Talking.

Miss Sunshine had her monthly visit with the speech therapist today. And, oh boy, was it a WONDERFUL visit.

The speech therapist was SO impressed with how she is doing. She said that she is completely on track with her speech and is in fact a bit accelerated, especially considering that she was behind not even four months ago!

And in even more wonderful, exciting speech news - we will not be seeing our therapist again until February! (Not that we don't like our ST, because we do. We like her very much actually. But not seeing her means Miss Sunshine is progressing so well that the need is reduced!) She will come back when Miss Sunshine is two and reevaluate again, and we will go from there.

We are noting some nasality in Miss Sunshine's speech - mainly when she had to transition to a non-nasal vowel from a nasal consonant. In particular, we hear it when she says "Snacks". "N" is a VERY nasal letter (Go ahead and say it. You'll notice that you can feel a lot of the sound coming out your nose if you concentrate on it). And she just has a hard time transitioning to a proper sounding "A" after that "N". Her ST (speech therapist, in case you didn't already catch that) says this is totally normal, and likely something she will outgrow, as she CAN say the non-nasal vowels properly when they are not behind a nasal consonant. It's along the same lines as the ear tubes - it's just going to take TIME for the muscles of her palate to learn how to do their job now that they are in the correct place - and one of those jobs involves speech. So, we give it time. If she is still having issue with this at around age 4 or so, she may be checked to see if she is a candidate for another procedure, a pharyngeal flap (or P-flap as it is more commonly called) which somehow involves lengthening the back of her palate to create a better seal to reduce nasality, or at least, that is my understanding of it. I really haven't done a lot of research into the procedure as yet, because I am still hoping that it will wind up being unnecessary in Miss Sunshine's case. Only time will tell.

So for now, we are just going to be THRILLED with Miss Sunshine's progress, as her speech has always been at the top of our concerns, and now we can shove it to the back of the list. Well, honestly, now that we don't need to be so worried about it, that pretty much eradicates the list!