It's the Little Things...

About 5 years ago, I was picking up an almond milk latte on the way home from work when I received a call from my husband, Jacob. “Hey,” he said, “I’ve been in a car accident. I need you to meet me.” At first, I figured it was just a fender bender, but as I drove my thoughts got the best of me and I started to worry. He’s fine. It’s fine. I told myself. If he wasn’t ok, he wouldn’t have been able to call you. He didn’t say anything about being hurt. I drove the 15 minutes (which felt like 15 hours) to meet him in a McDonald’s parking lot. He had just finished getting me a new tire when a teenager driving an SUV slammed into my poor Mazda 3. Tears rushed to my eyes and broke through like water bursting through a levy. Jacob was completely fine, buy my car was crushed, airbag deployed and everything. I sobbed thinking about how bad this could have been and praised God for His mercy on the situation. My car was towed and we became a 1 car family until we could get a rental from insuranc...

On Sundays, I'd like to write a little about how God is shaping me and teaching me about Him through being a parent. God has really molded, shaped and taught me about His love for me through given me C. Although I know that right now I only see dimly, and won't fully understand God's love for me until I meet Him ( 1 Corinthians 13:12 ), I truly believe that He uses all circumstances in our lives to help us better understand who He is.  Yesterday, my mom, best friend and I had a little girls day (and we let C tag along). We went to brunch and to the mall. C is at the stage where he enjoys being in the stroller for a few minutes, but then his independence gets the best of him and he wants to run free! It was a Saturday, and the mall was pretty crowded. In an effort to keep him safe and not get another bruise on his forehead, my rule was that he could walk but he needed to be holding someone's hand or the stroller. At first, C was quick to comply, thankful for the small ...

Hi, everyone! I bet you thought I abandoned this blog… I’ll be honest, I wondered if I did for a while there. This post is going to be a little bit different. It’s been a really tough few months for me. It seemed like it would be trivializing everything that happened to jump on into a post about toys or language. As I reflect and work through everything that happened, I keep coming back to how it all makes what I do-- my work, speech therapy, being a mom-- that much more important. I’d like to think of myself as a writer. When I was in college, I would feel deeply moved by nature or The Lord or by songs or conversations, and I would make sense of it all by writing. This is me making sense of 2018 so far. My dad passed away suddenly in early January. He started feeling crummy on Thursday, so he went to the doctor and was diagnosed with flu (even though his test was negative and he’d had the flu vaccine) on Friday afternoon. He continued to battle and ended up at the hospital e...

  Raise your hand if you have an active toddler at your house! My hand is definitely in the air! At one of our well checks, our pediatrician asked us if C was able to complete a 3-part puzzle. I remember thinking "my chid can't sit for 1 minute... much less problem solve a difficult task!" As I try to work on speech and language skills with C, I grow frustrated at times that his attention span isn't as long as mine. But then I remember that he is an active boy, and that any skills I try to work with him on will mean more to him if I bring an activity that is engaging to him. Enter... the slide! We have one of these guys in our playroom and C LOVES it! These are skills you could also target on a playground, swing set or any other slide you come across. Here are some of the ways that we sneak speech and language skills into this fun activity. 1. Teach Prepositions Up, down, around... these are great prepositional words to highlight while your child plays on the ...

Hello, everyone! I’m back to blogging and starting a new blog. I wanted to take this first post to talk about how I got here and what I want to blog about. So here we go! A little about me… I am a Speech-Language Pathologist. I feel like most people don’t know what a SLP is or does unless you or someone you know has needed one. SLPs focus on all areas of communication, including articulation (how you make sounds, like kids who say wabbit instead of rabbit), language (understanding what is said to you and being able to express yourself using appropriate vocabulary and grammar), stuttering, voice, feeding and swallowing disorders. SLPs work with a variety of people from birth to geriatrics. Ever since I can remember, I have wanted to work with kids. When I was a kid, I remember playing school with my stuffed animals and little sister. I would take my little tykes easel out to our driveway and meticulously line up chairs for my “students” to listen to my lesson. As I grew older, m...