Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Preschool #1

A just finished his speech therapy, during which he said absolutely nothing, but he picked up a fire engine for a week and his play is "fabulous." (I think the fire engine will have batteries before the weekend gets very long.)

I never realized until we started going through all this that play could be graded and assessed.

This morning A and I headed to a preschool for a test-run. I was concerned because he didn't sleep well and I think the cold has boomeranged back on him. He started motioning and pointing the minute we saw the playground, and then he didn't hesitate to run right into the room and start playing with a toy garage once we got there.

This is a regular preschool that has some developmentally disabled kids mainstreamed in the classroom. The DD kids have two teachers who specifically watch and guide them among the other two teachers for the regular kids in the room. It would be for two hours, twice a week.

The preschool itself seemed to be pretty loosely structured: free play time, snack, music/dance time, and then a special visit from the speech therapist (not ours). The time they would have spent on the playground today was spent with the speech therapist. He had a grand old time. I was concerned because all the art on the walls seemed to be from the regular kids, but I asked and was told that the DD kids always have the option to put their art up but most parents just take it home with them.

What else? The teacher asked me if I'd like the speech therapist to do an evaluation of A, and I said, no, not really, he's been evaluated a lot. The speech therapist took a minute at the end to ask me if I really had no concerns because she thought he certainly should see someone for his speech. I explained that no, he's been evaluated about six times by now, he's tracking here for expressive and there for receptive, and we've been prompting two- and three-syllables from him, pressing on two and celebrating three.

A had to be dragged to the car, crying. I think this preschool's certainly a contender, but there's still one other one I'd like to see.

He's sick. We did Costco and IKEA (his idea; he kept frantically pointing at IKEA and would not let up, so we went, jeez) and he fell asleep by the time we pulled into the garage; unfortunately, he wouldn't sleep for longer than half an hour before he'd wake up, crying and sniffling. He took a two-hour nap in half-hour increments with me rubbing his back. He may be sleeping in the car seat tonight.

And tomorrow's Thanksgiving, and we're having raclette and sweet potato pie, which just made me remember the sweet potatoes steaming on the stove. Yikes.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Last Day of First Five

Sigh. I'm melancholic here. A is trying to figure out all the ways the Aquadoodler pens interact with the humidifier.

Today was A's last speech class with his wonderful teacher. I made blueberry muffins for the staff there and C and I baked several batches of fussy butter cookies from Cook's Illustrated which I put into cute tiny gift bags for his caseworker and his speech teacher.

The other kid (who has some issues, shall we say it kindly?) in his class didn't show, so she got A all to herself for their last class, which they both enjoyed.

His teacher was teary-eyed. She talked about how much she loved working with him, what a sweetie he is, how far he's come with his language. He has come far. He can produce three-syllable phrases now, puts two words together, has expanded his vocabulary significantly, by at least fifty percent if not more, and imitates our speech more often. She's been really good for him. Besides, how can you not love anyone who recognizes how amazing your child is and enjoys him as much as you do?

It's hard to have a melancholic farewell with a two-year-old, though. We were saying goodbye and she and I were teary. I was trying to emote the fact that we wouldn't be back again to A when another family with a dog showed up. He completely focused on the dog and didn't give his teacher a backwards glance, let alone a goodbye hug. Happily, she knows the ways of two-year-olds, and I do too, so we left it at that. The upshot of two-year-olds not having a concept of time is that they don't have a concept of grief.

One phase over, another begins. Tomorrow we try out our first preschool, then home for a nap and lunch before the speech therapist comes over. At least I've already vacuumed. (This is an issue of consternation when you have a virtual stranger sitting on your floor for an hour.)

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Return of the voice

I can speak again, quietly and mumbly, and that is a good thing.

A has always mimicked us when it comes to cats and his food. A cat would approach him and he would say, "No, no, no!" and vocalize a lot of irritated, urgent scoldings.

Well, this week he discovered that if he fed the cats turkey, they would come to him and sit by him and even lick his fingers. So he's changed modes now.

