Believe me - I know that therapy is the only thing that is going to allow him to fully communicate! Hopefully now that he is showing the want and ability to mimic sounds we can get him into therapy so he will someday be able to find his voice. I also can't wait for the day that I get anything resembling an "I love you" from him. He loves to give hugs and kisses and is the most snuggly of all my kids. I just want to hear those words from him!

Holy Smokes! I thought I heard DS speaking more jibberish today and then this afternoon he actually repeated a few letter sounds while my DS (3) was playing on starfall. He's never repeated anything I've asked him before. He said "ah", "oh", "ma" "mama" tried to say "b" and "apple." I guess he really is ready for speech therapy! Before this he would never repeat anything so I never knew how he would do speech therapy when he wouldn't even try to say anything.

I'll definitely try the coconut milk. I was getting ready to go to earth fare to pick up some coconut milk yogurt for him since he keeps sneaking bites of his sister's regular yogurt so I will add that to my list. I totally understand being so outspoken about Prompt. From what I've seen from the videos I've watched today I can see why it makes such a difference over the flash card based speech therapy. Now it's just about calling all the SLP's that have completed the bridging and see what I can find out from them before I call the one Certified therapist. The one certified therapist is the director of group of 6 or 7 SLPs so I have a feeling that getting in with her may be difficult and she is the only one in her practice that has undergone any PROMPT training. Everyone else within 4 hours has only completed the bridging course.

Misty - how you and your friend were treated by EI is about how I feel I will be treated if I continue to deal with them. My DH was as fed up as I was after the first phone conversation when the coordinator told me that he wouldn't qualify because he had enough approximations. It seems like there is a huge difference in what people count as approximations. How can my 2.5 year old not qualify just because he tries to communicate (at home only) and none of us understand him, but my friends 14 month old who had two words and babbles a lot does? I could not believe when she said that they don't care at all about articulation and only work on vocabulary. I'm sure there are some kids that are delayed, but my son understands everything that you tell him. It obviously isn't a problem with him being able to understand or not having the vocabulary, he just can't get the words out to be understood. Elizabeth - We just started him on Fish Oil about 5 days ago. He is currently on Almond milk due to dairy intolerance, He eats eggs several times a week for breakfast. I have noticed a lot more jibberish from him while he plays by himself. Not sure if it could be a result of the fish oil or from me just being more tuned into what he is doing while he plays by himself.

All groups are having problems with all forum members being treated as group owners. I can click on any social group and ban members, change their layout, make them private etc.

I'm definitely not thinking this is something he would outgrow or comparing him to your DS. The biggest thing that hits me is looking back at my other kids at 2.5 and seeing them talking in sentences and then my youngest barely making noises. I sometimes lose DS in the house as well. We recently went to Disney and it was terrifying any time I didn't have him on my back. Knowing that he if slipped away that he would not answer me or make noise to let me know where he was.

If you go heavy on the fat the first week you will not feel hungry while your body adjusts. In the High Fat Low Carb social group we were just having a conversation about how when our carbs are low enough that several of us have trouble getting enough calories because we are just not hungry. Once your body stops craving the carbs you will not be hungry. Definitely check out paleo recipe sites and you will find lots of options. There are also lots of blog posts about cooking/prepping your food on one day for the whole week etc. I can't find the few that I have bookmarked but if I find them I will come back and post them.

Thank you so much for all the information. If I contact one of them about my concerns that he might have apraxia would they do the diagnosis or should I have him seen by a local SLP before I contact them. As I sat up reading about apraxia last night it sounds so much like my son. I looked again at the site because I was mainly searching around Atlanta but there is a certified instructor in Memphis which is 4 hours from me as well. In Atlanta there is a handful of instructors that have completed bridging. When your son started PROMPT was he doing any babbling/jibberish talk etc? My son will name things if we are reading books but other than that he will only say mama to get my attention, mil when he wants a drink or ja if I ask him a yes or no question. . Otherwise he doesn't make much attempt to speak. I do hear some random oohs, aahs, i's from him throughout the day but never consonant sounds.

