Jake's Journey with Apraxia

Last week, my kids were on Spring Break and we took a much needed, restful vacation to the beach. We had a great time and Jake can say the word “beach” just perfect, which makes an apraxia mama like myself feel extra sunshiny inside.

It was nice to have a week of no school, speech sessions, baseball, homework, or chores and we enjoyed spending a week where our biggest decision of the day was, “What’s for dinner?” The party didn’t stop when we got home on Saturday, however, because on Sunday it was time for the Easter Bunny to make his annual delivery. The boys are always happy to see what special treats are in their Easter baskets and looked adorable in their matching bunny ears.

I blogged in February about Jake eating chocolate, but I’d like to follow-up and say that it is absolutely a proven fact that my Lil’ Man talks fabulous when he’s been indulging in Kisses. And although I know chocolate is not part of a healthy breakfast, I must admit that I didn’t shoo him away when he dug into his Easter basket Tuesday morning before speech!

Our family as a whole is enjoying hearing Jake’s cute little voice emerge and we share many “Awww … how cute!” moments at some of his funny mispronunciations. For the most part, between his excellent talent at charades and his improved speech, we are able to communicate with him for the first time, which makes us feel extra giddy inside. He still misses many sounds in words, but he also says a lot of sounds correctly. We are definitely hearing more two and three word sentences come out clearer.

Jake did great in speech this week and his SLP told us to focus on /p/ and /t/ words at home. Oddly enough, he can still say /t/ at the end of a word perfect, but struggles if it’s at the beginning. /P/ still gives him a hard time regardless of where it’s at. In fact, if /p/ is in the middle or the end of a word, typically the entire thing comes out jumbled.

Wednesday night I plugged these words into our Speech-EZ Apraxia app and twenty minutes later I had successfully practiced his speech words at home. He also did both of these sounds on the Tiga Talk app, which still continues to wow him. As his reward for doing his words, Temple Run and Angry Birds was his pat on the back.

The word of the week, which has been repeated close to 1,000 times, is “gecko.” New fascination with lizards? Nope. It’s Lil’ Man’s word for “legos” because he can’t get enough of his brother’s Ninjago Legos. However, after thinking how cute it was for the past week or so, I started correcting him yesterday. I mean, geez, if he’s going to say it that much, I have no choice but to jump at the opportunity to give the more difficult /l/ and /g/ words a workout.

How’s his diet going? No earth-shattering changes to report. The only thing different I’ve been putting into his body on a regular basis is the Omega-3 Flintstones vitamin and Minute Maid juice fortified with Omega-3. What I have discovered, is that it’s not going to be as easy as I thought to incorporate new foods (even yummy ones) into his diet.

For example, today I made Jake cupcakes from Gold Circle Farms DHA Omega-3 eggs. I have actively been trying to get him to eat these particular eggs since we found out he isn’t allergic anymore, but he has refused everything I’ve offered. Today, however, when he saw those cupcakes drowning in chocolate icing, he couldn’t resist. Unfortunately it didn’t go so well and his face broke out in hives and he was very itchy.

When I looked Gold Farm eggs up online, I found out that the all natural, vegetarian feed that they give to the hens to produce eggs with DHA Omega-3 is made of tiny marine algae. It also said that 3-4 of their eggs provide the same amount of DHA as a 3 ounce serving of salmon. Since Jake is severely allergic to fish, I guess I should keep him away from all things that live in water and also test regular eggs next week.