Comparing comparisons

Today I received an email from a blog friend (who I didn’t recognize immediately…sorry!) asking a question that prompted what I have been meaning to post about for a while.  So I asked permission to share the email and response, removing identifiers, for a couple reasons.

1. I don’t like to rewrite things when I don’t need to.  Who has the time?
2. I know there are SEVERAL of you other blog buddies out there who can relate to this situation, and I’d really love to share your input with her as well.

So read along, and please share your thoughts…if you want to do a post of your own, or you already have one that’s relevant, leave a link in the comments. Thanks.  Online support is VITAL, I think. I’d be lost without all the things I’ve learned from the other “DS moms.” (I know…not PC.)

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Her email:
I have a 2 1/2 year old who has down syndrome, and an 11 month old who is 'typical'.

My question for you is: how do you not compare them? At 11 months, V is doing more things than R did at 18 months. 

It scares me how fast V is learning and reaching milestones.  I am ashamed that I even compare them at all.  It's so hard to watch R at her therapies, struggling to climb stairs, or say a word, or stack a block, yet V can do those things and we haven't even showed her!

I'm sorry. I don't mean to vent. I just thought you might have some advice for a mom with an older child with special needs and a younger child who will soon surpass the older.

Thank you.
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My response:
Hi,

I’ve been debating a post about this, formulating it in my head very recently.  Funny that you happened to write today.  I don’t know that I have any great advice, but I’ll share how it looks for me.

As you might know, my girls are 27 months apart, Braska will be 4 in November and Kinlee is a few days away from 17 months.  The simple answer is that I DO compare them, sometimes just because they’re my kids and I think every parent marvels at how different and how similar their kids are, no matter what their chromosome count is.  Sometimes I enjoy looking at how Kinlee at 17 months is the same size Braska was at almost 3 years old.  It’s fun to me, not to Braska’s insult, but just because I enjoy their differences.  I love to take pictures of Kinlee in things that Braska wore, though now, they are wearing many of the same things!

That said… there are times when it’s not as “cute” to compare, and I’ve found that recently I’ve been faced with the hardest issue.  It surprised me, but I’ve had to deal with it a little more than I expected.  You see, Kinlee and Braska basically started walking at the same time…Kinlee was 13 months, Braska was 40 months.  Braska has progressed well, is getting stronger, and has gained better balance, but she is still very wobbly and very much a “new walker.”  Kinlee sped right past her, handling steps more skillfully, climbing more, balancing better, almost running at this point.  Braska is significantly delayed in her gross motor—it is one of her toughest areas, as she has severely low tone.  We know this, we knew this would happen, and it was ok.  I’m not too bothered by the walking issue.  BUT in the past couple months, Kinlee has taken off in her speech and language.  This is Braska’s STRENGTH!  Braska’s done extremely well with speech and enunciation, especially in the realm of kids with DS, and we’ve been very proud of her.  We work with her, but it is clearly a natural strength of hers.  With Kinlee fast approaching Braska in the speech “race,” I realized the other day that soon, ALL of Kinlee’s skills will be beyond Braska’s.  And that was hard for me.  I could deal with Kinlee passing her up in the weak areas, but once she overtakes her in the area of strength…what else is there?  She already uses “yes” and “no” more appropriately than Braska, who only this past week has started using “no” when she has a preference that would make it the right choice.  She can make her requests, follow directions, and understand a more complicated situation much more easily than Braska can.  It’s all a little hard for me to accept, but yet I am excited Kinlee is doing so well.  How to live in both of those worlds?!?

I never expected this to be a concern for me.  We don’t really struggle much with what Braska “can’t” do. I’m fine with her pace of learning, I expect her to do her best, but I don’t care too much about where she falls on a chart or in comparison to other 3-year-olds.  And yet, I’m hit by this situation of Kinlee preparing to fly right by her in the milestone sprint she’s on.  What to do about it?  I don’t know.  I must refocus back on the fact that Braska is a phenomenal kid, just like she is. She is by far the sweeter, more compliant, consistently happier, easier to deal with, and more loving child.  And I love that about her.  Kinlee is pretty great in her own right, but she’s a challenge in many of these areas, which I think is probably to be expected, and yet we don’t really KNOW what to expect. 