Thank you for posting this. I have seen your posts before about apraxia. After talking with a few friends that have dealt with EI in our area I feel like the coordinator was trying to avoid the hassle of taking in a kid just before he switches to the school system. Words that he does say that most people wouldn't catch are "ee" sometimes with an n on the end for Green, "oo" for Blue, "eh-o" for Yellow, "Ya ye" for Daddy. She kept trying to tell me that these would count for approximations. Another one that I told her was "I oh oh" for I don't know along with a gesture. She kept trying to tell me that those were close enough to words, but even when I know what he is trying to say I can't figure it out unless he is pointing to something. The more I read about Apraxia the more it sounds like him. He doesn't imitate at all, trying to get him to say something unless he wants to is nearly impossible, he doesn't seem to know how to move his tongue around in his mouth. I've looked at the PROMPT website but there are only 2 people about 2 hours away from me that have taken the Intro Course, and 3 that are seeking certification that are 4 hours from me. Is it possible to use Prompt only going every other week or so? Driving between 4 and 8 hours round trip for one session seems crazy but I would do it if it would make a difference!

Items that we buy a lot from Costco Produce - Apples, Bananas, Oranges, Berries and Grapes (only in the summer when the prices drop), asparagus, broccoli, spring mix, Bell Peppers, Onions, Potatoes Frozen - Fruits and Veggies, Almond Milk, Orange Juice, Milk, Butter, Bacon Meats - We used to buy a lot of meat from there until we purchased a side of beef this year so now we don't need to. I still pick up rotisserie chicken and sliced turkey Other things - Chocolate chips (on sale around Christmas and I throw them into the freezer) Coconut Oil, Spices, Dog food, vitamins, diapers, cleaning supplies, cereal, a few canned goods. We've also picked up our fair share of books and movies and other odds and ends. They actually get a nice assortment of toys around Christmas.

Georgiana - It always takes me 3-4 days after I stop cheating to start dropping again. The first few days are slow and then it speeds up again.

I looked into if our insurance will cover anything and I don't think they will. It used to show that they cover 90 sessions per calendar year but now there is a note saying that it only covers speech therapy for injury or stroke. It won't be impossible to come up with the money for private speech but it will definitely take some work. I will look into a private eval and private therapy. I just have a feeling that something is wrong especially since he makes almost no consonant sounds. When he does talk he sounds like he is trying to talk around a mouth full of marshmallows.

I'm only doing the EI eval because I'm in a school district that does not like to give services without a fight. I've been told by several others in the area that if you can qualify for EI right before they turn 3 that when you go to do an IEP with the school district most kids get more services because of the EI service provider being there with you to help get them the time that they need. Otherwise our local school is known for not providing enough services for kids not in school.

I need some advice especially from those who have dealt speech problems in toddlers My 2.5 year old has had problems with speech and I'm getting the run around from early intervention. He was never one to babble. He is the youngest of 4 and only babbled a little when away from his siblings. The first time he really made more than a cooing sound was when he was 8 months old and away from his siblings for a week. He started to babble more then but not a lot. He continued to barely babble and still made lots of vowel sounds without consonant sounds. At 14 months he was not trying to speak at all. He would point and grunt and very rarely make an effort to make more than cooing type sounds. He occasionally got out what sounded more like a word. My ped wasn't very concerned since he wasn't making the effort to speak and assumed that his siblings were speaking enough for him. At that point we moved to New Mexico for a temporary assignment. We looked at starting early intervention at that point but when I called them he had enough approximations of words that he would not have qualified at 18 months. They didn't care about the fact that the only word he could get out that someone else other than my husband and I could understand was mama and he only used that when he was upset. After that phone call to EI I just refused to deal with them since they didn't even want to send out someone to do an evaluation. They would have it I had insisted but at that point I was done dealing with the person and figured I would let him wait until he was 2 and deal with EI when we got back Alabama. We moved back in the fall and I'm finally getting around to dealing with EI here. They are saying the same things although this time they are willing to do the evaluation without me begging for it. The problem is that he has about 50 approximations for words and only 3 words that would be clear to other people(mama, mil for milk, and nana.) Most of his approximations you have to be watching what he is doing in order to understand what he is saying and they are made up of mainly vowel sounds. The EI coordinator that I spoke with said that most likely he will not qualify because they don't care about articulation only building vocabulary to let the school system deal with articulation later? Is that normal? You would think that the earlier you get a child to start making more consonant sounds the better. I'm just trying to figure out where to go from here if he does not qualify for EI. He has an EI evaluation on Friday. We are currently waiting to get an appointment with his ped to talk about his milk intolerance and other possible GI problems. I'm just lost on how to help him. All my other kids talked early and had huge vocabularies at his age. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Would you be willing to repost the link. I wanted to see but the Guest Pass Expired and it won't let me look at the pictures. Thanks!

