Trying to get a drunk baby dressed for her first dance.

A brief recap of Poodle's physical limitations. She can't see out of one eye. She has had major surgery on each side of her face and a lot of the tissue is scarred and numb. Her top lip is basically an artistic creation by her surgeon. It was not originally a thing. Her palate is ridiculous/mostly missing.

Now, for things working in her favor. She can see perfectly out of one of her eyes. She has a full set of lips that can close together and two proper cheeks with mostly correct bone placement, again, those cheekbones were invented by her surgeon. She loves interacting with people and seems to be smart. For a one year old anyway. I mean, she still poops her pants and licks people/the ground. Let's be serious. Her tongue is the proper size and works. Air travels as well and as normally as it can considering the disastrous palate. Her hearing is fine so far. She has an absolutely amazing speech therapist. I love her. If I had a million dollars, I would give her some. As of now, I don't really giver her any money, United Healthcare does.

We have been working with her speech therapist for about a month and a half. We see her every single Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. Before ST, S didn't say any words or make any consonant sounds. When she first started to babble, she would make a few easy consonant sounds, but she stopped doing that at some point. I guess she figured that there wasn't any future in it so why bother. She also would not imitate you. You could go "mamamamamamamama" until you were about to die from boredom, and the best thing you could expect out of S was a pity laugh. We haphazardly signed to her, but nothing consistent of focused.

Her therapist has focused us and educated us on what S is physically capable of saying and the activities in which we can engage to encourage her to make those sounds. We initially focused on "m", "b", and "h" sounds. She is now a master of "m" and "b" and she can even join those consonants with a small variety of vowel sounds. She can verbalize the "h" sound, but only when extremely prompted and she can't yet join any vowels with it. I made boxes into which I put toys beginning with each of those letters. Her therapist showed me how to exaggerate the sound and physically prompt her little lips, tongue, and throat. She has me doing a series of stretches on Poodle's mouth and cheeks to wake up the nerves. The soft tissue is already noticeably less swollen and stiff.

She also told us to focus on getting S to say a handful of words. Hi and bye. Mama and....Papa? Saying "P"s would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for her right now. So, D and I decided she should call him "Baba" instead. Our therapist was relieved, she said that she hates to tell parents to change their names, but that it would greatly encourage S to be able to associate a name she could say with her father. Who is of course her favorite person in the world. She now says both Mama and Baba and, when she isn't too distracted by dogs or soccer, knows that I'm Mama and that D is Baba.

Our current speech projects are word association, focused signing, and widening her range of vowel sounds. Her therapist wants to basically attack on ALL language fronts, give S every existing tool of communication.

Speaking of which, I fully intend to write a post on our first Children's Craniofacial Association retreat, but for purposes of this post, I'd like to say how amazing it was to see all the CCA kids, each with their own craniofacial difference. Even if two kids have the same syndrome, they look (and of course act) different, which just reinforced for me how every kid is such a unique little nutty snowflake. And how they each learned to speak or communicate in a unique way. I saw (more like completely spied on) a conversation between a group of five or six teenagers, and they were all communicating in a fluid flurry of verbalization and signing. Those kids could have a you tube channel, and I would watch it all day. And even the kids who don't speak or sign, they still conversed. These CCA kids and families have some sort of special language other humans might not even know exists.