The cats are growing more tolerant. I just put A down for a nap (he fought sleep dreadfully today) on our bed, which is occupied during the day by Jake and Niles. The cats were curled up together in the center of the bed, so there really wasn't a place to put a mostly-sleeping baby without being next to them. Niles gave it a minute and then left; Jake stayed because Jake is a pudding. Very sleepily, A pet Jake on his legs, and Jake watched him carefully and didn't move. Now they're both asleep, close together. It's so freaking cute.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

UCSD Study

A's taking part in a UCSD study on 27-month-olds. They're studying something about autism; A's a control subject. We went this morning and he had basically the same assessment process he's had everywhere else for the past few months, so it was very familiar to him, at least.

He'll get a toy out of the next visit, which will require the infamous skull cap of many sensors. Oy. This is why we needed the haircut.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

First haircut

Still no voice. It's pretty sad here. I tried calling my darling husband, and after rasping, "Hello? Can you hear me? Hello?" for what felt like forever, he said, "I can't hear you, so I'm going to hang up. Maybe you should text me." So we texted. No voice sucks.

A's signed up to be part of a study this week where they'll put a cap with gooey gel on his head and track his brain activity. Fun, no? This meant that I needed to get his hair cut.

Which I did. It's a little shorter overall, but still the same boy. Pictures will be uploaded as soon as I get someone small and sweet down for a nap, which he's been fighting all day, and I have no voice to sing him to sleep.

Sigh.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Chewbacca and R2-D2

House-bound and a little nutty. I don't feel like I can take him out since I can't talk to him to give him directions, so we've been at home all day, which is not our normal mode and makes us both cranky. He's provoked me a couple times to loud grunts not unlike Chewbacca, which he finds a little disturbing; conversely, it's difficult to calm someone down who's howling when you can only hoarsely whisper at a tiny, tiny volume.

And I have done pretty much nothing to help him with his speech today, since it seems odd to prompt for speech when I can't speak. But this doesn't make me feel better about his speech development. I whisper and grunt; he babbles in R2-D2-ese.

In short, today has been like Chewie and R2-D2 doing Waiting for Godot. This sounds great as a two-minute YouTube clip, but bad as an all-day thing.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Laryngitis

I've been sick. Yesterday, I lost my voice and am reduced to a tiny, hoarse whisper.

I woke up this morning and--no voice. Still. Do you any idea how difficult it is to parent a toddler without a voice? At least C's here as my knight in shining, talkative armor, but boy, my voice better return before tomorrow or it'll be an exciting day.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Torque

I don't know why we're on a physics theme for subjects but...

A can open the fridge. And the doors to the TV cabinet. And anything else that just requires torque.

It's a brave new dawn around here.

You can't push a string.

A had speech therapy for the first time this week. These are in-house visits, where the speech therapist comes to our house (which requires a certain amount of cleaning, of course) for an hour or so. (Of course, A turned over a glass of water on the couch, which required the couch being disassembled for the course of her visit.)

So she showed up, said, "Hi, I'm Janis," and in she came with a bag of toys, sat on the floor with A, and played with all the toys.

I sat nearby and watched and tried to stay out of the way. She played with him and talked to him in short, one or two word sentences about what they were doing. He was interested in the toys and didn't say much at all, like he normally is with new people.

I had to restrain myself from not translating when he did speak. He was funny. He would decide a toy was boring and sing a little bit of the clean-up song and put the toy away so he could move on to the next toy--what a fabulous little guy.

Janis desperately wanted A to play with a fishing set. This had: various small felt fishes, two fishing poles with strings that had a Velcro piece on the end.

A has a fishing set, a pole tipped in Velcro (no string) and some fish, so I guessed he would be pretty bored with her fishing set, and he was. She was firm in trying to redirect him to play with the fish, finally showing him how she fished. She put the string over a fish, pressed the Velcro piece into the fish, and picked it up by the pole. "Look, fish! Fish up!"

With a look I can only characterize as bemusement, he took the other fishing pole, pressed the Velcro to the fish with his hand, picked up the pole, and dumped it into her bag. Yes, this is how it works and this is the most efficient way to play with it instead of messing around with that string; next toy please.

So at the end of the session, I asked what I should be doing or if this was representative of how their sessions would go. She said she's using short sentences to urge him to imitate her and eventually she'll encourage me to use short sentences for periods of playtime throughout the day (though not obviously the whole day, since we can't live our lives in caveman-like grunts).

She said his receptive language is extremely high and she was surprised by his focus, because the report she read said he could be somewhat distracted.

He's two. Distracted is the name of the game. But A is a pretty focused kid.

