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.

Tired boys

A didn't sleep well last night and C didn't either. I didn't sleep well the night before, so last night I was apparently out of it enough that I wasn't disturbed very much.

Last Friday night, I went to the San Diego Film Festival and saw my friend Julie's film, Broken Windows, which was a lot of fun, since I've never been to a film festival before. The film is good but slow. I hope it does well.

We went to dinner before and A surprised us by eating popcorn shrimp and calamari (even the squiggly bits) but not the mac and cheese. This is a strange kid.

He had speech today and did well although he was tired. We're about to go to the store, run some errands, so he'll just have to cope. He had a short nap this morning but it's hot here and it's hard to nap when it's so freaking hot.

Certificate of Participation

It's graduation day here from Global Group for the little toddler boy. He's finished six weeks of general group activity and as such is done being enriched. He's still going to his specific speech group. He's loving it so far; we're going to have to think seriously about preschool when all of this is done. He used to have to be convinced to go in, and now he has to be restrained from running right into the classroom when we get there.

He's got a speech evaluation scheduled for next week. This is with the regional center and is just speech, so we'll see what shakes out there.

He's using a ton more words now; I don't know if it's the classes or just being around other kids or the general explosion of language that happens, but he's got tons more words: baby, bubbles, crocodile. He's doing a lot more spontaneous imitation, where if I say a word, he says it back. And he's picked up words he knew but had stopped using, like "more."

They gave him a post-class evaluation to see where he was compared to where he started (about the same, with a couple minor improvements). The woman doing the evaluation said to me, "He's such a sweet kid. There were kids crying in the room and he took them toys and tried to play with them." Yup, that's my sweetie.

Arrrgh, mateys!

My pirate name is:

Captain Bess Flint

Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

Assessment, round 2

We're on to the next agency here in speech development land. They came by the house today to do a general evaluation, all five areas again. Three women: an intake coordinator, a special ed teacher, and a trainee. The intake coordinator asked me questions while the teacher played with A. The trainee watched.

A was in a great mood and was his bubbly outgoing self. He sat them down, brought them toys, and tried to share the toys the teacher gave him with the other two women. "He wants to make sure everyone's involved," the teacher said. "He's got great play skills. He should be a social worker when he grows up."

It was same old, same old for questions. We hit an impasse in the play portion of the exam because A refused to play with the blocks. The teacher had lots more fun things in her bag of tricks and he didn't want to play with blocks when he has a gazillion sets of blocks in the house already. He'd already brought a set of blocks out for the women to play with.

The teacher asked if he was an only child, and then said, "Gosh, with play skills like his and all these toys, you should have five more." Um, no. No no no. She also approved of our toys. They're good toys. Active toys make passive babies, you know.

Anyway, he's a scattered kid. This does not have anything to do with his focus, which is legendary and laser-like and was commented upon by the women; I'm talking test results. He's literally all over. Won't play with blocks, 15 months for cognitive and 12 months for fine motor. Threads three beads on a string, 30 months for cognitive and fine motor. Makes the overall scoring a bit inaccurate.

His receptive language is fine; he's got a delay in his expressive language. According to the math of the test, he's showing a 25% delay in speech development, which is not enough to require the services of the more intensive agency. But they think his expressive is far enough behind that it requires further investigation, so they're going to have a speech evaluation done.

When they were all through, they asked me if I had any questions, and so I asked, "In your opinions, should I be worried about him?"

And they all looked at each other and the teacher said, "No. I wouldn't. On a ten point scale, I'd say you should worry about a 3, which you probably already are. He's very bright; his play skills are great, very directed. Play is the basis for speech. He talks a lot already in jargon and I'm guessing one day you'll be saying, 'We thought he wouldn't talk and now we can't get him to stop.'"

