Play Pretend

LB has long been into imaginary play, but since we moved to two homes, she has amped up several games.

When we first moved, she would repetitively play a game where she was Elsa hiding in her ice palace.  I was Anna and had to go find her and knock on the door and say: "Elsa, come out of the castle, we need you in Arandale.  We miss you Elsa." Elsa would run out of her castle and down the hallway and collapse on the floor.  I would chase after her and hug her on the floor to "unfreeze" her.  The "I miss you, I love you, come home" themes seemed important to LB as she got used to living in two places.

Lately, it's been Mama Cat/Baby Cat.  Baby Cat (played by LB) doesn't have a home and wanders around lost and crying.  Mama Cat finds Baby Cat and says "Baby Cat, are you lost, don't you have a mama?  You can come live with me in my house and I'll be your Mama Cat." The Mama helps Baby build a cozy nest.

Now we are four

I think I'll always have that little baby in my mind when I think of how amazing she is now.  At four, LB had a friends party and loved giving out Hello Kitty plates.  Her favorite animal is the giraffe.  She loves puzzles and suddenly gone from struggling with a four piece interlocking puzzle to being able to do a big puzzle on her own.  She likes to wear sundresses, shorts, and t-shirts even as winter closes in.  When she excited she does a little running skip and jump and looks like a tiny blond fairy.  She needs mamma and mommy and her blanket "bit,"and wants to be held and hugged and kissed.  She plays babysitter, which requires a mom, baby, and babysitter: the mom goes to work, and the baby tells her not to be long, and the babysitter says mom with be home soon.  She likes daycare as long as she doesn't have to stay to late in the afternoon.  The other parents say she is always sunny and happy.  She likes to watch Frozen and Babe.  She's memorized Richard Scarry's Bunny book, and it is the cutest thing ever to hear her say "Angora rabbits have soft cuddly fur."

Real Life With a W-Sitter

Advice on the internet: it's always worth the money.  Just because I need to periodically revisit issues I've decided not to worry about, I recently read the post about the evils of W-sitting here.

If you're not familiar with the W-sit (be thankful) here's a picture of LB in a half-W, with leg and foot pointed back and away from her body:

For LB, and many other kids, W-sitting is a symptom of low tone and low core strength.  Where kids with typical tone use their core muscles to stabilize themselves while sitting, kids like LB compensate for core weakness by making themselves as wide as possible while sitting.  In our journey through the world of PT, we've encountered a couple schools of thought related to W-sitting.

One, like the author of the linked article, says that as kids W-sit they further weaken their core, and that W-sitting is a bad habit that should be corrected until kids no longer do it-and strengthen their cores so by sitting properly.

An alternate view expressed by two of our PTs is that the benefits of reinforcing correct posture are outweighed by the developmental harm of constantly correcting a child who is trying to concentrate and learn through play.    Between ages 1 and 2, LB W-sat a lot and it was clearly her most comfortable sitting position.  Her PT encouraged us to allow her to continue her activity while quietly pulling one of her legs straight so she was in a half-W.  She also told us that she didn't consider it necessary to constantly correct a busy bee like LB, who was often in motion and shifting positions.  So a kid who W-sits for short periods interspersed with other positions may not need the same level of intervention as a kid who is sitting in a W for a half hour while working on a  project.

At LB's most recent PT evaluation, the therapist was even more emphatic that W-sitting is the symptom, not the problem.  He recommended as much walking, running, jumping, swimming, etc. as LB can manage in order to strengthen her core.  Encouraging LB to be active can be hard, sometimes she will absolutely refuse to walk, sometimes she wants to go to the park but only wants to go on the swings.  And modeling physical activity and engaging her in games really helps, but B and I are also human beings who don't always want to play chase with a young child, so sometimes challenging LB to get stronger means challenging ourselves.

According to that PT, the goal is overall strength, and if you build strength W-sitting will decrease without a lot of intervention.  I like that a lot more than viewing W-sitting as a "bad habit."  Doing what feels comfortable for your body because your body is atypical is not a bad habit nor is it lazy (I also don't like the "droopy snowman" thing).

