Can't think of a good title!

Hi everyone,

We are back from our family adventure in Morden.  We had a lovely time- all the kids swam and swam until they had rashes from the chlorine, there was an abundance of food (anyone who has never drunk cream gravy straight from the pitcher doesn't know what they're missing!) and the adults got lots of time to talk and talk and talk in between the eating.  Since we were all in the same hotel, Ramsy could head off to our room for a rest whenever he needed to and then join the crowd later on.  In spite of the snowstorm, everyone seemed to have a blast!

Interestingly, Ramsy's speech had been very labored for about a week and a half, but a couple of days after we got home, it smoothed out.  On Friday we met with a speech-language pathologist for an assessment.  She listened to him talk for quite a long time, asked him questions about himself and his work, and asked him to describe what was going on in a picture she showed him.  (We got quite a kick out of this picture, evidently from the 50s or 60s, showing a woman in a dress and apron wiping a dish at the kitchen sink as the water poured over the edge onto the floor and two children behind her swiped cookies from the pantry!) After this was finished, she said that she recognized two issues in his communication: aphasia and apraxia.  They commonly occur together, and one is to do with an interruption in the brain's signals to the muscles in the mouth/throat that form the sounds, and the other is to do with how his brain selects words.  She wants him to come two or three times a week for a couple of weeks, and then less often after that.  We are hopeful that this will be helpful for him; it's so frustrating for him not to be able to say what he is thinking!