I do SO get what you mean about how the younger can just GET things, like without being taught specifically for hours and hours before producing a result.  It’s been amazing to watch Kinlee surprise us over and over.  Last night I took her to the store with me, and she looked over at the side while I was choosing a loaf of bread and said “Buns!”  And she was right.  They were hamburger buns.  Something we NEVER have in the house.  I think we’ve used them once at her grandparents a couple weeks ago… how in the heck did she know that?!?  And animal sounds… we basically were reviewing with Braska, as we often do, just playing the “what does it say” game, and Kinlee knew them all right on after the first time through!    I can’t get over how one day she doesn’t know (fill in the blank) and the next day she knows it completely!  Braska has serious feeding issues, is on a g-tube, and isn’t anywhere near feeding herself, because she doesn’t really want food in the first place.  Kinlee was given a spoon, shown how to use it once, and she has a decent grasp of it.  Not that it’s perfect, but she gets it.  Amazing!  We often refer to Kinlee as the “superhero” of the family.  But then Braska is the one who has endured open-heart surgery and thrived with beauty and grace throughout the whole struggle!

Would I want to change Braska to make her “keep up” better?   Nope, not at all.  I’d love it if she were to be able to learn more easily or grasp concepts more fully, but I don’t know what other things we might lose in that adjustment that I’m not willing to let go of.  I have come to believe, once again, that she is precisely who she was designed to be, and I can only adore her for being so purely that.  There is no pretense to her, she doesn’t try to be what she’s not.  She’s 3, she’s a girly girl,  and that’s all that’s there.  And I like it that way. 

I don’t know if this helps any, but I can only encourage you that there are a lot of us out here who are in the same boat.  I have a few blogger friends who have a kiddo with DS as the oldest and then another one within the next couple years.  It’s amazing how similar our stories are, and yet how we each handle it with our own style.  If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to post your question (names removed, so you wouldn’t be identified at all, if you like) so that some of the other moms in this position could offer their insight as well.  Would that be ok with you?

The day that Kinlee uses her first full sentence in a more concise and language-appropriate way than her sister, I’m going to have trouble with it, even while I celebrate her accomplishment.  I hate to see Braska be truly “behind” her little sister, but I know that Kinlee is going to be a great leader for her to follow after.  Braska will benefit greatly from Kinlee’s being “ahead” of her!

Many blessings… love them like crazy, and celebrate them, no matter how quickly or slowly they got to the sweet spot. :o)

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How would YOU answer the question??

The germ count

As of right now, we are healthy.  That’s very nice. The girls are well—or as well as Braska can be with what is apparently allergies at this time of year, so still snot persists—and they are nearing their “normal” demeanors again. 

Right at the moment I can’t remember what I’ve updated about on here and what I haven’t and I have very limited time to throw some info up here, so I won’t go hunt it down. If this is a repeat, please pardon me.

Braska is due for tubes in her ears. We learned this at the end of February and were not at all surprised.  Though she made it her first three years of life with not a single ear infection, she had at least 4 in the first 3 months of school, so tubes are in order.  The ENT recommended that we get a sleep study first to see if we would just do tonsils, adenoids, and tubes all in one anesthesia trip. Sounds good to me. The sleep study was at the end of March. (Still no results…grrr. That’s another story. I’m going to be making another in a long string of calls this morning.)

To my chagrin, the ENT either has way too many patients or way too little time scheduled for OR procedures, because suddenly, when we wanted to schedule for a surgery date, they gave us June 2.  Not acceptable.  So we began to check out some options, including restarting with another ENT and still getting the whole process done in less time. But in the nick of time, I was told that there was a cancellation and we could have the slot, the first week of May.  I took it, and we resigned to the fact that we’d have to wait til then for the procedure.