If we we're to get to a place where we felt LB needed more intervention with her sitting, I would much rather present it as a positive, "sitting this way helps your body get stronger," and get her some low blocks to sit on than present W-sitting as a character flaw.

Health Update

I wrote about some of the stuff LB is up to last week, but I forgot to mention the thing that has been the biggest positive for our quality of life.  (Knock wood) LB has been remarkably healthy this winter!  She's had a few little sickness, but nothing scary, no extra doctor visits, no middle of the night nebs, no holding a congested child upright all night.

Last winter LB had a mild bout of pneumonia (very scary for me), pink eye, months with a green runny noses, and various viral miseries.  And that was better than the previous winter that involved wheezing, low o2 sats, ear infections, sinuses infections, and a fever of 105.  The fever happened while I was teaching, B handled it really well, and by the time I got home LB was down to a respectable 102.  That was also the winter that LB's ped called on Christmas morning to check up on her because she was so sickly.  That was the winter that we tried desperately to force a small child to swallow an oral steroid that tasted like dirty pennies (yes, I tried it).

I'm so thankful for that first ped, a gentleman who had practiced for close to 40 years.  I feel like he single handedly  kept us out of the hospital that first winter by checking in with us twice a day when LB was really sick, and giving us very detailed information about the symptoms that translate into "go to the hospital now."  I like our current ped, but she's in the "if your concerned, go to the ER" camp, rather than "let's run through all the symptoms, do a neb, and I'll call back in an hour and check on you" camp. 

Both of those winters required a minimum of an hour of nebulizer treatments, often with a thrashing rabid badger of a child.  The helpful advice from everyone was "just let her watch tv," but at that point in life, LB had no interest in screens.  We got our best results doing the nebs when she was asleep, but I could never drag myself out of bed to do one before she woke up in the morning.  Both of those winters involved anxious listening to interpret the exact character of LB's crackling, wheezing, and gasping.

During those winters, LB always lost her appetite and lost weight.  After LB was born it took a number of months for her to be plottable even on the premature and low-birth weight baby chart.  She has always been small, but in the winter she would dip off the normal weight chart into some nether reaches of the 1st percentile.  I don't think being small is necessarily a problem, but I do have some random folk belief that a little fat reserve helps a kid have energy and immunity.  This winter, almost no sickness has meant no weight loss, and LB seems sturdier, more energetic, and happier (and less whiny).

This winter we switched from the neb to an inhaler with spacer, and it is amazing!  I really wish we had tried it last winter.  I've heard that the neb can be more effective at delivering meds to the lungs, but given the amount of neb time when LB was out of range, I think the inhaler is much more effective for her.  We do a maintenance dose of Pulmacort 2x a day, along with a nasal spray 1x a day, and we have albuterol for times when she sounds crackly, but we rarely need to use it.

A healthy LB also has the benefit of a healthy me.  I guess I had undiagnosed asthma as a kid.  There are a bunch of asthmatics in my dad's family and we all seem to get worse as we age.  Every virus I get seems to settle in my lungs and leave me coughing and wheezing long after everyone else has recovered.  And I never go to the doctor, much to B's chagrin.  Last winter, when LB got pneumonia, I was afraid I also had it, and spent a week extreme commuting while feeling like there was an elephant sitting on my chest.

She's done so well this winter, I guess the next question will be whether she need to continue using maintenance meds every winter.  Our doctors have told us that preemies often grow out of their lungs issues by age three, but that will be a scary step.

LB Updates

The child is a chatterbox, especially when she's tired.  She has started "reading" to whatever mom is putting her to bed, which includes reciting very accurate passages of her favorite books interspersed with rambling monologues about I'm-not-quite-sure-what. 

After a tough adjustment to the preschool room at daycare, she's doing really well.  She has a "best friend" who is also tiny and well-behaved.  LB was upset one day because she and a friend (I mean that in the daycare sense) wouldn't stop lifting up their shirts and giggling and Miss A. told them they were going to get in trouble if they didn't stop.  According to LB, "I don't like to get in trouble!"

