Louisville, Kentucky

So, I really like the town of Louisville. It is quite pretty. I don't think Jason and I drove around quite as much of it last time as we did now. There is a beautiful riverfront area and some really pretty bridges. There are great brick row houses (a love of mine) in neighborhoods and the college campus is well-maintained and fun.

But, on to the reason we were there...

We left on Friday around noon. Before we could leave, we had an orthodontist appointment for Jocelyn. Braces are in her future, but she still has several baby teeth that she needs to lose so they would like for that to happen first. She has a very narrow upper jaw with not enough room for all of her teeth. Jason had some meetings to attend and then we were off!Above: Just passing through St. Louis into Iillinois

The girls have gotten to be quite the car travelers this summer: Colorado, Muskogee and now Louisville. They take turns choosing the movie and this goes pretty smoothly unless Olivia is overtired. We have discovered that once Livi starts yelling unreasonably in the car we are but a 20 minute leg rub from naptime :) Luckily she falls asleep in the car. Josie has a bit more trouble getting comfortable enough to sleep.

Above: Kentucky

We arrived in Louisville around 7pm their time and headed straight to a restaurant where several other families had gathered to eat. Here we met 3 more families that have been members of our group. It was nice to see some more faces!

Saturday, our testing started bright and early at 0830. Livi tested until about 4:30pm. She was exhausted and grumpy afterward. Jason gave Josie a break and took her to the mall to run around and eat lunch. On Saturday night, we went to the riverfront with our friends from Texas to eat dinner.

On Sunday, there was more testing. It began at 0830 again and was complete by about 2pm but it took until 4:00pm or so before we were able to sit down and discuss progress. Overall, they were quite impressed with the improvements that Olivia has made. We were able to find a pattern of things to focus on. While none of the overall areas were surprising to us, they were able to focus them into specifics for us to discuss with her teachers. We are supposed to contact Jennie to get some suggestions on what programs Jackson has used for reading (because he is such a great reader! Jennie, we will need to talk! :)). It was a bit of a blow for us to learn that even though the school stated she was 'on level' that she had essentially just memorized certain words and really struggled. It is either that or that she has regressed significantly. Neither was good news. Olivia has some difficulty with motor planning of her mouth and sentences (why it appears that words are 'stuck'). We received some suggestions to help with this. The speech therapist was impressed by all the skills she had developed to cope with these difficulties though.

On the good side, her spatial reasoning improved significantly (recognizing patterns in things is part of this) and her IQ had increased as well in this round of testing. Her vocabulary is squarely average with her peers meaning the number of labels she knows and words she understands (individually) are typical. She has problem, however, with the processing part--when people put words together in complicated ways.

We drove home from Louisville on Sunday evening and returned around midnight (our time). The girls were exhausted--even Josie got a little testy in the car which is completely unlike her. I think we wore them out! All in all, Jason and I felt that this was well worth the effort and expense to get to Louisville. We are pleased we were able to stop and reassess and refocus our plan for Livi.