So I'm not sure how it went, but I think he had fun and she left a toy here for him to play with, so it's all good.

Drive-by parenting

We were in the library yesterday, picking up my book on reserve (and damn you, SD Public Library System, for receiving eight (8!) of my holds the day after I pick up my one lonely book on reserve). A loves the library but the whole waiting in line to get checked out makes him cranky, because it's right next to the kids' DVDs and he wants to go look through them all again.

Anyway, I'm saying no and he has a tantrum. I'm calming him down as quickly as I can--I can't leave with an armful of books; I have reserve items I need to pick up or I'll get fined--and he settles easy enough. It's never quick enough in the library, though. In the process of having a tantrum, he's kicked a shoe off.

There's an older woman behind me. She says to me, "How old?" and I tell her he's two. She picks up his shoe, but instead of handing it back to me, she says to A, "Look at this nice shoe I found. Maybe someone doesn't want it any more. Maybe I'll take it." She mimes putting it on her own foot, and A holds his hand out for it. "Maybe if you said, 'Please, can I have my shoe back?' Hmm? Nice boys ask for things." A holds his hand out again and makes an agitated grunting noise, which to my mommy-sense, means tantrum #2 is on its way.

"No, not until you ask nicely," this woman says.

"He doesn't talk," I say. "He's got a moderate speech delay." A is pressing his hand against his chest in the sign for 'please.' "He's signing please."

She hands the shoe over to me. "I didn't know," she said. "But he was certainly loud enough before." Yes, lady, thanks; I didn't feel enough like a crappy parent before you decided to turn into the question Nazi and of course all children are silent angelic cherubs until they gain the power of speech.

Sunday, November 09, 2008

"Car, please?"

We're back. C's putting A down for a nap while I sort years of cosmetics, bath gels, and expired medications that are taking up valuable space in our too-small bathroom. The purge is on.

I forgot to blog about Halloween. We had Halloween. We have a costume for A but did not dress him up. C got off work early, which allowed him and A to carve a pumpkin together. Then dinner, birthday cake, and bed for A.

Tuesday night, basking in the warm glow of Obamarama, we headed to Disneyland. C was off work Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. We bought annual passes (for an absurdly low price compared to the WDW tickets, good God) and rode rides: the new Finding Nemo submarines (very cool), the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (for the small boy who loved every minute and was ready to go again), Space Mountain (smoother and darker than its WDW counterpart), and all sorts of other stuff. We walked onto every ride. We left at four-ish so I could make my read-and-critique group.

Thursday A had speech and a vision test. C had a meeting at work to check in for. His vision is fine (-0.25 in the left eye, 0 in the right, which for right now, is within normal tolerances). His speech class went great; he was the only one and the teacher adores him.

Friday we were slated to go to the last of our parenting classes, the review and post-test, and C and I decided we would rather spend the day going to Disneyland. So after breakfast, we bundled A into the car, drove up, and were at the front gate not much later than we were Wednesday morning. Plus, A got his normal morning nap in the car. It worked out beautifully.

It was more crowded than Wednesday but still mighty manageable. We had completely skipped Fantasyland on Wednesday, so we took some time letting a small boy point us from ride to ride. After Peter Pan, the carrousel. After the carrousel, Dumbo. And so on. The pommes frites at Cafe Orleans are fabulous, btw. We drove home at seven or so, got home in time for our normal bedtimes.

So Saturday morning, A leads me to the door to the garage and points. "Car?"

"You want to go in the car?" I say. Happy acknowledgement noise from A.

"You want to go in the car and go to Disneyland?"

Happy dancing from A. "Car, please!"

It's bizarre to me that Disneyland is within a reasonable drive. I think of it as being very far away, but it's not any farther than Park Meadows used to be from our house in Colorado.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Obama won

We're going to Disneyland.

Seriously.

Vote, vote, vote

I voted weeks ago, but C voted first thing this morning, fourth in line at our local polling place. But get out there today and vote.

See, I'm not introducing politics, because I think anyone who reads this blog already has made up their stubborn minds as to whom they're going to vote for. But I'll shamelessly plug a No on Prop 8 again, just for any Californians who really haven't come to their senses and want to spread hatred and fascism. No on Prop 8. Hopefully there will be lots of celebrations in the morning.