LB has a great sense of humor and can tell and understand jokes-most of which have the punchline "skunkfish!"

We've had fewer and shorter tantrums lately-more whining, but less honey-badgering, and I'll take it.  She will take offense to random things, like telling the dog, "You don't look at me in the eyes like that!" in a super creepy voice.  Or, "you don't say 'grinding on that wood'!" Which was a sign that we need to start watching what we say and sing in front of LB, and, despite our embrace of inappropriate music lyrics, any lyrics that glorify Ike Turner should not be sung in front of our young daughter (note that impressive use of the passive voice).

When she feels that she's been wrongly accused, LB will roar in our faces, but when she knows she is in the wrong, she'll say "I'm saaawwee." Which is cute until she says it again and again with increasing desperation, and we talk again about how people can get mad at each other but still love each other.  She will also say, often out of the blue, "Mama are you mad at me?" She's a sensitive creature.

LB is also pretty good at taking care of herself, she able to function pretty independently in the bathroom and can get dressed and undressed herself, including putting on a rashguard top by herself, which is pretty impressive for anyone.  

And she's got some moves (Note the very appropriate prop.  I wanted to get LB to dance in the car, but then, sadly, I realized I'm not that kind of mother.):

Full Swimmy

LB has finally gone full swimmy.  I ordered four rashguard shirts for her to wear, so we could stop the fussing that happens everyday she has to wear something other than her rashguard.  Perhaps this means:

• our permissive parenting will produce a weed-smoking, performance artist who specializes in uncomfortable performances of vintage Miley Cyrus at the local VFW karaoke 
• LB will grow up to tell funny, poignant stories about her lesbian moms who were so chill that the responded to her obvious sensory issues by buying her a bunch of swimsuits
• LB will decide to swim from Cuba to the US, or some other terrifying stunt that will make me cry

But today when we opened the package it was happy time, and "Is this for me to wear mama?"

Services, Services, Services: The Update Edition

It's been a week of work, and vomiting, and meetings, with just a little bit of the rage virus added in for good measure.  I finished my freelance job, and God willing, I will be paid some day.  I'm excited to be back to blogging now that I have a minute or two of free time. 

Hump day brought our IEP eligibility meeting.  Not good my friends.  I guess I've know for a long time that I find negativity highly motivating, but this meeting really brought it home.  I can't remember the last time I was in a room with such a bunch of unprofessional hacks, and I'm not even going to qualify that with any excuses about how they must have hard jobs or how they have to work within a broken system.  There is no excuse for what I saw in that room.

I'm taking the details straight to the ombsbudsperson for the school system.  The short version is that they were about to formally deny LB services, when I pulled a bureaucratic maneuver that forced the school team to throw out all of their findings and start over.  It was definitely a strange moment.  [Insert warfare or card playing metaphor here.]  Even though we kept them from getting what they wanted (a closed case), I left the building feeling dirty.  I want to believe in public education, and it sucks to see in action those people who ruin it for everyone: certainly for students and their parents, but also for the good educators in the system, who have to see their efforts to actually educate children constantly thwarted by people who are there to play the game and collect a check.

It's going to be a long 16 years.

Services, Services, Services (in which I complain about that which no one wishes to hear me complain about in real life)

We had LB's IEP transition meeting today.  For those of you lucky enough not to know, that is the transition that three year olds make from getting services through Early Intervention to getting services through the school system.  So far this shift has required

PT eval (2 service providers present)
Speech eval (3 sessions) (1 PT present)
1 meeting to describe transition process (3 providers present)
1 (hour long!) paperwork meeting (1 provider)
1 meeting to meet our transition coordinator (2 providers)
1 meeting to meet IEP team and sign forms (5 professionals!)
(and I was supposed to get LB a hearing screen, but I didn't because she hears fine)

In a few weeks we'll have
The meeting where they tell us if she qualifies for services

Do you see where I'm going with this.  We sat at a conference table with five professional people (presumably making professional salaries) signed a couple things, and they ushered us out the door.  How much did that meeting cost in labor hours?  Because I can tell you that the benefit to us was $0 (and that's being generous because it actually cost us money in lost time).