Due to our string of ear infections, strep, hand/foot/mouth disease, and random other fun germies, our pediatrician recommended this week that we keep Braska out of school until her surgery, just to be SURE that we don’t have to postpone due to another little illness.  If we have to reschedule, it would probably be December before we get in, by my calculations.

Therefore, this week I’ve been talking to lots of people at her school, the district coordinator, therapists, etc.  We’re trying to work out a way for her to go to school for therapy only and in environments that we can control as far as exposure/cleanliness.  So I would take her up for therapy services at regular times for the next few weeks.  At this point, we have speech on the calendar, but I’m waiting on the rest.  OT/feeding is my primary concern, since Braska’s been making progress with Sue, so it’s the one I’ll work the hardest for. (Excuse me…for which I’ll work the hardest.   Good grammar can be so formal.)

We’re hanging out at home in the meantime.  The girls are playing fairly well, though they sure do get on each others nerves lately, and mine, and Belle’s, and vice versa in all cases…close quarters we have here, and when we’re all trying to accomplish something different on our personal agendas, it gets heated.  We’ve made a few trips to the library, with limited handling of books.  Braska has asked almost daily to “go school today?” and “fun at Jack’s house!” (She actually says it like that…there’s nothing but fun at Jack’s house apparently!)

For now we’ll take it easy, enjoy the nice weather, though we can’t really use the beloved attic fan like we would prefer since Miss Snotty only gets worse with all the crazy high pollen lately.  We’ve had her on Claritin which didn’t seem to do anything at all.  We now have her on Zyrtec, but it appears to make her really crazy inside and she acts out strangely.  So I’m not really sure we’ll continue.  She hasn’t had it last night or today, so we’ll see how she does.

That’s where we are. Not all that bad, not all that fun. But I’ll take it over antibiotics and coughing and fevers and whining (more than usual, on Kinlee’s part) any day.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled day. Thanks for tuning in.

Fighting for feeding

Ok, so it’s not so much a “fight” but it has felt like it a little in the last couple days.  If you didn’t see the post on Braska’s blog about yesterday’s feeding demo (and if you want things to make sense) you might want to start there first.

Today the goal was to talk to the contact at the school and Sue, a superb OTR/L with excellent feeding skills and experience.  She was our OT for about 3 months at the end of the summer, right before Braska’s transition out of EI.  She is wonderful, as a person, with Braska, and at what she knows as a professional.  I wanted Braska to stay with her when starting school, since Sue works there as well as privately, but the school is set up so that each classroom has an OT who works with the kids in that room.  Since Braska wasn’t in one of Sue’s rooms, we went with the OT in the room.

 Let’s just say that has not worked out the best.

There’s a lot that could be said about that, but I’ll leave most of it alone except to mention that this is actually great timing.  I was only becoming aware of some concerns within the last couple weeks, so a change now is great.

Sue didn’t work with Braska on feeding when she was our OT. This was at our request.  At that point we were still under the impression that Braska’s issues were behavioral, for the most part, and so we weren’t doing focused feeding therapy at that point, trying not to “push her.”  Oh what I wish we’d known then…

Anyway, the good news is, for right now it seems we will be able to make the changes needed to get Braska back with Sue and working specifically on feeding.  We’ll be trying to make this work in Braska’s school schedule on the days Sue is there.  But if that doesn’t work, we’ll possibly go early or something like that to work on the oral motor specifically.  And if all else fails, we will see Sue on a private basis outside of school.  In fact, depending on how receptive Braska is and how it goes initially, we may do both if we can handle it financially. 

We have a lot of lost ground to make up.  But I was so encouraged by the fact that Sue wants to work with her and is sure that it’s not “too late.”  Her muscles can be trained and what behavioral habits have been learned are not too deep to relearn correctly.

