Kizzy's Speech Evaluation

So Kizzy just had her speech evaluation and I could just cry. The only test they had was to evaluate how Kizzy says individual words. Example: Kizzy would repeat words like duck, dress, bathtub, toothbrush, tree, zebra, jammies, cookie, cracker, puzzle, etc.  That was it. That was the test. On their bell curve of where she would qualify for speech therapy she was a fraction of a percentage above. Meaning, that of kids who DON'T need speech therapy she is at the very very bottom of the curve. On top of that my concern is not at all whether or not Kizzy can repeat specific words. She can. The few things she mispronounces are things such as "bafftub" or "cwayon". Not a big deal. The problem lies in when she's talking to people. Out of a ten word sentence all the words she says are so slurred together that you can maybe pick out 4 key words. Enough to structure what she was saying, but unless you are really trying to focus on understanding her, most people have to ask her to repeat herself. Sometimes she repeats what she said 5 or 6 times before they either finally get it, or ask me to interpret. I find I have to interpret about 90% of what she says to people in the community. 80% to her own grandmother and 50% to her own daddy! With that comes a great deal of frustration for her and for me. She has thrown herself on her bed sobbing because Grandpa didn't understand her. If heaven forbid I'm struggling to understand something it is the END of the world, because I'm the only one who consistantly understands without asking her to repeat.  Can you imagine how frustrating your life would be if literally every word that came out of your mouth people asked you to repeat?Not just once or twice but multiple times? And add on top of that there are some people who I shall not name, but those close to me can certainly make a wild guess who, they don't even try. They blow off anything she says to them. They've even gone so far as to make fun of how she pronounced her sentence.   I feel like she sometimes doesn't try to articulate because she knows that people will just ask me what she said, so it's like a crutch to her. At the same time, I'm not sure how to help her communicate with others unless there IS an interpreter for her. People who spend alot of time with toddlers tend to understand her better than those who don't. But at the same time the only difference between her speech and Kendal's is that Kizzy's sentence structures are more complex. Which that doesn't do her a whole lot of good when her sentence is so slurred together that people don't understand her. 
I told the Speech Therapist today that my concern is NOT if she can make certain sounds, or if she can parrot words. My concern is that people don't understand my daughter. I hear 2 and 3 year olds that are more clear than her. Communicating is HARD. I'm certain it effects HER comprehension too. The only thing the speech lady could do was reccommend a second evaluation done by a different speech therapist for a second opinion, because the ONLY test they had was to see if she could pronounce specific sounds or not.  My opinion on that- how dumb. Speech is so much more complex than just sounds.  What about articulations, sentence structure, and so on? The fact of the matter is Kizzy can prounounce every single sound in the english language. The few individual words that come out wrong are very very typical for her age. But when she talks, telling stories, asking questions, communicating with others in general, people do not understand her. Even the speech therapist a few times had to say "what? OH! you said your brother. Ok." Someone who's entire career is helping kids with speech problems and she had to take pause. She had to ask, "what?" and then she could piece it together. So no, I didn't interpret, but she still didn't understand right away. She still had to take a moment to put it together.

So, there is my rant. There is my frustration. It's off my chest and now we'll just have to wait for the next eval.

MOA

                                                                                          Back in August all but one of the Holker cousins were in town during Dylan's birthday. Dylan's choice of birthday activities was a day at the MOA (Mall of America) It was our kids first time riding the rides and they loved it.

They met Dora and Boots

                                                                                 By the time we left Kizzy was so in love with the rides, I'm afraid we might not be able to get away with skipping the rides when we go to the Mall.

 This is how Karter spent the day.

                                                                        All the cousins wore matching tie-dye shirts that day. Kendal and Kizzy still like breaking out their "awesome" shirts and matching each other.

                                                                       The favorite was the carousel. They rode the carousel at least 5 times.

                                                                          I love this picture, you can see how much fun they were having.

 On this ride Kizzy was such a trooper. You could tell she was terrified everytime the seat dropped, but she tried smiling for the camera and even volunteered to ride it a second time.

