'Tis the Season

Charlotte is very excited about all things Christmas.  Not just the presents, but everything (of course presents are discussed too).  But it has been fun to see completely wrap her head around the fact that this is a very special time of the year, just like I remembered it.

We had this paper advent calendar growing up that we reused year after year and I always liked getting up in the morning to open up the next day's window.  So I told Emily about that and last year she got this awesome felt advent calendar with 24 pockets and each day you take a new felt "ornament" out and put it on the felt tree.  And Charlotte comes down stairs and sees the calendar and the first thing she'll say to me is "Daddy it's day 11!" and she'll wait for me or Emily to come over to work the calendar with her.  It's a pretty nice way to start the day.  Or on mornings we all forget, it's a great way to start our post work/school afternoon together.

She loves the tree.  Emily brought the kids' table in their bedroom downstairs and put it next to the Christmas tree.  Charlotte is allowed to have her breakfast and snack there, and she'll just sit there looking at her tree and her Christmas stocking, eating.  Sometimes Happy joins her, sometimes she wants to sit in her high chair.

She loves Christmas music.  We have been listening to KOOL 108's Christmas music so much that Charltotte thinks it's a CD and not a radio station because we have heard each song they play at least ten 8712098123 times.   She makes up her own songs as kids do her age, and they are Christmas songs fused with some nonsense about Frozen.  But today she walked past me singing "and then we go KOOL 108 Christmas music time" and she did in the same tune KOOL 108 uses to announce itself.

She loves Christmas books. And Charlotte's personal librarian Suze has done a great job of keeping connected to Haps and Charlotte even though she can't be here with us this time.  She sent Charlotte some stickers, one sheet which is still untouched and a regular decoration at the dinner table.  And Charlotte used the other stickers to make holiday cards for decorations.  And then all on her own she made a card for Suze, but wants to me to add a message to Suze from Charlotte before I send it off.  We haven't found a good time to that because whenever I ask, Charlotte is busy coloring.

Anyway, two days ago Suze sent some Christmas books for Happy and Charlotte and immediately they were a HUGE hit.  Here they are when they first got them.  Note the homemade ribbon Charlotte is sporting.  She asked Emily to make that for her.

And the last few nights Charlotte has created her own agnostic manger to sleep in.  She always gets her stocking, which she treats like a doll, to sleep with, as well as the 'Twas the Night Before Christmas book from Suze (that poem was also a big part of our Christmas as a kid).  Then she gets her Rody bouncy horse we bought for her for physical therapy that she never once used in any physical way.  Only Rody isn't Rody anymore.  He's Rudolph.  And when I tuck the girls in I have to give Rudolph a kiss and then Charlotte makes sure he kisses me back.  And by that I mean she acts like the green reindeer that looks like a pony is licking me like a dog.  "Look Daddy.  Rudolph is kissing you like Pancho!"

So Rody didn't make the shot in the picture below, but there is Charlotte is in her manger.  Every night she lets the cat and book have half her bed.  Note the cat stocking has a matching homespun bow that Emily made at Charlotte's request.  Also, Charlotte is trying to make the exact same face that the cat is.  She came pretty close.  She has a bizarre knack to pretty much match any character's facial expression in a book.

Meanwhile Happy could care less couldn't care less could care less couldn't care less doesn't care about Christmas (sorry, it's an old Linguistics joke).  She's all like, "y'all do you're thing and I'll do mine and if we cross paths, that's cool.  I love you guys and all but I got stuff to do.  Speaking of which, I'm off to find a container, any container, full of stuff that I can dump on the floor.  This time make it super challenging so I REALLY have to earn it this time."

Well that reminds me.  There is one thing she loves about Christmas.  Pulling ornaments off the tree.  She's trying to train us to deal with it and we're trying to train her to stop doing it.

So far it's a stalemate in that regards.

Graduates

Charlotte graduated from Occupational Therapy (OT) at the end of November with little fanfare which is a good thing and Happy is wrapping up her time with Minneapolis Public School birth to three special education team.

We told Charlotte at the beginning of November that she only had to go to OT three more times and she was super excited.  She had a lot of fun at OT but she said she was excited to be with her friends at Edgecumbe Montessori all day.  While in OT she was showing up at school around 9:30 am once a week rather than her usual 7:30 a.m. where I think she liked being there before everyone but one kid rather than just being dropped in a full classroom in full swing.  I think we all can relate and appreciate easing into things.