It is so frustrating, because I know the system exists for a good reason, and some of its exactness and convolutedness does exist to protect parents and kids, to make sure parents understand the process, to make sure that everyone has access to the services they need.  But, it's enough to turn a lady into a small government libertarian.

They really need some kind of screening matrix that rates
1) The complexity of the child's needs (if LB had multiple serious issues, we probably would want to have an actual sit down meeting to make sure nothing was overlooked)
2) parental resources (some parents do need to have all of the forms read aloud to them, and it should be their right to hear that information.  B and I do not need to have things read aloud to us, and doing so is an annoying waste of resources)

The also need to modernize from paper triplicate forms!  Dear lord.  Most of the stuff that takes hours in person could be done online in minutes.  And not all parents have access to a computer and a scanner, but it would be so much cheaper to buy a family a tablet and pay for their internet access than to make them schelp around town to sign forms.  Even it they modernized the system, they could still have some dedicated people would work with families who needed the most support and keep providing them with in-person meetings. 

Report from the Annals of Stubborn and Manipulative Children

LB's speech therapist C goes to visit her a daycare once a week, even though the hunch at this point is no speech issues, just some mix of sensory/processing/social stuff that sounds like total bullshit until it's your kid.  I like C a lot, she's calm and seems eminently sensible.  Today she called after her visit with LB to tell me that she had attempted to do some more formal testing with LB, and LB had refused any part of it, even with the best and most creative efforts of C and the daycare staff. And then she asked me if LB has trouble drinking from a sippy cup!  Which really, if my almost three year old had trouble drinking from a sippy, I would probably mention it to her speech therapist.  But no, she has absolutely no issues, at home that is.  Apparently at school she feigns an inability to drink to the degree that they have her wear a bib!  And, of course, give her lots of attention.  C astute observation was that maybe LB likes getting attention for being a baby.  At her beloved old daycare, LB was always "Baby LB," and everyone fawned over her.  Add to that the fact that she is tiny (and cute), and she's now the oldest in her class by a ridiculous number of months, and I think we have a well-developed get-attention-by-acting-like-a-baby strategy going on.

So next week, another crack at the speech testing at our house, and maybe we can figure out if she is processing really slow, or she's amazingly stubborn, or something in between.

You've Come a Long Way Baby: Part 2

A year and some ago, LB was not quite walking, and then she was not quite talking.  I was hanging out in the space between mom of typical kid and mom of atypical kid.  A year later, LB is a walking talking machine.  Tonight she balanced on an upside down chair while saying (at our prompting of course) "Honey Badger don't care." We've come a long way, but LB is still on the edge of typical.  After a few weeks, LB's speech therapist ruled out receptive or expressive language disorders, and decided that LB is capable of speaking at a normal volume when she wants to.  After observing LB at daycare, she raised the idea of sensory issues.  Apparently at school, LB is sometimes happy to ignore the activity and do her own thing and she speaks very little compared to what we hear at home (no Honey Badger monologues for school).  Wait and see, wait and see.  Then there was the physical therapist evaluation.  LB can run, and she can walk up and down stairs, which is all good.  But we've noticed that she has a crazy little egg beater motion when she runs.  And it makes her so happy to swing her little legs as far away from her hips as she possibly can as she runs.  According to the PT, we are correct, and this issue has a name, genu valgum or knock knees.  Othro consult to follow (for freaking knock knees!).  At this point, it's not good or bad, it just is.

Bits and Pieces

Good speech visit.  ST was impressed by LB's increased articulation, but we're not really sure how or why that happened.  LB wowed with her sorting and stacking skills, even though she didn't like this week's toys as much as last week's.

I loved this article "Why Finnish Babies Sleep in Boxes," from the BBC Magazine.  Scroll down to see a picture of the contents of the box Finnish families receive for baby.  There's also an interesting sidebar about Finnish babies napping outside in the winter.