A Kizzy Update

Yesterday I took Kizzy in to be evalutated through our school district. I'm not sure how it works in Utah, but here in Minnesota evey child has to have an evaluation before entering kindergarten. They check for vision, hearing, fine and gross motor skills, speech, behavioral and developemental progress. They had some sort of scoring process where the minimum they look for at her age is 18 - average is 21 - and perfect is 26. Our girl scored a 23. They things that she didn't score on were kind of funny to me.  One was jumping on one foot 5 times in a row. She jumped 2 times. Then I was told that they don't have 3 year olds do that part of the assesment. Considering she was still 3 only a matter of weeks ago, its not a big deal. Another part was absolutely hilarious. This is what I heard.

The Lady: Tell me about this button.
Kizzy: Oh! Those go on shirts. And you put em through the hole and it holds your shirt together!
L: Anything else?
K: Nope.
L: Well, what color is it?
K: Blue.
L: Tell me about this truck.
K: It goes super fast and races. It goes on a green light and stops on a red light.
L: Anything else?
K: Nope
L: What color is it?
K: oh, it's yellow.

Apparently they were looking for descriptions such as the colors and shapes of the objects. Kizzy easily knew the color and shapes and thought they were asking for the function of the item.

Another went like this

L:Brother is a boy and sister is a....
K: Girl
L: an elephant is big and a mouse is....
K: little
L: a bird flies and a fish....
K: jumps up out of the water and then splashes back down.

Many of you know I've been concerned about Kizzy's speech for a few years now. Their assesment of her speech was that she should be evaluated further. They gave me a chart that showed different consenant sounds and at what ages children can correctly pronounce them the more difficult r and s sounds and combination sounds that aren't expected until closer to ages 6 and 7 she has a hard time with. But the red flag for her was that out of the sounds that up to 90% of children can correctly pronounce by turning age 4, she's in the 10% that cannot. So it looks like we'll be taking her into a speech therapist for further evaluation.

She's in the 10th percentile in height and weight.  She's slowly beginning to try new foods and we've been able to get her to start taking "no thank you" bites. She's learning her alphabet and doing really well with letter recognition and doing better with what sounds letters make. During family home evenings if we ask her what we talked about she can give us a recap on the subject. Her praying is becoming more personal and elaborate. She's begun saying things such as giving thanks for healthy bodies and specific activities, both those in the past and things she's looking forward to.

At the evaluation I was asked to fill out a form asking behavioral questions and it made me realize that although she's still my  fiesty one, her melt downs and temper tantrums have (almost) disappeared. I was asked to state what some of my favorite things about her are and I absolutely love how friendly she is, how caring she is for other's wellbeing and also how imaginative she is.

Karter's Blessing

On August 5th we had Karter recieve a name and a blessing. Prior to his birth we had not talked about when we wanted to do his blessing. But the Thursday before that Sunday it was brought to our attention that every single one of Kyle's siblings were going to be in town at the same time. (This is an extremely rare occurance) So Kyle jumped on it and called his brothers and set it all up.

Karter Gideon Clarence Holker was blessed with strength and wisdom. The ability to live up to God's expectations for him. He was sent to this earth and this family at this time for a specific reason.

In his circle: Kyle, Grandpa Holker, Uncles Kent, Kory, Kody, Kurt. Ken Rassmussen, Kent Lefevre, Ivan Leishman, and Doug Timothy. Kyle likes to acknowledge that there were 2 Kens and 2 Kents in attendance.

Kizzy is 4!

