size). Given Julia’s refusal to drink milk out of a sippy cup, I was curious to see if she had held her own for weight. Oddly enough, she has risen a few percentile points since her last check-up 5 months ago. The doctor was pleased and told me to stick to my plan to move her to sippy cups.

This is just a benchmark post. It is good to note current conditions so that later we can see how much we have grown or changed. Also, memories fade and it is good to remember details that are easy to forget.

If you spend time with Julia it is easy to see her strong and individual spirit. It is also obvious that she does not speak much or clearly. Being a pretty laid back parent, I have allowed her to grow and work out her own forms of communication. We have been waiting for a light bulb moment and for her speech to blossom out of her, but haven’t seen it yet. Through a course of conversations with several people and an observation from an aunt, we are taking a more active role in pursuing help for her. That role involved an interview today with a state agency to measure her speech deficiency. It is a good news/bad news situation. The bad news is not terrible; it is just that her deficiency is not bad enough for this agency to work with her. The good news is that in every other area Julia is doing very well. This is probably why she doesn’t qualify. She has been clever enough to work out other ways to communicate with us. The lady who visited with us described Julia as being pretty unique. Most kids with speech problems like hers, show issues in other areas. She definitely encouraged us to continue to look into options for Julia.

Our next step is to take Julia back to the pediatrician. We are going to have him check to see if she is “tongue tied” which maybe aggravating her speech issues. Also, we will get his recommendations for speech therapy. Of all the things that worry me, amazingly this has not become one of them. I’m very curious and interested in knowing more. I’m excited to think that we are going to help her across a hurdle.

Just an overview of where she is at now:

• She speaks partial words generally revolving around single consonant sound.
• She has little inflection in her words. She does have plenty of volume control and will speak from a whisper to a shout/squeal.
• She seems to not make many sounds that involve her tongue (although she uses the ‘d’ sound of DaDa well).
• She will make small two or three word sentences.
• Without context, most of her words are not understandable.
• When reading a book she asks her version of “what’s that” and will answer questions about the page.
• She loves to play animal sounds games.
• She loves to sing babble songs while she plays and goes to sleep.
• She uses a combination of signs, facial expressions, words, and pointing/head shaking to express her wishes and needs.
• Hearing is hard to measure on a two year old, but she seems to hear just fine. That is when she wants to. She hears the door open when it is time for Daddy to come home and runs to greet him.
• She is generally a very happy kid, these last several weeks she has struggled more with emotional issues and lots of tears. We don’t know if these are related to this issue or just normal two-year old developments.