But the OT really helped her get control of her sensory issues and fears.  At the end of October we were at Fireroast, Charlotte's favorite and my favorite coffee shop, eating outside when some two ton trucks rolled down 38th street on separate occasions and Charlotte didn't even notice.

And then at school, her teacher at Montessori did little nothing to hide her skepticism of Charlotte's need for OT and freely reminded me time and time again of all the times that Charlotte would hear loud noises and not react.  So clearly, in the teacher's eyes, Charlotte was just playing us for the fool and playing up her fears around us.  Rather than argue my alternate theory,  I just let her teachers think that because it really isn't a battle worth having.

But I think about all the kids I used to work with who would hold their speech together all day at school and then go home and stutter like crazy in front of mom and dad.  Or all kids who behave in school and come home and throw temper tantrums.  It's kind of like if I went to the beach and walked around shirtless, I would be trying like crazy to keep my belly sucked in.  That's a lot of work over the course of the day.  And when I got home, I would put on some pajama pants an old t-shirt and let my belly relax and go wherever it wants.  Kids do the same thing.  They have to perform at school and when they get home they just can't hold it all together anymore because it is so much work.  That's why the OT was so important for Charlotte so she didn't have to work so hard to keep her sensory self together.

Before OT, she'd suppress her out-of-whack sensory system to try to act like all the other kids.  Only it wasn't working as well as she hoped.  Over the summer she had daily to weekly behaviors with other kids and her teachers.  Pushing past kids.  Refusing to transition or follow directions.  Regular old three year old meltdowns, but way more than usual for her.  The teachers held her accountable as they should and we did too.  But... we never saw those behaviors at home.  I think Charlotte was overstimulated at school with light and noise and tried to hide her outbursts (because no other kid was freaking out about noise), but the energy and anxiety was pent up and had to come come out, only it came out sideways.  So she pushed kids, cried, yelled, refused to share.... like any other three year old at his or her worst, only the source was sensory based.  In the end it doesn't matter, but I do find it telling that all of these behaviors went away as Charlotte got better and better at tuning out irrelevant environmental noises.

And part of all this is to give a shout out to all the PTs, OTs, and my fellow SLPs, and the select teachers who can see the child holistically and not just focus on the one thing they are paid to work on, be it learning walk, read, or improve language skills.  Charlotte's PTs and OTs were able to connect the dots in ways that Charlotte's teachers at Edgecumbe, as great as they are, are not specifically trained to do.

Regarding Happy, her walking and talking coming along.  She has this super funny way of walking where her arms are like noodles that just hang down and flop around while her legs and tummy do all the work.  I am not sure if that is an issue or not and she is actually starting to use her upper body more.  Her PT will come out soon to check up on her.  But she is as happy as can be, climbing and walking and following Charlotte around or just doing her own thing.

Happy certainly has a mind with a heart of its own.  Charlotte and she are similar in that they are both very aware of what they can and cannot do and will do the hard things only when they are good and ready.  But they approach that line so differently.  Charlotte approaches with trepidation and meditation and then reflection, and Happy is more straight up defiant.  She knows exactly what the PT wants her to do and she just walks away from her as if to say, "Nope.  Not going to do that.  End of story" and acts like the PT doesn't exist.  But then.... that night there is Happy all by herself practicing independently whatever activity or exercise it is the PT wanted her to do earlier in the day (usually it's squats of some kind).  And at her age that's all we want, is for her to do the exercises.  The defiance, well, that's a streak I'm proud to say both my girls have, even if it manifests itself differently.  Charlotte is more of a "No thank you" about it all while Haps is more like "No and I don't care about you."

It's like my friend said about having two kids: one is pizza and the other is tacos.  They're totally different and you love them both the same.