Amazon is getting into the grocery business, read here.  I'm a little leery of trusting Amazon to be the company store for the whole country, but I think expanded  home deliver of groceries could be a good thing.  Thinking about the food desert issue historically, one of the things that has changed for people is that as cars became more ubiquitous, groceries stopped coming to people.  There must be some kind of efficiency involved in one truck brining food to people? Maybe?

Some 1970s nostalgia-"Brothers and Sisters" from the Free to Be You and Me album.  The first three minutes is kids chatting with Marlo Thomas, then comes the fabulous singing, dancing, and costuming.

The review of Water in the Park, a kid's book by Emily Jenkins in this past Sunday's NYtimes, made me want to buy it.  Austerity sucks!

I have decreed that this will be the Summer of Soup, so if anyone has any good recipes, I love to hear them.

Keep Calm and Carry On

Nothing much to see here, just a note to self.

This morning was our first meeting with LB's new speech therapist.  We'll have eight sessions over the next two months.  I like this woman.  She is a very good at giving explanations that a lay person can understand without making us feel like she's talking down to us.  I took LB a few minutes to warm up, and she was quieter than she is with us, but overall she had a good time, enjoyed playing, and seemed to really like the ST.  ST's take on LB: she needs to hear her talk more so she can get more information.  Fair enough.

Review: Andrew Solomon's Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

First off, I borrowed this book from the library.  I read this book for free!  How amazing is that?  I am really loving the library and trying to get in the habit of requesting books online as soon as I see something interesting.

I was telling someone how much I "enjoyed" this book, and he expressed surprise that I would use that particular word to describe my experience of a book that is about, among other things, children with severe disabilities, children conceived during rape, and children who become criminals.  The topics covered in the book are challenging, but Solomon has a thoughtful approach.  One of his central points, is the diversity and complexity of parental response to atypical kids.  While many parents go through a period of mourning and/or experience day-to-day hardships, they also find joy and meaning in their lives with their children.  He also explores atypical identities that bring individuals pride and joy, and those that bring burden, suffering, or shame.

This book is 702 pages of narrative, with another couple hundred pages of notes, which made me incredibly happy.  Usually non-fiction is just too short and I'm left with a million questions.  Solomon does a great job including multiple stories that illustrate his point about the diversity of experience.  However, I'd be very surprised if his editor didn't try to make him cut it down and tighten it up.  Solomon opens with the overarching theme of the book--the idea of horizontal identities, that is, identities not inherited vertically from a parent and instead tie the child to another identity group to which his/her parents don't belong.  At various points in the book, this theoretical center slips away, overwhelmed by the power of individual stories.  I was fine with that slippage, I love big, messy books, but I could imagine some readers finding in frustratingly meandering, particularly in the second section of the book.

Solomon is a gay man and a gay dad.  At the beginning and end of the book he talks about how these identities shaped his own life.  On pages 692-693 (if you're reading on a Kindle you're SOL) he describes so many of the feelings I had as a lesbian-mom to be (regret at not being able to have a child that was genetically related to both me and B, uneasiness with the fertility industry) that I would like to just photocopy those two pages and hand them out to anyone starting the process or asking me nosy questions on the bus.

If you are someone who likes non-fiction, particularly medical non-fiction, and enjoys a mix of personal stories and theory, I highly recommend this book.

Live Free or Die Trying

Last night was the last leg of my last extreme commute.  I find myself relived, very relieved, and sad, and excited, and scared.  I feel like the rest of my life has begun, but I don't quite know what that means.  The rest of my life got off to an inauspicious start today.  I kept LB home from daycare because she had an evaluation.  So we got a mellow start and ate oatmeal and mangos and I even took her to the park (I am supermom).  Then we came home to a smelly, messy house, our slowly dying dog, and a last minute assignment for a potential job.