We will also be developing a plan to includes Braska’s ST, who we really like a lot.  Ann works so well with Braska and Braska responds well to her. This way they will be coming at the oral motor elements from different directions but working on much the same skills, used for different things.

I’m hopeful that things will be righted soon, and I’m glad to know that we do have good people available.  Of course, I’m still frustrated that we were on a wrong path for what seems like such an important part of her young life, but I have to let that go. 

If I could hang out in NICUs and tell parents in our position NOT to take kids off the bottle completely, even if it just means letting them take 5 or 10 cc with the bottle before tube feeding… oh how I wish we’d have had someone to clue us in…  what a different picture we’d have now.  But it doesn’t work that way.  I can only help those who come behind us, and every child is different, but it’s worth sharing our experience so people can make a more informed decision.

Hopefully, over the next few weeks we’ll see some exciting things.  I acknowledged to Sue that we are willing to take the risk of regression in oral intake to get things done right and help Braska to get where she needs to be in the end. In other words, we may have to take some steps back before taking steps forward. We’ve always been hesitant to have specific feeding therapies because Braska would then refuse to eat for days or weeks at a time after something new was presented in therapy.  But now, I fully believe that we need to back up and do this right.  Teach her the right way to use her mouth and tongue and all the parts around them.  We need to help her eat properly and it won’t be such a difficult thing for her.  THEN maybe she will want to eat as it gets less difficult because her oral motor skills are better.  So if we must rely on the G-tube solely for a while, so be it.  She’ll get her nutrition and we’ll start the journey to being rid of the tube eventually. 

A journey I thought we started long ago, but we were following the wrong map.

***As I was proofing this, the school called.  They are willing to check out the options, create a plan, and help us make some changes to get Braska the therapy she needs.  The ball is rolling…I’m so glad for that. 

****Oh my goodness.  As soon as I posted this, the school called back.  They already have discussed with appropriate people and we have a plan in place.  Woo Hoo!!!  Sue will be handling the oral motor part of Braska’s OT (30 mins a week) and the classroom OT will be handling the fine motor part (also 30 mins a week).  I’m pleased with this and I hope that it works out as well as I expect it to! Yay! 

Thank you, God, for presenting and then solving a problem I wasn’t even aware of…and in short order.  Awesome!

Mommy report: Feeding demo/eval

You may have seen over here that we were recently scheduled to do a demo for a feeding therapy seminar that was held nearby.  Well that was today, and it was quite an experience.  A good experience, and yet one that leads to frustration…  let me explain.

Lori Overland, MS, CCC-SLP was the speaker, and the seminar was promoted by Leaps and Bounds, which is a therapy facility here.  We were to fill in where there was a need for a child with problems moving food around and maintaining liquids in the mouth.  What a good fit!  I was anxious that Braska might not cooperate in a group setting, but we went ahead and said we’d do it. 

We arrived a few minutes early, Braska got to meet Lori and play with her a bit while Lori did some visual eval and observed for a few specific things.  She tried a couple skills with her and shared some initial thoughts.  Immediately, she noted problems with Braska’s oral motor skill and strength.  This might not be a shocker to some of you, but the difference is that she pointed out things that we’ve not had anyone else mention before, or at least recently.  I had told her that we’d been led to believe that Braska’s issues were behavioral at this point, her refusal to eat being just that—refusing.  We haven’t worked on oral motor skills in over 18 months with any real intention, either in therapy or in general.  I always believed that since her speech is so good, and she can make all her sounds correctly, that her oral motor was not the biggest problem.  She is able to take food in and swallow it with no problem, so I just operated on the idea that she could eat if she wanted.  I know she can’t chew, she never has, so I figured we’d need specific work on that, but I wasn’t sure where to get it.

In less than 15 minutes of observing and working with Braska, she noted and explained numerous things that were “obvious” and pointed toward specific therapy needs.  I was relieved to know that there was something that could be done to help her, but I was amazed that we’ve not heard this from other therapists who worked with her quite a while.

