New Goldfish for Charlotte

"I came, I saw, I kicked its booty!"That's the phrase I'm trying to get Charlotte to say when they aske her about the speech therapy evaluation. We went in and the two SLPs had next to no information about CJ other than "Brain Tumor."They asked me about her skills before and after the surgery and I felt like the completely biased, "my child is perfect" kind of dad because I told them how off the charts she was, in terms of language, before the surgery. I did say that her speech is still slurred at times, she speaks pretty slowly and the nasal quality is pervasive.They started the testing at the 3 year old level and it was pretty straight forward..."Which dog is bigger..." stuff like that. She didn't get a question "wrong" until they had advanced to the 4.5 year level! A couple questions she answered incorrectly were pretty complex but at least one was "wrong" only because she was grouping things differently in her head than for what they were looking.She also used the word "caught" in its proper context which just about floored the SLPs. That's my baby!Needless to say, she doesn't really need too much speech therapy. They said most of the nasality will probably clear up in time and not to worry about the speed as she's using complete sentences and communicating her ideas very clearly. "Slow and steady wins the race," one of them said.There was a bit of good chaos in the house last night as cousins Jeff Reynolds and daughter Savannah came by to visit as well as "Uncle" Nate and "Aunt" Kelly came down from NY and brought little Ethan for a first-time visit. All the while, Dad and Juanita were fixing things and feeding everyone. Then we all went down to Romp n' Roll to play and hear Southern Horizon (one of the groups in which I fumble around) rehearse. It was CJ's first trip back to RNR and there were plenty of people at open gym who were very happy to see her.This morning we fully intended to use our Cracker Barrel gift card and go to breakfast with Nate, Kelly, and Ethan but they wouldn't hear of it so thanks for breakfast guys!Rachel has taken CJ to see the daring duo of Dy Tye and Joann this morning and I'm off to Maryland for a very cool vocal jazz clinic followed by an Uptown Vocal Jazz Quartet performance at the Avalon Theater in Easton. It's a thing called Radio From Downtown and it's always a hoot to do because it's almost all National Public Radio people including Susan Stamberg, Karl Kassel (sp?), etc... and I get to see first hand how totally top-notch people do their thing.Leaving now so wish us all luck for he weekend! Dad and Juanita...you're in charge! Don't forget to feed the cats.Oh and by the way, CJ has decided to name the new goldfish Abbey Cadabby. We'll try real hard not to kill it.

Well after our wonderful breakfast this morning (mmm...Cracker Barrel! What a treat!) we kissed Daddy goodbye and headed to MCV for our meeting with Dr. Tye. Charlotte and I had a discussion about whether Dr. Tye would be wearing a tie (as he sometimes does) or scrubs (as he usually does). Her guess was scrubs. Mommy's guess was tie. Charlotte won!
Word to the wise: a handicapped tag is NO help at MCV. We actually had to go through the parking garage 2 times to find a space. Of course, I counted at least 6 "open" spaces but since they like to sandwich the spaces as close as humanly possible and many people like to "straddle the lines" (or worse, just take up two spaces entirely) we were out of many options. Finally found a spot between two HUGE SUVs on the 4th level and traipsed over to the ACC for our meeting with Dr. Tye and Joann. She looked great to them, got both of her sutures from her ventric line removed and were told they would meet up with us again once we started things with Dr. Khan.
Then we had a quick lunch at the hospital Chick-Fil-A (of course) and then hurried home to meet friends from Commonwealth Autism Service who stopped by to visit. I then left Charlotte with Grandpa and Grandma Bonita while I went to Romp n' Roll to work!
It is so great to hear everyone's comments about the journal and how they love to keep up with Charlotte's goings-on.
Open Gym almost done so I must start to clean up...gotta go home and put Abby Cadabby in her newly redone fish tank.