Birth

First Birthday

Second Birthday

Third Birthday

Fourth Birthday

Karter's Birth Story

On the morning of the 19th I went into my midwife to have my membranes stripped for the 4th time in a little over 2 weeks. My midwife told me her guess for me was Saturday the 21st. Being already 6 days past my due date, it was alittle disheartening to think about facing 2 more days. I went home and resumed my normal routines. About 2:45 in the afternoon I had a contraction. it was no biggie. it didn't hurt very much and I'd already experienced literally hundreds just like it in the past 5 weeks. Shortly after that Kyle took the kids to run some errands while I retreated to my bed to feel crummy and sorry for myself that I was still pregnant.
Over the next hour I experienced enough contractions that I thought I should start paying attention. My contractions were very sporadic and not at all regular. About 4:45 I thought I should call my midwife and just give her a heads up that I was having the contractions and see what she thought. I figured I'd wait for Kyle to get home to call, I expected him around 5:00. Well, as how all things go, Kyle wasn't home until after 5:30 and I wasn't able to reach my midwife until 6:00. We chatted. My contractions were still any where from 2 minutes apart up to 7 minutes. I could still walk, talk and breathe through them. It was decided that I should eat some dinner, take a shower, and she would call me back after an hour and we would go from there.
She called back at 7:00 on the nose, right as we were starting our family prayer and scriptures. At that point I was pretty sure the baby was coming, but was sure I still had several hours. until 10:00 at least. I saw no reason to not put my kids to bed first and then head into the hospital. My midwife agreed to call back in a half hour. Kyle was looking at me like I was crazy. He wasn't sure why I was waiting. I was still convinced we had plenty of time. I told him if he felt so urgent he could give his mom the heads up and throw the bag in the car while I continued the bedtime routine.
When my midwife called back she asked, "so, what are you thinking?" I told her we were going to leave for the hospital. Glancing at the clock 7:34, we would be leaving in the next 10 minutes for sure. I hung up with her and called my mom to tell her we would be leaving for the hospital. For some reason I started crying while talking to her, not sure why but it was very emotional. As I hung up with her the clocked switched from 7:36 to 7:37. I went and kissed my kids good night, and headed out the door. When I reached the car a contraction hit me so hard I had to lean on the door frame and was physically unable to get in the car. After waiting a moment for it to pass I climbed on in and we backed out of the drive way. It was 7:46. It took about 3 minutes to get out of the neighborhood and to the freeway entrance. In that time I had 3 contractions. Kyle pointed out that they were every minute. I continued to have a contraction about every minute for the rest of the drive. It's about a 20 minute drive with no traffic. Kyle drove 90 the whole way with moderate traffic and made it in 15. I spent those 15 minutes resisting the urge to push and yelling at Kyle to make the pain stop, insisting that I couldn't do it and I needed an epidural. We pull up at the hospital at 8:03. I stumble out of the car while Kyle went to park the car. I somehow made it inside where a security officer kindly helps me into a wheel chair and begins wheeling me up to the 6th floor.
I begin having a very surreal experience where I'm feeling hyper aware of my surroundings but I feel like I'm viewing it on TV or even as if I were reading my thoughts out of a novel, not experiencing them for myself. I watch the security officer hold the elevator door for a man and his son. Silently I'm cursing this kind man who is helping me so much, for helping other people. I watch the man look at me as he pushes the number 2 button. What are you doing? I'm screaming n the inside, I don't have time for this! I'm very aware of the boy who can't be more than 8 staring at me with huge eyes. They exit and we make it to the 6th floor. The security guard wheels me into admission and takes off. I can't help it but I'm yelling at the staff. I'm telling them that I need an epidural right away. I don't have time to be in here. They don't understand, I don't have any time!!!!!! They ascertain that I am indeed Kari Holker and tell me kindly that they are taking me into the triage area and I begin to flip out on them. I don't have time for triage, I need an epidural right away. They convince me to stand up and help me out of my clothes. They get me on a gurney and a nurse says, "She has a lip and her water is bulging!" All of a sudden it went from 2 nurses in the room to at least 7. Immediately the gurney starts moving and I hear Kyle's voice. Finally he's here!
I'm in the delivery room and in less than a minute my midwife walks in. She comes and sits at my feet, she's able to get my attention and she tells me, " your baby is coming". I hear a nurse say, " get the camera daddy". Kyle turns to get our camera out of our bag. My brain stopped working and my body took over. I pushed. Kyle turned back towards me and sees Karter's head. I push again and his torso is out. I'm being coaxed to reach down and catch my baby, I tell them to just pull him out. I push one more time and he's out and in my arms. 3 pushes, 1.5 minutes, I'm still on the gurney and the time is 8:14. Crazy. It seems like something you'd see in a sitcom. It's now 6 days later and I'm still not quite sure that it really happened to me. But he's here! He's perfect and healthy and adorable. His older sister loves taking care of him. She's very hands on from picking out his clothes to helping change diapers to turning on a musical toy for him when he starts crying. Big Brother Kendal has adapted very well to the baby. He's not as hands on, but you can tell he takes his role as big brother and protector very seriously. His interpretation of helping "his baby" when Karter cries is to throw a blanket on his head.

