Ellie Morgan, speech therapist

It might surprise you, but Linda isn't particularly good about doing her homework. I think she feels like living is therapy enough. Oh, sometimes she'll do some activity if it strikes her fancy, but not like when she was at Rusk. I think the difference is that everything she did at Rusk was to get her home faster, and now she's here.

Well tonight, Linda suggested that we make popcorn. I admit, I wasn't keen on the idea, because it was about Ellie's bedtime. I like it when Ellie goes to bed. Most parents feel the same about their kids I suspect. I have to be "on" whenever Ellie is home or she does unfathomable things, like drawing on Linda's white t-shirt (while she is wearing it) with crayons or rubbing diaper cream on Linda's arms. (Both of those things have really happened.) So I like the opportunity to relax when Ellie goes down.

Oh well. We made popcorn anyway, and it turned out to be fun. Linda used to be the one to make popcorn, but Ellie always helped, so I had her help me too. Then we sat at the table and ate it together--with blue Pepsi cans. Ellie asked for blue Pepsi cans by color, as if they come in other colors.

Linda mentions that picking up popcorn is good OT, and she used her left hand part of the time.

With Ellie, it is also good speech therapy. Over a period of about 15 minutes, I think Ellie happened on about 3/4 of the speech therapy assignments that Linda has been neglecting, just goofing around with us. Tongue out, up, down, left, right, in each cheek. Making scrunched up angry faces, and surprised faces, and pushing your lips to the left and right. We did spitting, and we did blowing bubbles in our glasses with a straw. Ellie called out turns, "Daddy's turn," and "my turn," and "Mommy's turn." We made silly sounds that only the 2 and under crowd usually care about like the "bbbbbb" sound of running your fingers back and forth over your lips.

Personally, I think Ellie's favorite was the spitting. I'm pretty sure that she got in trouble for that when she stayed with her aunt, so laughing about it with Mom and Dad probably feels really rebellious.