Second dentist visit

He's got good teeth, happily.

First of all, the people at our dentist's office love A. I was in there all the time when I was pregnant, got my braces off and had a bunch of work done postpartum when I could wheel A in in the stroller and have him stay put. So they've known him since before his debut and they adore him.

So we go for his cleaning today and everyone in the office has to say hi. He high-fives everyone. He doesn't want to sit in the chair, but he sits in my lap in the chair. Then he doesn't want to open his mouth. He takes a toothbrush, brushes with his lips tightly shut, and drops the toothbrush on the floor.

And then Chris the tech lets him have the air/water gun. And we're off to the races. There's water everywhere: on me, A, the tech, the walls, the floor. Everywhere. But A figured out that he could squirt the water in his mouth for a drink, and then he would open his mouth to have a drink and blow air on his tongue, and voila, the tech can check his teeth.

He brushes and she gets a mirror in to inspect his teeth, then she says, "Do you think he'd let me polish them with the magic toothbrush?" Sure, why not? She shows it to him and lets him lick the (bubble gum flavored) toothpaste, and sure, he'll let her polish his teeth.

Then the dentist comes back to examine him, and yes, with the tech there, he'll let the dentist examine his teeth.

Happily, it all looks good. His teeth are plaque-free, even in the front where they expect toddlers to have plaque, and there's no signs of decay, even in his molars. His bite looks good; he may have a deep bite but the dentist wouldn't be worried about that for some time anyway. And he does officially have all twenty teeth, which is super.

So he's doing good, we're doing good, and the only improvement to A's dental regime that the dentist could offer was brushing after every meal instead of twice a day. But that's it.

This kid has had two parents in braces for most of the time he's been alive. He's seen a lot of tooth brushing and tooth maintenance. C says I spend an inordinate amount of time brushing, but that's because I am not a slave to the timer on my Sonicare.

We go again in six months. Whee! I'm so glad his teeth are turning out to be more like C's than mine.

Individual Family Service Plan

That's the IFSP, which sounds like a Meyer-Briggs personality type. C and I met with the intake coordinator to establish an IFSP for A. This sets up goals (that the family--that's us--can measure) and, more importantly, lists what classes and services he'll be getting.

Right now, he's set up for twelve sessions of speech therapy and an hour or two of pseudo-preschool twice a week. The speech therapist will be coming to our house weekly (eep); A and I have to tour all the available preschools until we find one we like (maybe not the one for behavioral issue kids, for example).

A just went down to sleep and he was so tired that I'm tired. He didn't want to sleep; he kept being almost asleep then waking up to say, "Daddy?" Daddy should be on his way home from work.

A had speech today; they played musical instruments to practice blowing air. He's only got a couple weeks left there; I'm hoping they'll let him finish. There will be one week of overlap with the Regional Center stuff. I can't mention enough how immensely thankful I am that all of this assessment stuff has moved so quickly. I know government and bureaucracy is bad and evil, especially in an election year, but man, I'm glad they have all this stuff available for free, so quickly. These little people grow fast.

Please!

Everyone's braces-free in the C/K/A household, and there is much rejoicing. We are now accepting your donations of toffee, sugar-crusted nuts and pizza bones.

A had the speech teacher all to himself today, and he talked up a storm. He did all the animal noises with his teacher, then sang (sang!) and said, "Please!" He's signed please for the longest time, but now we're supposed to make sure he says it consistently. His teacher places a finger under her lower lip sometimes to remind A to talk, and if he's not paying enough attention to her, she'll do it to him, so that's something we're supposed to work on with him.

But she thinks he's making excellent progress, so there we are.

A and I went to the Birch Aquarium today after speech with a writer friend of mine and her two-year-old (who is huge! huge!). We all had a good time. They have these elaborate water tables with partitions you can move around to create currents and flows and float tiny boats down. A loved that. C would love it. I would have loved it more if I wasn't on baby duty and got to play with it myself.

They have tidepools (which we did not go into since A's apparently allergic to starfish protein) and fake tidepools with all sorts of rubber creatures (lobsters, starfish, crabs, shells, shrimp). Unfortunately, they're right next to each other, so A decided he would reallocate a rubber tiger shrimp to the tidepool. "Happens all the time," a docent told me, but they had to debate how best to remove it because A threw it pretty far. They needed a stick to get it.

It's a small museum but it's pretty neat. The displays are well-thought out. I think the boat thing alone is probably worth a membership.

Hatetriots: yes, a political rant

Oh, come now, you didn't think we'd get through this kind of an election year without a rant, did you?

That's pronounced "hate-triots" to rhyme with patriots. I'm a little sick of them here.

Right now, gay marriage is legal in California. There's a proposition on the ballot to amend the California state constitution to make same-sex marriage illegal; it's called Prop 8.

The "Yes on 8" movement is out there with big fat lying ads stating that if Prop 8 does not pass, gay marriage will be taught in schools and churches will lose their tax-exempt status if they don't perform same-sex marriages. These are both big fat honking lies.