We put Braska in her feeding chair, and Lori began to do the demonstration for 65 or so OTs and SLPs who were in attendance.  She tried a variety of things, like massage and vibration, to stimulate Braska’s mouth and face and prepare it for feeding.  Braska did pretty well overall, and she accepted this interaction better than I would have expected.  She didn’t like the alligator jiggler as much as she used to back in the day, but for the most part, she cooperated.  She did not want to bite things when asked, like the chewy tube, but that wasn’t really a surprise.

Lori tried to work on the inside of her mouth, on her tongue and cheeks, but Braska was not really having that.  Again, this isn’t new for her to avoid that type of thing.  I fed her some yogurt while the whole group watched and commented or asked questions.  Lori showed what things were indicating issues.  The position of her jaw, the way she led with her tongue instead of her lip, the way the top lip stayed up instead of coming down to meet the spoon properly.  She also noted things like how long it took Braska to swallow, I guess meaning that she had to work hard to get the food or liquid back there.  She also offered her some water in a honey bear, but Braska was not really interested in that so much.  She wouldn’t really open her mouth.

Braska is so finicky about who she will warm up to when it comes to working on feeding or around her mouth.  She is very quick to shut down around several therapists we’ve had, and it was amazing to me to see how well she did with Lori.  I really wish she didn’t live and practice in Connecticut!

We are proud of how Braska has done with her speech and language.  She does extremely well for a child her age with DS in the area of speech and language.  But Lori pointed out that, though she is speaking very well,  she could be even MORE clear and proper in her speech if we could work on these oral motor concerns.

Lori also felt that some of her feeding issues, at least currently, could be due to her ears and enlarged tonsils and adenoids(T&A).  I’ve heard from other parents who found that after their child had the T&A removed due to sleep apnea concerns their child also showed improvement in her feeding issues also.  Lori felt due to Braska’s noise respiration and apneic episodes that she’s having more frequently that she probably would show progress after the T&A were removed.  Braska is scheduled for a sleep study on 3/23 at which time the decision will be made about if they will take out her T&A at the same time that they put in her ear tubes.  The combination of these things will likely bring positive results to the feeding situation.  She also noted that it might be related to her tendency to sit with her head back, chin up, so frequently.  This could possibly be a position that allows for the most open airway.  We’ll see what the sleep study shows and go from there, but it’s encouraging to think that we might be on to something that could really make a difference.

As we left, I was happy that we’d found a direction to take to help Braska, and at the same time, I was really kind of mad that we’ve gone this long without this being stressed as important.  How have we had all these professionals in and out of our home and involved in her transition and evaluations and no one brought up that she needed focused oral motor therapy??  Now that we’re out of First Steps (EI), this will be all on us to take care of.  Insurance doesn’t cover it unless there is a medical diagnosis, and I don’t know that we’ll have a valid one right now.  So if we seek private therapy to correct the bad habits and learn the proper ones, it will all be out of pocket.  If that’s what we need to do, we will do it.  Money will not be the reason she doesn’t learn to eat properly.   I’m just frustrated that we’ve gone this long operating on flawed assumptions.

Where do we go from here?  Well, we start tomorrow by talking to the school and making some changes to ensure that the right people are working with her.  The good news is that there is someone who knows what to do and who Braska likes very well.  The bad news is that there is a policy in place that makes it hard for us to be able to have her work with Braska.  But I think we can work around it or run right through it.  If all else fails, we can see this person outside of school in her private practice, and that’s what we’ll do if we need to.  That’s where we’ll start…  it’s going to be a long road, but at least we now know where we’re headed.

New experiences coming right up

(This is a scheduled post…so I’m writing it Friday night, but you won’t see it til Saturday.  That’s because I want to be sure you have time to see this post with the exciting news!)

