She is 8 today. And she’s having a skating party tonight with something like 11 or 12 girls. Hopefully her birthday present has been collected from Grandma’s post office box and will be given to her.
Today Agent Murphy went for an AAC evaluation because he’s been at something of an impasse in his speech therapy lately. He won’t consistently use the signs he knows, he won’t consistently even try to imitate sounds (let alone get the right ones), so his speech therapist wanted the AAC specialist to evaluate him to determine if there’s anything else that might help him communicate while we keep working on speech.
Today’s therapist agreed with us that he understands a lot. She said when she sees such a big gap between comprehension and expression, she expects there’s something oral-motor going on. She agrees with our speech therapist’s unofficial diagnosis of apraxia — an inability to make a particular sound on cue. Apparently it’s something you might see in adults who’ve had a stroke. They can make all sorts of sounds and say lots of words, but if you say something to them like, “Say ‘mother’” they struggle and think really hard and can’t say it. And then an hour later they’ll just blurt out “Mother.”
An occupational therapist observed his session today, too, and she said she thinks he might have slightly low tone in his facial muscles; but nothing that seems to require intervention now. We’re just supposed to keep working with him on imitating sounds and such.
And we’re going to work on putting together a communications book for him — pictures of various things in different categories that he can use to communicate. They also loaned us a basic communications device to see if he’ll get passed the stage of “let’s just push all the buttons” and actually consider using it more reliably to communicate. Her preference, like mine, is to stay pretty low-tech with assistive stuff at this point, given that he’s still pretty young and hopefully will start vocalizing more. (Of course, he vocalizes much more at home than he ever does in therapy; but it’s all still pretty random. Although he does seem to be learning to say “No” — like when we tell him he has time out — though it’s a bit more like “Nuh.”)
We’re supposed to see the AAC specialist again in about 6 months to see where we are and if we need to change course.
So on Saturday night Mr. Tldz and I had a big night out — or at least what passes for a big night out around here. A Catholic parish about 30 miles from here brought in Joy and Jim Pinto of EWTN fame (so we’d never heard of them!) to do a mission evening talking about marriage. He was raised Catholic, became an Episcopal minister, and then in 2003 he and his wife came into communion with the Catholic Church. He’s now a pastoral associate with Priests for Life and she is the executive director of a CPC in Alabama, in addition to their radio show, television appearances, and various speaking engagements.
They had lots of interesting things to say, and clearly they typically do longer missions of 2 or 3 days. They condensed that into about 2 hours, so it was really something of a highlight reel. I bet they’d be worth seeing in a lengthier format.
Anyway, the parish provided childcare in the church nursery and dinner (heavy hors d’oeuvres, really, but it sufficed) for the mission attendees. So it was a full service evening for the bargain price of some gasoline. Good times.
Agent Murphy was the youngest kiddo in the nursery and apparently had a great time. (He always seems to like the nursery of whatever parish.) Fortunately for him, unlike the other parents, his parents thought to pack him a dinner so he wasn’t starving. It was a late bedtime for him, but he’s back to his normal sleeping now.
Early this morning Agent Murphy and I trundled off to the OB’s office (in the nasty cold and rain; I’m ready for spring!) to have Laurie the ultrasound tech check on Garbanzo Bean III. This was just to check the baby’s size to confirm or adjust the due date. She came up with July 23, so pretty close to the July 25 we were originally given. We’ll see her again in a month or two when the baby is bigger so she can check on the chambers of the heart and such.
We’ve been reading God Gave Us Two and A Baby Sister for Frances. Agent Murphy has started picking out God Gave Us Two for story time. We wonder how much he understands of what we’ve been telling him. At this age, especially with his not talking, it’s hard to tell. So after reading God Gave Us Two last night I was explaining to him that we were going to go to the doctor’s office today and they would use a special machine to look inside Mommy’s tummy so we could see his baby brother or sister. He patted his tummy. So I told him, “Yes, but Mommy’s tummy.” Laurie gave him his own copy of an ultrasound photo today. I’ve taped it onto his dresser where he can look at it while he’s in bed.
So the parish mission wrapped up last night. We only had time to get through the Book of Acts and didn’t touch any of the epistles. They had been saying there would be a penance service last night, with 30 priests available for confession after Walk Thru ended. Well, indeed, there were a bunch of priests available to hear confessions, but no penance service as such. That’s too bad, but it’s fine. The sacrament is the point, after all.
We hadn’t been in quite a while. Don’t remember exactly when the last time was. I know it was before Agent Murphy was born. Mr. Tldz thinks it may have been before we were married. Yeah, a long time in either case. It was helpful to have the nursery available for the Agent to make getting to confession a little easier.
It’s funny. I always dread going to confession. And then I go and it’s really not a big ordeal and I feel better afterwards. You’d think I’d learn… I’ve done my prescribed penance, and hopefully I can turn over a new leaf for Lent. Whenever I receive penance at confession, I’m reminded of the story of St. John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests. He gained a reputation as a wonderful confessor and was known to hear confessions for 12+ hours per day. He received some criticism for being too lenient in the penances he gave. He is said to have said, “I give them what I think they can handle, and I do the rest myself.” I’ve often wondered, when I’m given what little penance I receive, if the priest is taking something on himself on my behalf. In persona Christi and all that.
Mr. Tldz had an honest to goodness Irish priest, with full brogue. I had a priest of some African extraction. Indeed, this Catholic church is catholic.
The first night of our parish mission was tonight. We’re doing an abbreviated version of Walk Thru the New Testament. It looks like it will be good. The hand signs and such are a little hokey — I think I’m not primarily a visual learner that way and would rather just take notes — but the concepts are good, and I think the program will help some of these ideas be more memorable than they have been when I’ve learned them in other contexts. So I think it will be a good use of our time. And Agent Murphy gets to spend three nights in a row at the parish nursery and stay up past his bedtime! He likes it there — they have good toys, including a little puppet show stage and a play kitchen. He was playing at the kitchen when we came to pick him up tonight.
One comment the presenter made this evening was in reference to the believing Christian’s appropriate focus being on eternity, as opposed to the past, present, or future. He suggested as a Lenten exercise to try to make a habit of making decisions/choices in light of how they will impact eternity. That’s a good reminder. I’m often very bad about that, especially lately. Get caught up in too much trivial stuff and lose sight of the ultimate goal and outlook. I guess I will have to work on that during Lent.