Lucky day

So February 8th is officially my lucky day. On Feb. 8, 2007 I was offered and accepted a ring from an amazing man, the love of my life and my best friend. Now 6 years later on Feb. 8, 2013 we are signing a contract on our very first house. Not just our first house, but our first home after living in my in-law's basement for the last 3.5 years. Yes, I like Feb. 8. It's a good day.

Speaking of...

So here's the latest on Kizzy's speech. We had her evaluated by a different speech therapist in December. This lady took some time to actually listen to our concerns. By the school district's standards, Kizzy still does not qualify for speech therapy, yet. If she tests the same after Feb. 19th (her half birthday) she would fall in the bracket of needing therapy. But an answer to what the root of her struggles might be came just today. I had wondered (mostly to myself) if her very slight tongue tie had anything to do with her unclear speech. Well Kizzy went to the dentist for the first time today. She has no cavaties (hooray!) but the dentist gave me a quick assesment and a very casual statement he made suddenly made everything make SO much sense. Kizzy has a crossbite. You can see it in her sweet little smile. It's not a big deal. Nothing that braces when she's older can't fix. But when the dentist told me about it, I noticed it for the first time and I suddenly got a very clear picture in my head. So I did a little research, found a few articles and medical journal publications and this is what I found: A crossbite is when teeth are not alligned properly. Notice how on one side of Kizzy's smile the lower teeth jut out over the upper teeth. This causes the room inside her mouth cavity to be too crowded for her tongue. She frequently bites the inside of her cheek and her tongue on accident. This is because of her crossbite. And since her tongue is crowded her words are not clear!  This is how she literally can pronounce each and every sound in the english language. Her "l"s are more pronounced than some 6 year olds I know. And yet her speech is so slurred.  While it's not a solution on helping her clear up her communication, it's a relief to have a WHY.

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