Tomorrow/today (Saturday) I will be spending the day at our local/regional DS conference.  The DSAGSL puts this on each year.  I’ve never gone, for a variety of reasons.  But this year, thanks to my buddy Adrienne, I ended up on the planning committee along with Julie. Both of us first-timers, and kind of representing the “moms of younger kids” set.  I also was asked to be part of a workshop with a parent panel on the process of doing the first IEP, transitioning from Early Intervention to the school system.  So tomorrow will be a busy day, one that I am expecting to be exhausting in a few ways, but I hope that it will go well for those who come.  I really hope more are in attendance than what it sounds like there will be.  Julie is picking me up at 7 am. Neither of us like to be up and presentable at that hour.  I believe some caffeine will be involved.

Then on Tuesday morning, Braska and I—more Braska than me—will be “the entertainment” (or the lab rat) for a demonstration by Lori Overland, all the way from Connecticut, at a seminar for therapists here.  Braska will be exhibiting her trouble moving food around in her mouth appropriately and her struggle with liquids remaining in the mouth when she tries to take a drink.  I’m really looking forward to this because Lori is a very well regarded expert on oral-motor issues and feeding, and we get an evaluation and recommendations from her for Braska as a “Thank You” for volunteering.  (Worth like $600!)  I’m all for any expert help with feeding!! And I love that we can be a part of helping people learn about issues that a tiny part of an already small population deal with daily. It was really neat how the kiddos who were originally scheduled were unable to attend and we jumped in to fill a need at the last second…just setting this up today!  Can’t wait to see how it goes.  I just hope Braska cooperates with what they need.  I do have to give a bit of case history to the group, so that will make me nervous, but I’ll make it.  It’s been a while since I’ve had to speak to a group of healthcare professionals, but I think I can remember how.

So it’s going to be a busy weekend around here—I already had an event tonight that I helped with at church, conference tomorrow, Father-in-law’s birthday on Sunday, couple appointments on Monday, and oral-motor seminar on Tuesday—I think I’ll have quite a bit of new and helpful information by the time I get to sit down, breathe, and process it all.  I’ll be sure to share.

Early Intervention: Parent-centered team

Even though we are just outside of the Early Intervention system, since Braska turned 3 in November, I still get a lot of contacts and questions about the differences in EI services in different states and even other counties in Missouri.  Ria has been communicating with someone about this and posted their conversation on her blog today.  It sounds like this mom that Ria has been talking to has been put into the new model for EI that some places are transitioning to. She asked for some input into our experiences.

In St. Louis County, next door to ours, the First Steps Program has been trying out a new parent-centered team approach with new parents and transferring families.  From what I learned via word of mouth from a few in the administrative side of the system, St. Louis County agreed to be part of a testing or trial program with this new approach.  So far, I’ve not heard many families who are pleased with it, unfortunately.

To contrast the two, let me first summarize our experience: Braska had in-home therapies with First Steps from the time we moved to Missouri when she was 18 months old.   She had weekly speech therapy (ST), occupational/feeding therapy (OT), physical therapy (PT), and she also was seen by a nutritionist/feeding specialist due to her G-tube and difficulty gaining weight.  We made some adjustments to these over the past couple years and changed OT to every other week for a while, slowed ST to every other week for her last 6 months in EI since she was so self-motivated and ahead of the curve in her speech skills, we had PT at Braska’s school for a while, and we changed the schedule for the nutritionist as well.  But even in all this, we still had each provider of their particular specialty coming to treat Braska hands-on. 

When Braska turned 2, she went to what I called “pre-preschool” for two hours each Monday.  The teacher was a developmental therapist (DT) and it was a great experience.  Braska loved it, she learned a lot, and I firmly believe it helped her with the transition to preschool when she turned 3.  This was an added benefit to the home-based therapies, but I wouldn’t want to have it be the only thing.  I wouldn’t have wanted a group setting with one therapist to be her only treatment each week.  In some cases, I’m told that’s happening.