So I'm somewhat relieved, although it felt anticlimactic to have three people tell me what I thought about my kid already was right. They don't know why he doesn't talk either, but there's a ton of money to be had if we figure it out (and apply it across many other kids in the universe).

the House of Mouse

We just got back from Walt Disney World, that altar to childhood and capitalism. A had a fabulous time. This is what he loved:

• Peter Pan's Flight
• It's a Small World
• The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
• Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin
  
• El Gran Fiesta (the boat ride in Mexico)
• Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party
• the Finding Nemo and Festival of the Lion King shows
• Flights of Wonder
  
• Stealing the chocolate coating off his mother's Mickey Ears ice cream novelties
• Dole Whip and ice cream
  
• Running around with his cousins
  
• Swimming in the pool, especially when his dad picked him and me up and tossed us up in the air together
  
• The little table that slid out from under the desk to eat breakfast on
• Sitting on bench seats to eat with us
  
• Feeding M&Ms to Pluto
• Fountains
• The talking trash can in Tomorrowland

And we loved watching him. There's nothing quite like watching your own kid enjoy something. I've always been a "suck the marrow out of the day" kind of girl at Disney, but this trip, I was more than happy to watch A take yet another trip around London and Neverland in a pirate ship because he was just thrilled to take it in.

Yes, they lost our luggage. But they found it. Yes, two-year-olds need naps and snacks. But they also notice the smallest things and have the biggest smiles.

Visits and travel and more

Well, I neglected to mention that last week our lovely friends the Bumps came to town for the weekend and we all had a fabulous time. They brought cookies and birthday presents and played a lot with A. He was quite sad when everyone went home and C went back to work and it was only me and him.

I'm tired. He's asleep, so I feel like I should blog, but I'm not sure what to blog about.

He's doing super great in swimming. We signed him up for classes--the place we've been taking classes is moving to a swim school where we pay monthly instead of in sessions, so that'll be good for him. And they'll still have the advanced class in the morning so all of us can go, which is nice.

Group is going well. Last time the teachers told me to get out and they'd talk him down from crying. He screamed and cries and I went to a more far-away room where I couldn't hear him, but he did great. He follows directions, cleans up, participates in the activities, so that's all super. One of the other parents (a grandma, actually) told me, "He is really smart. I've been watching him and he's very smart." Yes, I know. It makes me wonder what all the rest of the kids are in there for.

Speech pathologist (finally)

We met with the speech pathologist today. It's the same song and dance we've done the rest of the time: A plays while she asked me questions, then she played with him for a bit. She confirmed what everyone else has been saying; A has a mild to moderate developmental delay in speech.

She's the gate-keeper to all the services, though, so now we get to be on the track for services. He's wait-listed for the Communication Group, which is like the group he goes to now, only smaller and specifically for speech. He'll get a hearing test the next time the hearing test cavalcade rolls into town (once every two months). C and I will get to attend a parenting class to determine how to help A.

The one new thing today was a referral to Regional Services. The department we've been going to is a stop-gap measure to help kids who are a little behind catch up so they're prepared for preschool/kindergarten. There's another department that offers more extensive services for kids who need more help. A is borderline between the groups, mild to moderate. The criterion he's being assessed against is the 24-27 month old criterion, and he's at the beginning of the range. So the pathologist asked me if I wanted to get the paperwork rolling to get him into Regional Services or if I wanted to wait and see how he did in his groups.

I thought about it for maybe thirty seconds, then said, "Let's get the paperwork started." I know that it's a lot harder to get someone into a program than it is to take them out of it, and even if he does great, I want him to have all the resources he can.

He seems to be liking Group; there's lots of toys and books there for him to play with. He's not done at the end of class and has to be convinced that it's time to go home. The facilitators say he's doing really well, pays attention, remains on task, cleans up. I still waver (worry) about the qualities of the other parents, but he's getting playtime with other kids and attention from trained teachers, and I figure that can't hurt.


Oh, and he's got two new words: baby and bear.

Global group

That's what we went to today. It's like mini-preschool. All the kids in the class are two, but he's the youngest and smallest. They have some structured arts and crafts activities, some free play time, they wash their hands and get cookies and water, then they read books and sing songs and are done. There's only five kids, all boys, and two teachers.

He did good. He needed some reassurance at the beginning that I was still around, and when they came out to wash their hands, he latched on and wouldn't let me go, so I came back in for the last part of group. But he had fun and threw a tantrum when we tried to go.

