So frustrated...

Keeghan has been really frustrating me lately.  I'm not a patient person, I'll freely admit that.  Never have been, never will be.  Parenting a toddler/pre-schooler at 40 is very different than parenting three of them at 30.  I am much more patient with Keeghan.  Lately, however, I find myself snapping more and more and I couldn't figure it out at first, but now I've keyed into it.  The lack of sleep is most certainly an issue.  It's frustrating but we have been doing that to some degree since coming home.  It's Keeghan's speech.  We had her evaluated for early intervention services a couple months after coming home and she qualified.  She still had a delay once she hit 3 and therefore has qualified for services through our local elementary school.  Awesome.  The beginning of this year, however, Keeghan started stuttering.  At first I thought maybe it was just a phase.  A burst in development that was making her stutter.  I left it alone and figured it would pass.  Come April I started to get worried and mentioned it to her pre-school teacher and the speech pathologist.  They said they weren't really seeing it at school, but that Keeghan also wasn't talking much at school so that might have been it.  Come the end of the school year, the stutter was still there and we talked about it at Keeghan's IEP meeting.  We wrote it into her IEP for this fall and I was told not to worry and just to ignore it.  All great advice.

BUT the stuttering seems to be getting worse.  Keeghan can't seem to get through a sentence in one try.  It's not always the first word or a specific sound.  I have to stop whatever I am doing to listen to her and understand what she is saying because it's difficult to follow what she says with the stutter.  I can't cook lunch and hear a request for some juice...I have to stop whatever I'm doing to listen and understand.  It's...in a word...frustrating.  I wonder if the lack of sleep or stress of me wanting sleep is making it all worse.  We just started week 2 of school so I'll give it another week and then try and meet with the speech pathologist and teacher to get some suggestions because I'm gonna need some!