The guru for what is called the “team approach” around here is Robin McWilliam, Ph.D. (He has a blog here if you’re interested.)  He’s widely known in the field of EI for promoting what he calls a PSP or primary service provider model.  My paraphrase of the model, combining what I’ve read and what I’ve heard from parents who have been in it, goes like this… There is a team of providers—PT, OT, DT, ST, etc.—who meet regularly to discuss little Suzy.  They are all involved in working on her IFSP goals and they are all familiar with her.  BUT not all of them have met her, and in many cases they may not.

The feature of this model, also called the transdisciplinary model, is that there is one person identified as the “primary service provider (PSP)” and that person is who sees Suzy in the home regularly.  That person conveys all the instructions and thoughts or concerns from the team.  The PSP is usually the therapist who deals with the child’s most delayed area, as far as I can tell.  For instance, if Suzy is 2 and she walks well and eats well and can scribble, but she doesn’t use words yet, she will probably have the ST be her PSP.  What that means is that the ST will come to the house weekly or biweekly and work with Suzy, but she will not only do ST but will also address concerns in PT or OT areas also.  The PSP will research and discuss with the other team members issues that come up and she will then report back to the parent.  But all concerns about any modality will go through the PSP—the ST in this scenario.

To me, it’s clear why this approach is frustrating for a parent.  What if my child has two areas that are in great need of work?  What kind of delay in answers must come when a parent must ask an ST about the inversion of her child’s ankles and wait for the ST to talk to the PT and then get back to the parent?  Wouldn’t it always be wiser for the provider who is offering the advice to be the one actually seeing and working with the child?  From what I’ve been told, parents receive a lot of handouts and information for where to research and find their own answers for issues that might come up.  This is better than nothing, maybe, but it still pales in comparison to the idea of a person, trained in THAT field, observing the child and discussing the plan with you.

I’m told by those who know these things that being in this trial group is not mandatory in St. Louis County, though they don’t tell you that, and that you can opt out of this team approach.  But last I heard, they were putting 1 out of 4 new families, either by birth or by transfer, into the new model.  And there have been quite a few unhappy families.

We’re just one county over, and we did not participate in this model. I’m thankful for that, though I’m told that all of Missouri may end up going this route soon if some people in high places have their way.  We’ll have to see.  I hope that’s not the case.

I can’t imagine having to deal with one person about all our issues…G-tube, no/limited oral feeding, not walking, and very delayed fine motor.  I can’t imagine the strain on any therapist who would have been put in the position of our PSP.  I can tell you that I wouldn’t have been fun to be around much after about a week in that system.  It just doesn’t seem like the best interest of the child is in the forefront in this system.  Maybe some like it, maybe some have had success, but for a child with multiple delays and challenges, it just doesn’t seem to make sense.

Have you had experience with this new approach?  Thoughts?

More visits with friends

A few weeks ago, we went to see my friends Connor and Lucas.  They used to live in the town where I lived when I was a tiny baby.  Now they live in a different place, just like us.  But a different different place.

So we went to see them and play for a couple days.  They have the BEST playroom and SO many toys!  And they also have the best mommy and daddy for reading books!  Mr. Matt and Miss Nico read lots of books to me and KiKi, and I love books, so that was my favorite part.

They also have a chair I call the thinking chair.  Like Steve has on Blues Clues, you know.  This is me showing Mommy how I smile.  She says I need to practice a little.


Here’s KiKi playing in the playroom.  She had a lot of fun in there.


And before we left, all us kids got on the couch for a picture.  Mommy and Miss Nico took a bunch because we were being a little silly and not listening all the time.


Then Connor took a turn.  He’s pretty good!  

And Miss Nico helped Lucas take one, too. 

We had fun, guys!! Thanks for letting us play and feeding us lots of yummy food!  We can’t wait til we can play with your new little sister! (That’s what I hope it is…the new baby.  They need a little girl like me!)