Esther Marie is A Sponge...and A Ham!

Happy October! Hard to believe it is "fall" now...especially since in the South it still feels like summer.

Esther Marie had her second appointment with her speech therapist this morning here at the house. Ms. Michele was here for almost 2 hours playing with Esther Marie while working on speech. The idea is to get her to mimic speech as it relates to her, in her own environment. Michele was constantly amazed at how Esther Marie tried to imitate words and sounds and kept saying she was just like a sponge. Apparently some children she works with are not very responsive. And Esther Marie was playing music from a Leap Frog musical table she has and was dancing around and showing out...such a little ham! She loves attention and therefore will imitate to get it. Puzzles provide a good opportunity for Emmie to work on fine motor skills, cognitive skills and speech. Also good is using pretend dishes and utensils. A lot of different toys become a phone for Esther Marie and she enjoys talking on the real phone too. We have to watch her to make sure she is not actually calling someone!

We have three more therapy appointments this month and of course, Kindermusic class each Thursday. Esther Marie is fully emerged in the "early intervention" program at this point...and it will be interesting to see how she is doing at the end of this month.

It will be about six months after the palate repair surgery, which was on August 20th, before the doctor and speech therapist at the cleft clinic can fully evaluate how well the surgery helped her. The objective is to have her talking as much as possible, and making sounds, so they can properly evaluate this. Then we will go from there in deciding whether she needs more palate surgery. (I pray not!) We have a follow-up appointment at three months to talk about more intensive speech therapy.

I am not sure if I mentioned this before, but Dr. G said Esther Marie will need to have surgery when she is four to repair and reshape her nose and her lip. She has too much scar tissue from her first surgery to correct the double cleft lip that she was born with. Her little nose is apparently too flat and her nostrils flare out in the wrong direction. I dread this surgery because she will be old enough to be more aware of what is happening.

Well, God is good and He will get Esther Marie, his little angel, through all this and also our family. Thanks for your love, support, encouragement and prayers!