Rachel has been receiving one on one private speech therapy now for the last 8 weeks. The therapist comes to our house once a week, and does therapy for one hour. She pours her heart and soul into planning the lessons and therapy for Rachel each week. She recently purchased a computer program that she's added to their lineup of therapy, which Rachel loves. She's made a treasure box and set up a reward system for earning treasures and stickers and really works well with Rachel.
Wednesdays is speech day. When school starts up in 2 weeks, Wednesdays will be minimum days for the girls which will still work out perfectly for Rachel and our weekly speech.
When Dr. D'Antonio first evaluated her over 8 weeks ago, we learned that Rachel's speech was worse than we originally thought. She has what's called a Phonic Awareness Disorder in addition to other speech issues. There are certain sounds in the middle of words that she simply does not hear. Her hearing is fine, it's that she doesn't hear the phonetics.
For the last few weeks, we've been working and dwelling and working hard on distinguishing between certain sounds. Tooth tapper sounds such as the 'th' sounds and lip biter sounds as in 'f' sounds, etc. We have homework and things to work with Rachel on during the week and we've been really good about it (we aren't paying the big bucks to not do our homework! LOL).
This morning, Dr. D'Antonio brought along a colleague, a speech pathologist who specializes in cleft affected children birth to three years of age. Together they did therapy and it gave Dr. D'Antonio a change to get the thoughts and opinion of another pathologist. The most exciting news is that she was BLOWN AWAY with the breakthrough that Rachel seemed to have reached this last week!!! It's like something clicked and she got EVERYTHING correct and made all the sounds perfectly the first try and was able to self correct on a few words without prompting for correction! She's even cleaned up sounds that were first documented as problem sounds in the initial evaluation without having even been worked on!
We are so excited for this breakthrough! And so very thankful the Lord brought Dr. D'Antonio into our lives to help Rachel...
Rachel was very excited for today. She up and dressed and totally ready for school by 6:45am. We had requested her teacher and were pleased to discover yesterday that our request had been granted. She's got a lot of kids in her class that she knows and looks like it'll be a great school year!
School gets out at 2:15. I can't wait to hear how she enjoyed her school day and eating lunch at school and what she thinks!
The tooth has been cleaned and put in a baggie and tucked inside the little tooth fairy pillow and placed beneath her pillow! Daddy said the first lost tooth was deserving of $5.00 and that's what's been tucked inside her pillow!
This girl loved playing in the sand. Everyday she played in the sand, either digging, being buried, or sitting in holes the kids had dug and then filled with water. Thankfully, one of our friends who had a shower and hook ups, let me shower her in her trailer everyday. There's no other way I'd have been able to get the sand out of every crevice of her body. LOL. 
