She is usually such a happy girl but I had just taken her bottle away to take this picture so that is why she seems so solemn, she can't quite figure out why I took her bottle away. She said "ba ba" for the first time this morning which means her bottle!!! We celebrated by doing the happy dance and clapping. She also "says" bye-bye which means she intonated the sound in her throat. She actually used her mouth to say "ba ba". When we say "ma ma ma ma ma" she does repeat it but we aren't so sure she connects it to me yet and she hasn't repeated "da da da da" yet but when I asked her to take something to da da, she did. That was wonderful, she actually understood what to do. Her speech therapist is very happy with her progress so far and wants her to go through the fazes of speech from infancy (babbling) to her age. However, she won't be up to her age for a very long time since she is starting from so far behind. We are working on exercising the muscles in her lips and mouth and she is showing fantastic improvement and control. We are also trying to learn and teach her sign language so we can all communicate to try to minimize her frustration. This will be the longest lasting effect of her cleft, speech. After her palate is repaired we will have to ramp up the speech.
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