Along those lines, Happy's language development is interesting.  She is finally willing to imitate and attempt sounds.  She'd imitate every nonspeech sound you can think of and laugh and smile the whole time.  But the second you did something as simple as an "m" for "more" she would just ignore that and do her own thing.  But now she is feeling better at taking risks with her speech and has tried to say Charlotte's name in imitation few times as well as a slew of other easier words all the time.  She probably has about ten words so a language boon should happen in about six months.  If not, well someone else can speech therapize her because that's going to be my role.  But she is finally interested in talking, just like her PT and special ed teacher told us: once she gets walking down she will be more interested in trying out speech.

So things are progressing.  Charlotte is eager to take responsibility for her learning and digested every second of OT, and Haps is eager to take responsibility for herself and doing things on her terms.

Tacos and pizza.  I love them both.

Jammin' On the One

Happy found a kazoo the other day and it's like she finally found her jam.  

One of these days I'll remember that you have to hold your phone horizontal to make a video.

Learning to Walk

Happy is figuring out this bipedal thing.  It's fun for everyone!  

I always forget that I have to turn my phone horizontal!

Introverts Unite

I love this picture only because each adult does not want to be in the picture.  The close observer will note that there is third adult in the picture, propping up Happy and using her own child as  screen.  Of course I too was more than happy to be on the other side of the camera/phone.

I asked the question, "Who likes popsicles?" before taking the picture.  Even though Emily didn't raise her hand, all others were  accurate in their responses.

Busman's Holiday

For a change I will be on an IEP team and not have to do any of the paperwork.  Happy was assessed by the Minneapolis Public Schools birth to three team on Wednesday and yesterday and she does indeed qualify for special ed services.  The concerns are not huge, but enough to warrant a little extra help from a physical therapist and a teacher will help monitor her language, feeding, and other cognitive development.  Obviously I can handle the speech and language aspect but that is not the role I want to play with my own child, yet I find myself wanting to analyze and work on it anyway.

It will be awhile before we get the full report from the team, but basically Happy's adaptive, functional, social, and non verbal skills are developing just fine.  She is 1.4 standard deviations below the mean with her language development and further behind in her motor development (the teacher said 1st percentile but that can't be right because Charlotte wasn't that low and Happy is further than long than she was).  So we will have a teacher and physical therapist come to our house around once a month to monitor her progress and give us things to work on at home.

Regarding the motor aspect, Happy is personally focussed on walking and standing.  You can tell she wants to walk like her sister more than she wants to learn how to do anything else.  I would say 75% of her play is motor based: climbing, cruising furniture, crawling, moving, trying to stand.... So we might see some nice gains over the next few months.  Happy's IEP goal is to walk in a stable fashion.

In terms of feeding, her tolerance of textures is improving.  Emily has a good theory.  Happy's teeth emerged in an unusual order.  The top four teeth came in  months ago and the bottom two just came in over the last two weeks.  It seems like now that she has her lower teeth she is much more comfortable eating different textures besides puree.  But she still cannot drink from any kind of a cup.  The physical therapist said this is likely due to her low muscle tone.  Charlotte had the same problem with cups and her physical therapist said the same thing.  So we will have an IEP goal for Happy to drink from a cup independently.

For communication, we all want Happy to communicate with sign, gesture, and words.  Well, except Charlotte and Happy could care less about this.  They are quite content babbling back and forth to each other.  So Happy's motivation to talk is not as strong as her desire to walk.  Oftentimes a kid like Happy will appear to behind in many areas when really they are only behind in one.  This is because the kid is so busy working on the one thing she can't do that she will ignore the other things she could also be working on.  In other words, a little 14 month old brain can really only focus on one area of development.  And because motor development is slow-going, she has no cognitive resources left to work on her speech and language development at the same time so she lags in that area.

At the risk of going too far down the clinical path, this is the distinction between a disorder and a delay.  The gross motor is a disorder and Happy will not catch up to her peers without intervention from a specialist.  The communication issues are a delay and once Happy gets to working on it, she will take off on her own.  The teacher assessing Happy basically suggested this in not so many words.

Kind of an interesting distinction between Happy and Charlotte.  Charlotte's language skills and fine-motor skills are, frankly, well above average and always have been.  For the first 18 months of Charlotte's life she had little to no interest in walking or any gross motor.  She was quite content to sit in one place and look at books or play with one toy, or sit with us and look at books.  So of course her language and fine motor took off.  Meanwhile, Happy really wants to walk and is focussed on that.  Looking at books and playing with one toy gets in the way of her meeting that goal, so her language stands to develop more slowly.

