Red Fish

Red Fish started piano lessons a few weeks ago.  She loves it so far and begs me to practice with her.  She is doing a group class with a couple of friends and so far I think the program is pretty interesting.  A lot of our neighbors go to the same music program.  It involves a lot of ear training and theory but at a very relaxed pace.  Everything is very child friendly and easy for Red Fish to understand and enjoy.  It will be fascinating to see how things continue.  It's exciting to see her starting on an instrument.  Music has had such a profound impact on my life, I'm excited to see where it takes Red Fish.

I always have to keep Red Fish busy.  Her little mind moves so fast.  She learns things quickly and easily and I really enjoy her thirst for knowledge.  It's hard to keep up with her.

We have been doing speech again for the past 5 months with a new therapist this time and we work daily at home but not for as long as we used to.  Speech is so much less stressful than it used to be.  We are closer to home, it isn't quite as intense and  Red Fish is doing fabulously.  We have almost nailed "sh" "l" and her multi-syllable words are so much better articulated.  She hardly ever drops syllables now.  When she was tested in October for "j" and "ch" she couldn't even pronounce them in isolation but now she is starting to add them into conversation on her own.  She is at 100% on "th" when we quiz her and she is just working on getting the percentage up in normal conversation.  We just started really drilling on "ch" and she is doing awesome.  It's so exciting to see all of her progress.  It really is miraculous how much progress she has made in the last few years of speech therapy.  I'm so proud of her.  I guess it's difficult to understand the depth of my excitement and pride when she is articulate and talks so much unless you know how much work serious speech therapy is.  I have a small circle of friends and family who really get how huge her accomplishments really are or how much work she has had to put in.  Our hurdles aren't nearly as big anymore and the battles we are fighting are so much smaller than they used to be.  It's difficult for me to stop myself from grabbing people by the ears and shouting- "Did you hear how well she articulated that sentence?  Aren't you excited about how easy that was to understand?"