The Higgins Family: Everything Embry: August 9

Pool with Eliot

The afternoons after school get long...pickup is 2:30 pm and she doesn't get her normal 2-3 hour nap at school...although this week she was still zonked on the floor in the middle of her loud, bright classroom when I picked her up! Hilarious! Anyway, Jacob was working late so we packed dinner with Lauren and Eliot and got to a new pool we were trying out by 3:00 pm. The kids had a blast and Embry was WORN out!

Living the LIFE!

e&e

Story Time and Chick-fil-A

We were happy to meet up with a bunch of our friends Tuesday after a few weeks of us traveling. Story time got a little crazy during the shaky eggs song and Embry and William bounced right into each other's heads. Poor E got a black eye immediately, but shook it off after a few minutes of cuddling with Mommy. We ended the play date with lunch at CFA...Mmmmm!!!!

The Golden Hour at White Rock Lake

I'd been wanting to take Embry over to White Rock Lake during the "golden hour" (the hour before sunset) to get some pictures of her. Jacob worked late again Tuesday and she took a nice long nap, so I figured she could take staying up a bit late, so about 7:15 we headed to the lake with Eliot. She was in a bit of a mood, and only wanted to take pictures with Eliot RIGHT by her side, so I got some cute closeups (despite her black puffy eye) and some cute pics of the two of them. It was a gorgeous evening and the breeze on the lake made it not feel all 100+ degrees...

My 29th Birthday

Wednesday I turned the big 2-9 and celebrated all day long! Jacob had a court appearance downtown at 10:30, so we were able to go out to breakfast, where they gave me a piece of coconut cream pie to go...omg! We then went over to a "birthday play date" hosted by a few of my girlfriends and had lunch and cupcakes there. That evening we met Jacob for dinner at Chuy's for a delish dinner! The celebration continued Thursday when another group of girlfriends took me out to a yummy dinner!!

Breakfast with these cuties

I definitely cheated on my Gestational Diabetes diet and ate this later in the day!

Birthday play date!

The two year olds singing Happy Birthday =)

Waiting for me with her dolly

Speech Therapy Evaluation

Thursday I took Embry to a private speech therapy evaluation. My mama instinct has told me that she definitely has some annunciation problems and I know she's hard to understand. When I had her evaluated through ECI last summer, I was worried about her lack of speech...which isn't the case anymore. I know she's on track developmentally with number of words she says, making sentences, and she understands everything we say, but Jacob and I have still been concerned about her speech.

Turns out we were right...after an hour long evaluation she was given a diagnosis of "severe articulation disorder". They did the Goldman Fristoe 2 Articulation test on her and she scored a 53. The average is 85-115, so she's definitely pretty behind in articulation. The therapist said she was confident it is not an apraxia problem or any sort of understanding issue, it seems 100% articulation. During the test, the therapist kept mentioning how "stimulable" she is, meaning when she'd say something incorrectly and the therapist would correct her, she'd say it the right way. Which of course also means, she's a great candidate for speech therapy. They want her to come 2-3 days a week and they do not accept insurance...meaning we'd be spending upward of $700 a month on speech therapy.

Thursday afternoon I spoke with three of my friends (two here in Dallas and one in Houston) who are speech therapists and they all agree with our plan of action. In the state of Texas, at age three you can be tested through the school district in which you live and then you can qualify for state funded therapy that way. All three of my friends agree that waiting 8 more weeks until she's three and having her re-evaluated is our best option. If she scores so low again on the articulation test, she should qualify for free speech therapy. If they say she doesn't qualify, we will start looking for other, cheaper options than this specific place we had her tested.

In the mean time we've picked a few letters which we know she can say, but is just lazy about and are working on them with her. It's amazing how quickly she's picking things up already!