Kids say the darndest things

I had an interesting conversation with Kizzy this morning. It went something like this.
Kizzy (having stripped down to her undies): I'm a rock star!
Me: you're a rock star? Well, rock stars wear clothes.
Kizzy: No, Mom. Rock stars are 'makin' (Kizzy speak for naked).

Where she came up with this I have no idea.

Pre-School Graduation

Today was Kizzy's last day of Pre-School for the school year and she has a little graduation "ceremony".  It was really cute. Her class recited the Pledge of Allegiance and then sang "It's a Grand Ol' Flag" Then sang 2 cute little songs about the days of the week and learning.  Then they were given  little certificates.  We took our little "grad" out to lunch afterwards. She loved pre-school and I know she'll be looking forward to it next year. She learned alot and is well on her way to recognizing all her letters and numbers. She can recited the alphabet and count to 20. She knows all of her shapes and colors and un-preschool related she's starting to grasp gospel concepts. Kizzy is one smart cookie and I'm loving watching her learn and her imagination grow.

Bullies

I hate confrontation. I mean really really detest being involved in it. Therefore, over the last few years as I have had to deal with a person on a regular basis who has a tendancy to be a bully to all those around them, I have just bit my tongue and and then done my best to avoid them. For the most part. I have once or twice spoken up. And this person, in true "I'm entitled to everything" form has ignored my protests and continued with the offensive behavior. Today they went a little too far and I snapped. I called this person a not very nice name in my response. I know I shouldn't have.

However, why should I just endure being bullied? Shouldn't I speak up? And when my original defenses get ignored, should I come on stronger?

What would you do? (Please keep in mind, this person not only treats myself inappropriately, but also my children.)

Preschool

Kizzy started preschool mid february and is loving it! Back at the beginning of the school year I felt that Kizzy wasn't quite ready to start preschool. Around Christmas I thought she'd probably do well, but I figured she'd still have to wait until next school year. And then out of the blue, my friend MariAnne sent me an email. She teaches preschool out of her home and one of her students this year had a conflict with schedules and she suddenly had an open spot in her class. So Kizzy was able to start in the middle of the school year. She loves it! She looks forward to going every week. She can recognize every letter she's learned so far and loves doing her homework. She's starting to really show how creative and imaginative she can be, which is a lot of fun to discover about her.

Kizzy's self done 'do

Kizzy dressed herself for the snow outside

All dressed for preschool!

I sure love my girl!

Boy Oh Boy Oh Boy!

Yes, that's right, it's a boy. While Kizzy will be outnumbered, Kendal will get a little buddy. So far the names we are thinking are:
Kyle Joseph Jonathan (aka KJ)
or
Karter Gideon Clarence

Right now Kyle is leaning towards Karter.

What do you think?

Kendal at 19 months

I love my little red-head boy! He has the cutest smile and such a funny personality. Lately his vocabulary has exploded and I thought it would be fun to share what he can say.

Where's Daddy? (asked probably over 200 times in a day)

here doe (here you go)

ess you (bless you)

chess (yes)

no

mine

stop

doe way (go away)

ball

bear

thank you

hello

hi

bye bye

water

cheese

yummy

Mama

I yuv you (I love you)

Sitzy (Kizzy)

awesome

antsome (want some very similar to awesome, but there is a difference)

more

Uh-uh

Ah-Ah (grandpa)

socks

shoes

poopoo

peepee

please

up

down

He also is a neat freak, he picks up after himself and will go as far as try to make Kizzy's bed and picks up her toys and clothes. If he finds anything that is trash he will stop playing in order to go throw it away. He'll even go out of his way if he notices a sleeve from a shirt hanging out of the hamper. He always asks for a paper towel after meals so he can clean his tray and his face. He's an excellent hand washer.

I think Kendal might be mechanically minded. His fine motor skills are very good and he can be entertained for hours by making things fit together.

Kendal was born with music in his soul. As a newborn he would perk up to music in a way that was very noticable. Since then he has shown a love for playing with instruments. He is always "head dancing" (Sometimes he dances with his whole body, but mostly he keeps rhythym with his head, but it can't really be called head banging). He always notices music, even from sources that I don't realize is music at first (such as commercials). The most amazing thing is he can carry a tune. While he can't say most of the words in songs you can tell which song he's singing.

You can recognize the difference between "I am a child of God" the "abc song" , "I love to see the temple" and many more.

