apraxia/CAS??
First of all, sorry for being lame and posting next to never.... I do lurk a bunch to keep up with you all though!
Anyone dealing with CAS?
Henry had a speech and hearing eval. recently... for now they're calling his issues a general expressive speech delay but warned us she suspects we're really dealing with apraxia (he has several big ol' red flags... huge gap between receptive and expressive language, groping, the only vowel sound he makes is the schwa sound, and he plugs in the small handful of sounds/words he can make/say in for everything new we ask him to try....) His receptive lang. skills are solid to 27-30 months but his expressive only 9-12 months 
Anybody dealing with this? Tips? Info? Resources? Words of wisdom?
Anything you've got is much appreciated!!
Re: apraxia/CAS??
A very good friend of mine is a Speech Pathologist and her daughter has Apraxia. if you want I can FB msg her and ask her if she knows of any resources or words of wisdom.
First of all, I'm sorry that you're dealing with this. I'm sure it's really overwhelming to get all that information!
I'm a speech therapist. I have only worked with a handful of little ones diagnosed with apraxia, but I know it's extremely frustrating for both the children and the parents. I will tell you that I just dismissed a little guy (6 1/2 years old) last week who had been receiving speech services since he was 3. No one could understand anything he said (his mom still tears up when she talks about it). And now? He's extremely advanced academically, his vocabulary is amazing, and the only speech issues he has are a very age appropriate w/r substitution and some very minor vowel differences (that most people won't notice). So just keep that in mind... and in my experience, the higher receptive language skills are a good sign!
I'm not sure what resources you have already discovered, but apraxia-kids.org is extremely helpful. Also, are you signing with him? It definitely helps (and when I worked with the little ones, it's often the first thing we did). Repetitive books/songs with predictable patterns are great, using sound effects ("whee" while going down a slide, "pop" while popping bubbles, etc to increase vocalization of any kind), playing around with sounds and making a game out of it, animal sounds, any kind of repetitive game (something like "1...2...3...go" while pushing a car, and then wait for him to attempt "go" before you push the car), reading a lot and repeating names of objects... these are all good activities and things that I used with the kids I have worked with.
Remember (as I'm sure already know) that any attempt at a word is great, even if he doesn't get very close to the actual target word. Definitely reward him for trying to communicate... that will motivate him to continue!
Will he be receiving speech therapy? You'll be able to observe any therapy, so you'll have a better idea of things that you can do for him at home.
Hopefully this makes sense... it's been a long day!! I was about to go to bed, but I felt like I had to respond.
Sasa, thank you so much for your reply!!
To answer your questions -
Yes! We are signing with him! We started when he was about 6 months old... long before we suspected any issues and I am so glad we did! He knows and uses about 15 signs regularly & spontaneously and has about 5 more that he'll use when prompted. It has been so good for him to be able to communicate his needs ... I don't even want to think about what kind of tantrums we'd have without it!!
And yes again, he's starting weekly speech therapy at our Children's hospital. Also, we just got hooked up with a 'head start' type program in our state. I thought it was just for low income but just found out it's not! So, hopefully he'll qualify for therapy with them too so he'll have it 2x per week. I'm really looking forward to getting started so I can learn more things to work on with him at home!
Thank you for all the ideas, those are great. We definitely read lots of books! And we have especially been working on praising him for all of his efforts... we clap and say yay and give high fives
Now he claps for himself when he says something 
It's really cute! He started saying recently 'yay' which actually sounds like 'ah' but still! Oh, and bubbles - yes! The speech therapist who did his eval. had bubbles and he said 'pop' with her (which was just 'ah' but in a sweet little chirpy way, he mimicked her inflection which was neat, he's normally just so quiet).
Thank you again for you reply! I really appreciate it, especially hearing about the little guy you just dismissed, love hearing a success story!!!
Hannah
LIAngel: It would be great if you could message your friend, I'll take any info I can get!
Thank you!!
Hannah