But I also think that Happy just doesn't have the speech motor skills to imitate speech.  She will imitate all sort of non-speech sounds and babble away with Charlotte.  She will point Nacho Average Cat and say two sentences of nonsense.  So she can connect sounds but if you ask her to imitate just one sound and she knows it is attached to a word, she can't do it.  I tried to get her to make the /m/ sound yesterday and she pursed her lips and blew air out her nose.

Like I said upfront, I do not want to be her Speech Language Pathologist.  But it is clear to me that she will get to talking when she is ready and to push her to talk now is unfair to her.  In the meantime, we'll use sign and gestures to help Happy find ways to communicate and not be frustrated.  A Speech Language Pathologist ethically really can't even work with a kid like Happy until she is two or three years old because chances are good she will get caught up on her own over the next eight months.  The youngest non-autistic kid I saw at my old job was 20 months and it didn't feel right to me to be servicing that kid but that wasn't my call.  In general we didn't start seeing kids until they were over 24 months, unless autism or a significant cognitive disorder was suspected.

At the end of the day, her disposition and social skills, and engagement with her parents and sister exceed any expectations I could have for her.  She is going to be fine and time is on her side.  I am not worried but recognize that she needs a little more help than her mom and dad can give her.

And there is the overriding rule of child development: kindergarten in the great equalizer.  Kids take their own path in which skills they develop and ignore and then they all meet at roughly the same spot by age six or seven.  Happy has five or six years to figure it all out, and there is one final truth about her, it is that she likes to carve out her own path.

Therapy Upates

1. Charlotte has graduated from Physical Therapy but will be reassessed in six months.  She still has exercises to do each night to help her along but the physical therapist was extremely pleased with how Charlotte has progressed.  She said Charlotte will always be a bit behind in her gross motor skills but that fact that Charlotte has progressed as far as she has is amazing.  Good job Charlotte .  She worked hard in therapy and did her nightly exercises with us with minimal complaint (usually she asked to do them).  So the credit truly does go to her.

2. Now Charlotte is beginning Occupational Therapy, beginning tomorrow.  I am anticipating a short course, but have been in the business of kids long enough to know that such predictions are often proven wrong.   We are going to get some help for some issues she has with sensory integration.  About four months ago I began thinking, "If Charlotte were a kid I was seeing at my old job, I wold have referred her parents to an Occupational Therapist for a sensory integration assessment."  At that exact same time, Charlotte's physical therapist told Emily we may want to have Charlotte assessed by an Occupational Therapist for sensory integration issues because Charlotte was freaking out about environmental sounds most kids her age no longer worry about.

Also, Charlotte is pretty intolerant of any moisture and dirt on her.  So she will do some activities in Occupational Therapy to desensitize her reactions to this.  And then I need help on how to help Charlotte cope with her disdain for environmental noises like thunder and trucks.  I think we hit rock bottom a few months ago, in terms of how much it was bothering her and she is starting to self-regulate a little better.  But it is still bugging her to the point that it is impacting her quality of life.

And I need to know when to intervene and when to let her sort it out on her own.  The Occupational Therapist will help give us effective, clinically-based strategies.  My instinct is to let Charlotte learn to figure it out on her own, but few weeks ago there I was, at dinner time, feeding Charlotte like a baby so she could cover her ears without interruption because she heard distant thunder once over a 30 minute period.  That is no way for her or I to live.  There are obviously better solutions out there and Charlotte, like most kids, will be more receptive to learning about and using these better solutions if they come from an adult teacher/helper, rather than from a parent.

 3. Happy will be assessed by the Minneapolis Birth to Three Team (special ed) for low muscle tone.  She is not yet standing alone and the pediatrician identified low muscle tone at Happy's 12 month wellness check.  So she has low muscle tone like her sister, just not as bad.  I know she won't qualify for services and we received excellent recommendations from Charlotte's physical therapist on things to do at home (hence the crawling around on the air mattress video) to help the motor development.  But I wouldn't mind the birth to three team taking a comprehensive look at Happy and giving us their feedback and recommendations.  She is behind in feeding, talking, and gross motor.  I'm not at all concerned at this point but I'd rather have her on the radar than not, and would like to hear what recommendations they have.  A team of experts looking at your kid's development never hurts.