If Prop 8 fails, nothing changes. There's no change to the law. There's no change in how your kids are going about their daily lives. If your church or synagogue or mosque won't marry a same-sex couple, it'll still count as a church just as much as the churches that practice love thy neighbor as thyself do. (Sorry--that's my "who's actually Christian?" rant sneaking in.) A No on Prop 8 changes nothing.

This kind of crap really pisses me off. There's no legal reason to deprive a group of people of their civil rights--and I think marriage, with all its social/economic/political constructs, counts as a civil right.

I can't think of any reasons to shoot down same-sex marriage other than fear and hatred. I'm calling the politicos who spew hatred and fear in order to scare people into voting their way hatetriots.

I don't know if A will be gay or straight, but I want him to get married--if he chooses--with the minimum amount of bureaucratic governmental interference either way.

I really hope this thing fails. Down with the hatetriots.

Overtime

C's working overtime. He worked yesterday (although that was a short day, because he was home before A went to bed) and he's still working today.

A and I are spending a lot of time together. A's begun to put two words together again verbally, like "Bye, Daddy!" and (sadly, with big eyes) "Go car? Go Daddy?" Sigh. He's coming out with entire strings of jargon that sound like a complete sentence ("What is this over here?"). We meet with his service coordinator in another week or so to set up speech services. Also, he knows how to operate the DVD player, including swapping disks. From closed cases. Oy.

I've been reading Nigella Lawson which always makes me feel like roasting chickens and baking cakes and being all domestic goddess-y, so today I roasted a chicken and some potatoes for A and I to eat for lunch. They came out perfectly. Perfect moist crispy-skinned chicken, perfect crispy roasted potatoes. And A wouldn't touch either of them until I produced (organic, non-HFCS) ketchup, which he's never eaten before.

Well, he loved it. And he loved chicken as a ketchup conveyance device. But he's still not really interested in potatoes. I know he's mine, but good grief, where's his potato love?

How's the fam?

We're all sick and cranky.

C's work is in the crazy schedule stage. He's sick. He's coughing up a lung all the time. This is coming on the heels of having enough mouth pain that he couldn't speak coherently for a week.

A's sick. He's got a slight fever, stuffy nose, occasional cough, bad attitude. He's not sleeping well. He's tired enough that things that usually don't bug him make him break out in tears. He's not even napping well, which means I spend a lot of time that I normally get to myself soothing him back to sleep. Poor baby, he's sick.

I'm sick, but I'm the least sick of the three so I don't get to be sick. A late night Tuesday turned into an early morning (4AM) Wednesday which turned into a late night last night and really, I could use a nap and maybe some Advil.

C's schedule has turned ugly, coming home at midnight last night, with a week of awful scheduling ahead (working Saturday, Sunday, and 3AM on Tuesday morning, woo hoo), which means my schedule has turned ugly because I love my boy, but I love having time to myself once a day too, which is not happening (unless you count the drive to and from the orthodontist's this morning, which I do not).

Buh, buh, buh; puh, puh, puh; muh, muh, muh

Today A had speech and he was the only one there--lucky! His teacher dotes on him (and really, who doesn't?). She's working on the bilabial sounds with him: B, M, P. So they colored in baby birds and momma birds and then played crash with the buses and trucks and blew bubbles. He said bubbles, beep-beep, and pop. I haven't heard pop at home, so that's good.

She invited me to a parenting class that starts tomorrow on how to help A speak, so I ran over and got the kindly old lady next door signed up to watch A for the next few Friday mornings and we will be in class.

A has a flu shot today. This will not help the doctor rehabilitation program.

Monkey see, monkey do

Yesterday was Free Tuesday here in sunny San Diego, and the boy and I went to the Natural History Museum. Free Tuesday is this great program where every Tuesday of the month, certain Balboa Park museums are open for free. The Natural History Museum has dinosaurs and a baby elephant and a room with a bucket of puppets, so he's happy there.

Since it was Free Tuesday, it was packed, not as packed as it could be, but still packed with kidlets. I kept smelling poop, and kept checking the back of A's pants to make sure it wasn't him (it wasn't). My current theory on the vast amounts of poop is that I saw a lot of dads with kids, and I think dads can feign more oblivion to poop than moms, in general.

Anyway, at some point after I'd checked his pants for the fortieth time, A came around behind me and tried to check my pants, at which point I decided maybe I was sending the wrong message about what we do in the museum.

Regional Center Assessment

Today we had another speech evaluation. It's the same-old, same-old: two assessors, one graduate student observing, playtime for A, talking to me.

His official assessment is 27-30 months for receptive language - with some 33-36 month behaviors - and 15-18 months for expressive language. So he understands everything and says hardly anything. He's very bright and right on track for all his other developmental areas. They mentioned how outgoing and sociable he was. None of this is different from any of our other assessments.

So he meets the 33.33% delay requirement in expressive speech, which is the cut-off line for qualifying for Regional Center services. So next week our coordinator (who was out today) will start setting up a plan for him. He'll probably see a speech therapist regularly as a start.

I just wanted to thank everyone who's asked about how he's doing and how the assessments are going. It means a lot to me that other people are interested in him.