Great video. I went to their channel of student videos and there is also a great one called NASA Cribs about the ISS.

Larla - I'm the same way. If I stay under 40 carbs I'm not hungry at all and a lot of time I have to force myself to eat to get to 1200 calories a day. Today I woke up and was not hungry (even after cheating and having some cookie dough with DH last night ;) ) I finally ate breakfast around 10:30 which was a few roasted chicken thighs and some fresh veggies. It's now almost 2 and I will force myself to eat some lunch here soon because otherwise I won't want anything for dinner. This whole week has been rough for me. Lots of cheating because of Dh's birthday cake and then him snacking on sweets that I can't get past the cravings and have a few bites. Need to get my motivation back to be strict next week. My weight lose stalled all week with the cheats... but at least I didn't gain :)

I know everyone loves looking at puppy pics so I thought I would post a few. We went to the shelter yesterday and picked up our new puppy. We found her on petfinder and she looks so much like my older dog that we had to adopt her. Please ignore the construction mess around them we are in the middle of a major remodel

Katie - I will slow down to 1.5 lbs a week now that I lost a lot of water weight. Last time I did low carb I did the same thing. Quick drop the first week and then averaged out to 1.5 lbs every week after that. It didn't matter if I was perfect all week or if I had a day where I went over my carbs I still lost 1.5 lbs a week.

I made Egg Muffins this weekend and they were a nice change. I used 1lb of pork sausage and a dozen eggs and it made 12 muffin tins full (Just beware that it can stick horribly if you cook them too long. If you google Paleo Egg muffins you will find lots of different ideas for things to add in.

Today is the start of day 7 for me. I've dropped 4.6 lbs so far! Not bad when I my starting goals were 18 lbs to reach my goal weight and 23 lbs to reach my dream weight. Last night was the first night that I had a carb heavy veggie with a meal and I was surprised that I really didn't want that much. We had roasted sweet potato bites and I was actually happy with the small 1/2 cup serving of them. I've hit the phase where the cravings are pretty much gone and I am not hungry at all between meals. I actually have to force myself to snack in order to keep my protein and fat up high enough because my meals are too low in both alone. I've given up caffeine and only drink water now. I'm sure occasionally I will have a cup of iced tea, but for now I'll keep it just as water to help flush out the junk.

Thankfully the cravings weren't too bad today but I did notice that I had a bit of brain fog this morning from the grains last night. My hands also hurt a bit when I woke up but it went away quickly. I'll definitely be making some peanut butter balls with dark chocolate once I drop more weight. Today at Aldi's I splurged and picked up a bar of dark chocolate just to have in the house for the bad days where it's either that or dig into some of the junk that I have in the house for the kids. I love eating roasted chicken thighs for breakfast. It helps break up the constant egg dishes.

That is what I am hoping for too. Once I reach my middle goal weight (15lbs from now) I hope I can stop limiting the fruit and higher carb veggies and just enjoy a clean diet without the grains/sugar. Losing anything after that is going to take some serious exercise.

Just a few days back into this and I sabotaged myself. My husband's work had a movie night with pizza and popcorn. I knew going into this evening that I needed to eat well before hand so that I would be full before I sat in a room full of junk. Of course kids were rowdy and I didn't have time to make myself dinner before we went. So I grabbed a bunless burger on the way (and resisted the temptation of ordering fries :) ) The burger didn't fill me up enough so I was having horrible cravings at the movie night. I ended up eating a few small pieces of thin crust pizza. I was still low enough on carbs for the day that I was still under 50 to end the day but I know that it's only going to create more cravings tomorrow since I gave in and had some grains for the first time in 4 days. But it was either eat some meat loaded thin crust pizza or find myself gorging on the pile of chocolate they had there. At least I resisted the pile of Reeses peanut butter cups which are my all time favorite candy.

Thanks for posting that. I guess I will just have to plan ahead for dinner to avoid things with carbs if I want a salad at lunch. I love a big salad at lunch - today's was a huge bowl of spring mix with peppers, broccoli, bacon and cauliflower along with a couple of roasted chicken thighs It was 20 something carbs :wacko: which is fine if I wasn't planning a veggie heavy dinner.