My hunch is Happy is going to be standing on her own and walking in the next one to three months.  In terms of speech and language, her language seems okay because she is using sign and is good, not great, with receptive language.  I think her speech motor skills need a little more time to develop before she gets more words.  So far she says, "Hi" and "night night" and maybe "Mama" and "Dada."  About two weeks ago at lunch stared right at me, held up a banana and said, "Yu....      me" (yummy, which I often say to her).  It took so much effort that I can see why she is not talking more at this point.  Meanwhile, her disposition, self-regulation, patience, social skills, and play skills are pretty awesome.

Vacation Slideshow And All Its Details

As a family, we were at the Parker Compound in Hancock, Wisconsin.  Below are some pictures from our trip.  A few tips for the slideshow and my captions.  If you want the autoplay to stop, simply hit the pause button (of course), but as a heads up, the pause button comes and goes depending on where you place your mouse/cursor.

Secondly, if you want the captions feature off, click on the the little word bubble in the bottom left corner (again its presence or absence will depend on where you cursor is).

Finally, you can also watch the slideshow on Picassa. Click on the colorful Picassa rainbow circle at the bottom right of the slideshow AND THEN click on the hypertext that says "2014-7-21."  Clicking on that will take you to the Picassa site, which has a slideshow option that is much cleaner and easier to look at.  If I were, say, a grandparent, these extra steps may be worth the hassle since I don't get to see these kids much.  Sorry I cannot put the link in directly but I have to write this post in HTML mode and it has been too long since I shared a link posting this way and I have forgotten how to do it. I really wish this weren't so clunky, but for some reason Google, who owns both Blogger and Picassa, has chosen to make interfacing between Blogger and Picassa difficult. I think they want to steer everyone on Blogger to Google Plus, but that is just a guess.

Anyway, the trip itself was awesome.  Everyone had a lot of fun and I am sure it is fun for Emily to see her kids grow up with their (second) cousins making memories in the exact same place Emily did, with her own cousins, who are now moms with her.  I know I enjoyed watching my kids enjoy themselves.

Play Date

I'm not going to lie to you.  Summers off is a pretty sweet gig.  It makes the most frustrating and demoralizing parts of my job worthwhile.  I need to remember this post and this video when things start getting dark and deep in about five or six months.

A little context here.  At Happy's one year check-up the doctor identified low muscle tone in this Haps as well.  So I talked to Charlotte's physical therapist and she agreed that there is low muscle tone, just not as low as Charlotte's and she gave us some suggestions, including having Happy crawl on uneven surfaces.  This should explain the air mattress.  And now Haps will soon be evaluated by the school district special ed team, just like Charlotte was.

Nawrockis Got Talent

On Monday, Happy crawled for the first time. She has been working on this for a week or two and finally figured out what to do with her arms.  And legs.  She looks just like baby Mike in the thumbnail for this video. 

In other news, Charlotte is still making guitars out of Bristle blocks and singing unrecognizable songs.

Conversations with Happy #1 through 4098

For the last month Happy has been sporting her single word as if it were an Olympic gold medal.

Happy: Hi

Anyone Adult Willing To Participate: Hi

Happy: Hi

Adult: Hi

Happy: Hi

Adult: Hi

Happy: Hi

Adult: Hi

Happy: Hi

Ad....

Well, you get the idea.  Actually you don't.  Because you probably have never before encountered someone who is such an extrovert yet has so little to say and even fewer ways to say it.  You can tell she wants so badly to say so much more.  She seems to be on the verge of a few other words, and they can't come soon enough, for any of us.  You can only say hi back and forth for so long... unless you're Happy.  In that case, you can do it non-stop until you acquire that elusive, coveted second word.  In fact, words two through four may already be in place but it's too early to make the call.

Happy is Happy

I have probably worked over a thousand kids over the years (yikes, I'm getting old) and if I have learned one thing, it is be careful with nicknaming or naming your kid something like, I don't know, Happy.  More often than not, the opposite occurs.  So I am waiting for the curse to kick in.  Meanwhile, we'll sit back and enjoy the ride.

Happy Has A Lot On Her Mind