#23

Pahta = Pasta

More Pahta from Leslie Ann McNolty on Vimeo.

Two More!

I forgot two words:

poo poo
bye bye

That's 21! Take that so-called child development experts!

Maybe Not So Far Behind

Thomas had his 2-year-old checkup yesterday. He weighs 27 lbs 1 oz and he's 33 and 3/4 inches tall. He's just below average in weight, right at average for height, and just above on head circumference. He also got his last two shots until Kindergarten (except for annual flu shots). Yay! Shots are horrible.

At each checkup, I fill out a developmental checklist. The speech requirement for 2-year-olds is a 20 word vocabulary. I was shocked. I thought Thomas's speech was still way behind. Not so; he has a 19 word vocabulary. He says:

Dada
Sissy
ruah = truck
argh = quack (and lion, tiger, bear, dinosaur, etc.)
moo
hoo hoo (owl)
mo = more
pway = plane
uh oh
ahh = all gone
wa = water
tee = teeth
ju = juice
shoes
ca = car
ffuu = fan
cook = cookie
oh wow
pea = please

He'll also repeat just about anything you ask him too.

I'm glad he's not too far behind, but I'm also a little angry. Maybe he wouldn't have caught up without speech therapy but given that he never freaking talks at speech therapy, I think he probably would have done it on his own. We've worried about him so much over the past year. For most of that year, I've thought that we're just caught in a particular moment in time, when everyone is on the lookout for speech delays. Ten years ago (and likely 10 years from now), no one would have thought twice about Thomas's speech at 14-months-old. And while speech therapy certainly doesn't hurt him, I hate it. The only time I've ever really thought there might be something truly wrong with Thomas was during a therapy session. So, I don't take him anymore; Jeremy does. I couldn't take it anymore.

I'm rambling. I'm just frustrated because I think we could have avoided this whole stupid thing.

Lots of Goings Ons

I signed the paperwork for Thomas' speech therapy last Thursday. Pat, our services coordinator, said that they have a shortage of speech therapists right now so I thought it might take a while to actually get an appointment. But I got a call today. Thomas starts speech therapy next Monday. He'll go once a week until he can accurately imitate sounds, has a 100 word vocabulary and can use 2-3 word phrases.

I also scheduled by dissertation proposal defense. On Wednesday, May 6th at 2 pm I'll sit down with 10 of the professors in my department and probably cry. No, I'll just want to cry.

My proposal is a 25 page paper that identifies the problem my dissertation will address and outlines my solution to it. The proposal defense is a working session - at least that's how the faculty views it. Students traditionally think of it as an hour-long opportunity for your professors to point out the weaknesses in your arguments and generally undermine your confidence in your philosophical abilities. Since I already have very little confidence in my philosophical abilities, it shouldn't take even that long. Though I doubt they'll cut it short, no matter how much I might wish they would.

Clearly, I am not looking forward to it. However, if I get through it (without crying, hyperventilating, vomiting or rashly faking an epileptic seizure) and my proposal passes (lets not even consider the alternative), I'll get my master's degree and I'll finally be able to teach. More importantly, the last five years will have proven not to have been a complete waste of time. (It was touch and go there for a while on that score).

Advanced Skills

Where's Your Hair? from Leslie Ann McNolty on Vimeo.


He's also really good at refusing to talk.


Stubborn from Leslie Ann McNolty on Vimeo.

Zoo

We went to the Sacramento Zoo this morning. It's a small zoo and badly in need up updating. It really made me appreciate all the work that has gone into the Sedgwick County Zoo.




Fortunately, they are doing some work on it. This sad little giraffe exhibit is being replaced with a much bigger enclosure next year. Hopefully, it won't have any concrete.




Sitting in this little dump truck was probably the highlight of the zoo for Thomas. The kid is seriously obsessed with vehicles. Jeremy was holding him at the chimpanzee exhibit when a young chimp walked right up to the glass and climbed a rope that was hanging there. It was very cool. Unfortunately, a plane flew overhead at the same time. Thomas missed the chimp because he was frantically pointing at the sky and saying "Pway! Pway!"* over and over again.

Silly monkey.

*"Pway" is how Thomas tries to say "plane". The "p" sound is just barely there. As far as I can tell, he has no idea how to make the "n" sound. I've never heard him make it.

Appointments Update

Thomas had his speech and development evaluations on Friday afternoon. (The speech therapist rescheduled so we could do them both at once.) Overall, it went very well. He tested at 9 months on his speech development which is a 50% delay. But we already knew that. I mean, he's supposed to talk and he doesn't. No big surprise there.

I was more worried about the other areas of development: language comprehension, social skills, gross motor skills and fine motor skills. We thought he was doing fine in all of those areas but we're no experts. It would have been awful to have found out he had further delays that we hadn't even noticed. But there was no need to worry because, as it turns out, he's 3 to 6 months ahead in all those areas. They seemed particularly impressed when he showed them where his eyes, nose, ears, mouth, hair and feet are. I thought we were supposed to be teaching him body parts at this age but apparently it's an advanced skill.

He does qualify for free speech therapy once a week. We should start in a few weeks. In the meantime, the speech therapist recommended that we find a way to give him more exposure to other little kids. Toddlers are more likely to mimic other toddlers than adults. That's where he's gotten stuck. He mimics us physically; if I'm wiping off the counters, he'll bend down and wipe the floor. But he doesn't try to mimic the sounds we make. So, we're looking for an affordable (read free) way to get him around other kids.

We also went back to The Shriner's Hospital today. His arm is almost completely healed. There's one very small spot that is still open but it should scab over in the next day or two. Now we just have to manage the burn so it doesn't leave a scar. We're supposed to massage moisturizer into it 4 times a day for 5 minutes at a time. I don't know how I'm going to convince him to sit still for that long. He's also wearing a pressure sleeve to keep the new skin from puffing up and leaving a raised area. He'll have a red mark and be especially susceptible to sunburn for the next year or so. After that, good as new.

Appointments

We are going to be busy with appointments in the next two weeks. Thomas has two evaluations scheduled. He's being seen by an infant development specialist on Friday afternoon and a speech pathologist 10 days later on March 23rd. They each come to our house for the evaluation. I really have no idea what to expect; I'm just glad that we're finally doing something. Although if the future is anything like the past, it will be another 5 months before we get a report or find out if he qualifies for free services.

We're also going back to The Shriner's Hospital on Monday afternoon (the 16th). At our first appointment, they said his burn should heal within two weeks. It's only been two days but I haven't seen any improvement at all. I'm starting to worry that he won't heal fast enough and he'll end up with a scar. On the other hand, Jeremy thinks it is getting better. His arm does bleed a lot when we clean it and blood is a sign of healing.

So much for avoiding the heartbreaking parts.