The other parents waiting in the hall give me the shivers. Really. The one teaching her baby to play with the light switch, the one reeking of cigarette smoke who yelled at her five-year-old for waking up the baby after the mother started a tickle fight, yeah, they scare me. But they are there at the center, waiting while their kids get enriched, so they're doing something.

These are just so not the people we hang out with. I usually run with the mommies who debate organic vs. local and Montessori vs. Waldorf. It reminds me of what my mom used to say: the only time in your life you ever have all levels of society together is in the public school system.

A needs a nap and we need to go to the store. Store's lost every day this week, but it's going to win today.

Developmental Assessment

At A's two-year check-up, (he's fine, btw), I talked to our pediatrician about A's speech. He used to use more words than he does now; he used to use two-word phrases and he stopped. This is one of those autism signs that gives me the heebie-jeebies, but he's still very tuned into people and situations, so I thought, no, not autism.

But it's something.

And our super-cool pediatrician agreed that it was odd and so last week we started out on the journey of assessment.

• Tuesday: initial screening: a questionnaire, asked verbally of me, to determine a general development level in five categories: gross motor, fine motor, personal/social (interactions), cognitive (problem solving), communication. He's off the charts for everything but communication, where he's in the 12-24 month category. Ouch. Come back tomorrow to meet with a speech specialist.
• Wednesday: not the speech specialist. This is a more thorough general screening, done by someone who questions me and plays and talks with A. He's in the 30 month range for everything but communication, where he's in the 15-18 month range. Come back tomorrow and meet with another specialist to do a speech assessment, plus we're going to put A into some monitored play groups to make him play with other children and force him to develop communication skills in self-defense.
• Thursday: Speech assessment, general. This is one-hour where the specialist talks mostly to A and some to me and asks him to say things, accomplish tasks, play. He's in the 15-18 month range for expressive communication (him talking) and the 18-21 month range for receptive communication (him listening to what people say).

And so here we are. I figured I'd blog before it got to be too much to describe. He's got the first of the playgroups tomorrow. We have a more in-depth meeting next week with a speech pathologist who will assess him in more detail and set goals.

The last specialist recommended a specific communication-focused play group, an audiology test, and a parenting class for us to be able to help him specifically with communication, but all of those have to be seconded by the speech pathologist.

The audiology test is to make sure he's hearing us since the specialist noted a delay between when A hears a request and when he acts on the request. The suspicion around here is that the delay is the time A takes to decide whether or not he's going to follow a request, but it's good to get him tested anyway.

We're all ambivalent here. I'm glad we got early intervention; I just want to know what's up with him. C still thinks, much like walking, that A just needs to decide he wants to talk and he'll talk. I think assessment is always a good thing, and the earlier the better. But every specialist has taken great pains to tell me: he's smart. He's really really smart. And I say, well, duh.

Flying baby boy

By his second birthday, A has been on twenty flights. I saw a blog post by a friend and thought, gosh, I wonder how many flights A has been on so far. Twenty.

Two!

That's right; he's two.

The grandparents came out for the weekend and we had a birthday party at the zoo that went well, I thought. We fed the giraffes, had some lunch, opened presents, had cupcakes. Low-key, good for a two-year-old (especially one low on naps).

Yesterday he and I didn't do much since we were still in recovery mode from the weekend; I don't think any of us got enough sleep. But he's now got piles of toys (not like he was lacking before) and he was happy to play with the new toys and watch his new Elmo DVD over and over and over again.

And over.

And over.

I can't believe he's two. Two! He's a walking, talking little boy with opinions, when two years ago, we had this tiny, tiny thing that couldn't hold his head up. Yesterday, within the space of two minutes, he climbed up on the counter (using his brand new Tonka truck) and poured a ramekin of cooking oil on the kitchen floor. I would have chosen some other way to highlight his independence and abilities, but ornery is what being two is all about. Two years ago, it took all our combined efforts to nurse; last night he had meatballs and corn chips for dinner like they were going out of style. He ate seven mini-meatballs. Good grief.

So happy birthday, beautiful baby boy of mine.