Goals

As 2017 comes to a close and 2018 begins I find myself looking back on the last year with a sense of accomplishment at how far my family and I have come. After two years of merely surviving each day as I waded through the immense guilt and grief of loosing Ellie, we had fallen into some really bad patterns. At the beginning of 2017 I was extremely unhappy with who I had become and was ready to once again take control of my life. I was inspired by a quote I read from M. Russell Ballard that stated:
I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don't set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that reached but a small part of our full potential when one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, she will then be able to make a great difference in the results she attains in this life."
I decided to set some very specific personal and family goals for 2017 and set smaller goals each month to help me attain what I wanted to accomplish.
My personal goal for 2017 was to ‘Be purposeful and deliberate with my time each day.’
Our Family Goal for 2017 was to ‘Increase Love and Kindness in our home.’
Each month we set a spiritual, health, and family improvement goal to work toward throughout the month. We had a set reward at the end of the month if we reached our goal. I was pleased with how effective it was.  Even when we fell short of some of our specific goals and didn’t earn the set reward, we still felt that we had made improvement and seen growth in the area we were working on. We were consistent with it until summertime and then we started to slip a little and we became less structured with our goals, but I felt like we were still making a concerted effort at improving our family and bringing more love and kindness into our home.
I found a lot of satisfaction in accomplishing a variety of personal goals I set for myself throughout the year. I didn’t accomplish them all, but “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become while achieving your goals.” - Zig Ziglar.  While I still have a long way to go, I am extremely proud of the progress I have made this year.

My focus for 2018 comes down to one word - Simplify!!
A week or so ago, I happened upon the talk “Good, Better, Best” by Elder Dallin H. Oaks from Oct 2007 conference and as I read his inspired words I knew this would be my motto for the year. “We have to forgo some good things in order to choose others that are better or best because they develop faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and strengthen our families.”

Our family focus for 2018 will be ‘Working together to build a happy home.’ as I hope to continue teaching my kids responsibility, hard work, and discipline. As I tell my kids every time we are working together to complete a job, "Many hands make light work -- and a slightly less crazy mom."

I am feeling optimistic and excited to see what twists and turns 2018 has in store for our family.

Speech

 Watching Ryan grow and develop in a typical way has been nothing short of amazing. I took all the little milestones for granted with my older kids, but after working so hard for every single accomplishment with Ellie, I am in complete awe each time that Ryan just naturally figures out what to do next. I guess I did a pretty good job wiping my slate of expectations clean with Ellie and just celebrating each success as it came rather than worrying about what she should be doing at certain ages. Now I don't have the slightest idea what a baby should be doing developmentally at each age. Often times Ryan will completely blow me away by doing something new that I'm not expecting for a long time only to realize that he actually reached that milestone much later than any of my other kids. I guess that is why I didn't realize he was falling behind on speech until I was filling out the questionnaire at his 1 year check up and realized that he should be babbling more, making consonant noises like mamama, bababa, dadada, and mimicking our noises. But he wasn't doing any of that. He did a great job communicating his wants and needs with his go to sounds of "pthhhhh" and "oooo ooooo" with an accompanying pointing finger. The doctor told me that while Ryan was a little behind in his speech he was doing so great in every other area that there was no need to worry. Some kids just take a little bit longer to talk and he would probably be back on track by his 15 month checkup. I agreed that Ryan was doing great and while I was still aware over the coming months that he was behind on speech, I didn't worry about it. At his 15 month check up (that actually happened closer to 16 months) Ryan had made very little, if any, progress with his verbal speech. This time the doctor expressed concern over how far behind Ryan was. So after that appointment we had Ryan evaluated by Kids on the Move for early intervention. At his evaluation Ryan blew them away with how smart he is and how much he understands. They use an evaluation tool where anything less than 16 is below normal and 20-30 is the typical range. Ryan was right on if not a little high in every area but communication. Communication is divided into two categories - expressive and receptive communication. Ryan's receptive communication was off the charts at 50 while his expressive communication was way below at 6. This qualified him for early intervention for his speech.

For the last two months we have been working with an early childhood development specialist on skills that will help teach and encourage him to communicate verbally. I love working with these specialist who break down each skill into little micro-steps that have to be taken to reach the bigger goal. There is so much that goes into learning how to talk that I never would have realized. With their guidance we have been able to help Ryan develop the skills he was lacking. We started seeing little bits of progress from day 1 but just the last couple weeks his speech has really taken off. He is now able to sign basic daily needs like more, again, drink, food, all done, please, want. He has started mimicking noises and will tell you a dog says "woo woo", a chicken says "bababa", a cow says "mmooooo" and a car says "brrrrrrr". He says Mama, Dada, and Baba in reference to me, Scott, and his bottle. He says BA! for ball. "Hiiiii" with the cutest little wave and a similar but slightly different sounding "iiiiii" for Bye with the same darling wave. He asks for a treat by saying "Mmmmm" and "a" to be lifted up. He tells us he's done eating by signing all done while saying, "aahhhhh". And those are just the things he is saying consistently. There have been many other words he has mimicked a time or two like kiss, mess, eyes, poke, and many more.

We are all obsessed with his new found talking and it isn't uncommon for us all to erupt in applause whenever Ryan says something we ask him to. He loves the attention and will often start clapping excitedly for himself when he says something. I can't wait to hear all that Ryan has to tell us in the coming weeks and months.

I am so grateful for early intervention and how it has blessed our lives with two of our five kids.