He's a MAJOR daddy's boy. If Daddy is home he wants absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. However when Daddy is at work he's very lovable and sweet to his Mama. He gives lots of loves and kisses.

All in all he's a sweet boy. He has a sense of humor and is very funny. He's a good brother and looks out for his sister. He tends to be whiny but doesn't have much of a temper so his tantrums are minimal. He's a great sleeper, and doesnt' do well when he doesn't get his 12 hours at night and his 2-3 hours during the day. He sometimes is naughty on purpose but not to be defiant, he thinks he's funny. He's going through a phase of separation anxiety which makes nursery a work in progress, but I'm confident he'll grow out of it. One major difference I've recently noticed between Kizzy and Kendal is that Kizzy loved everything animal and could identify and make the noises for at least a dozen different animals by the time she was just past 12 months. Whereas Kendal is just starting to take notice of animals and can only identify dogs and bears and his 3 animal noises are barking, growling and mooing.

One of my all time favorite things that he does is fishy lips and I cannot seem to get it on camera, but as soon as I do I promise to share.

I love my baby boy!

How to Avoid Bedtime

I'm sure all children have their phases where they fight bedtime. Some more adamantly than others. Kizzy and Kendal both also have these phases. Kendal will just cry and fuss and stay awake and play. Sometimes he'll throw his sippy of water overboard and yell "uh-oh! uh-oh! uh-oh!" until someone gets it for him. He's also been known to throw his loveys which include his blanket, his pillow pet and some stuffed animals. But over all he's pretty good about bedtime. Kizzy is a little more stubborn and has come up with every excuse to get out of bed in the book. Including the following (and the solutions we've come up with):
- Potty (potty time is now included in the routine, at the very end)
- drink (sippys of water are now permanent fixtures in their beds)
-snack ( story time now includes a small bowl of grapes or a slice of cheese)
- scared (Kizzy is a proud new owner of a Monster Scaring Flashlight)
-not tired (Kizzy gets to tell stories to her Bear)
-too hot (we don't really tuck her in until after she falls asleep)
- needs to say another prayer (Kizzy gets to say prayers for Kendal too)
She has several others that don't come up as often such as wanting to take medicine, too dark, too light, too cold, to quiet, too noisy, needs more stuffed animals, stripping pajamas off and needing help putting them back on, wants to play with Kendal, wants the door to stay open, needs to tuck her dolls in, needs to brush her stuffed monkey's teeth, more stories, etc, etc, etc. But tonight she came up with a new one that I hadn't heard before and wasn't sure how to send her back to bed after this one. She's been crying for a few minutes and talking to herself when she leaves the bedroom and comes to me:

Kizzy: Mommy, I just want to be with my family.
Mommy: You want to be with your family?
K: yes, you and my Daddy and you Mommy. I just want my Mommy. And my family.

Ok, seriously how sweet is that? And how on earth am I supposed to be firm about bedtime when all I want to do is snuggle with her after saying something so sweet? She's a crack up and certainly a smarty pants. But she's also very sweet and I love those moments.

Grumpy Kizzyisms

Today Kizzy was a grumpy girl. I'm actually thinking she might be coming down with something. But before today she never had the verbalization skills to express her grumpies to me and she had some doozies today. Examples:

Kizzy: Mommy, my eyes are rubbing.
(pause)
Me: You're rubbing your eyes?
K: yes, my eyes are rubbing
M: are you tired?
K: NO! I just need a rest


K:Mommy! I talking to you!
M: what Kizzy?
K: look at my face!
(I look)
K: It's my grumpy face.


Kizzy had been playing by herself for about 20 minutes while I had been giving Kendal his lunch. She came and found me in the kitchen and announced-
K: Mommy, everybody is bothering me!
M: who is bothering you?
K: EVERYBODY!


M: well Kizzy, Kendal's napping, what do you want to do?
K: (shrug)
M: We can play, or read stories, or watch a show, or play a game. What do you want?
K: (shrug)
M: how about coloring? do you want to color?
K: NOTHING MOM! I want to do nothing!
M: ok, we don't have to do anything.
K: But Mom! I want to color!


Even with the grumpies, this girl sure can make me laugh.

Christmas Church Clothes

Both kids are holding a toy from their stockings, I didn't even realize that until I uploaded these pictures.