The evaluation team arrived a hour later to a messy house, a dying dog, a fussy child, and me.  I don't know if I have ever so fully achieved the stereotype of "stressed out working mom."  I spent the evaluation urging LB on while I also frantically trying to compose appropriate emails about arcane matters.  If you've read here for any amount of time, you will know that I have a typo problem, one that should have been beaten out of me during my many, many years of education, but I guess I'm just an overachiever.

I kept it together with only a little fraying at the edges until the evaluators started asking important questions like, "what are some words you would use to describe your family."  I had a mini-freakout and got all quavery as I told them to just write down that I had declined to answer, and please move on BECAUSE I'M CLEARLY STRESSED AND I CAN'T DO THIS RIGHT NOW!.

LB did her stuff and scored similarly to her last evaluation.  This test included a picture of a rotary phone for her to identify.  Even my luddite parents don't have a phone like that.  Ridiculousness.  They gave her a "significant delay" for gross motor, which came as surprise, but she also wouldn't run or climb stairs for them, so we'll get another eval with a PT and see what's up.  Her other problem area was speech, particularly articulation, which we have noticed at home, so she'll also get a speech evaluation.

Meanwhile, in my home state there are conspiracy theories and conservative revolutions.

This and That

LB's behavior as of late has been "challenging." I guess it's just a mix of toddler, March in New England, sick and fussy, and time change.  Sometimes B and I have responded with grace and good humor, and sometimes not.  My coping strategies have been several-fold.  Stuffing my craw with discount Easter candy, sampling the excellent beers that B selects (Lagunitas Brown Sugga' Substitute, check it out!), some IKEA retail therapy in search of mealtime and organizational solutions, and distractions of the watching, reading and listening variety.

If you've been thinking about DOMA and SCOTUS, the American Bar Association has helpfully provided links to all of the amicus briefs.  I've been slowly making my way through some of them, and it's interesting to see the varied perspectives that go beyond a simple liberal/conservative divide (including the Westboro Baptist Church's brief in support of neither party).

My FIL passed along a purported North Korean propaganda video about life in the US.  Here the Huff Post explains that the video is real, but the voiceover is fake.  B and I recently watched the documentary Camp 14: Total Control Zone, about the life of one of the only people born in a North Korean prison who is known to have escaped.  It's an interesting film that combines classic documentary elements with graphic-novel style reenactments I just finished reading Escape from Camp 14, a book about the same man by journalist Blaine Harden.  The book answered some of the questions I had after watching the film.  Both the book and the film were engrossing, but I was left with questions about the degree to which this one man's experience was representative of a whole population of prisoners.  I don't doubt the accuracy of the claims about the oppression and violence faced by prisoners, but I wondered if his descriptions of family life, and the lack of familial affection, were widespread or the experience of a dysfunctional family within a totalitarian environment.

This photo series of children with their most prized possession are poignant, hopeful and depressing.

I really enjoyed the article "About a Boy," in this week's New Yorker (which you may not be able to access for a while unless you have a NY subscription).  The article discusses the increasing options for trans youth and the ethical and practical challenges that come with those options. As the article points outs, it can be physically easier for young people who transition at an earlier age, however, early transitions may force young people to establish a gender identity before they are ready to do so.  The author makes the interesting point that perhaps adults are more comfortable with early transitions because if fits with our cultural desire for a strong gender binary.  I've recently gotten back in touch with someone I went to summer camp with back in the day who is a transwoman and a trans activist.  I'm curious to here her critique of the article.  As a thoroughly ciswoman, many of the authors concerns about early transitions made perfect sense to me, but for people who aren't trans I think it is really hard to understand on an empathic and elemental level.

And, so as not to give the young people all the attention, RI NPR has been running a series on aging in RI (I think we have the most aged population in the US) including this piece on gay elders in RI.

Finally, I read Hilary Mantel's novels  Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies a few months ago and loved them.  B has started reading Wolf Hall, and talking with her about the book is just reminding me how amazing it is.  The book switches perspectives and moves through time with few markers, but somehow Mantel manages those shifts without making the book seem overly technique driven.  The novels have the backbone of a really interesting story, even if you know how it will turn out in the end, enriched by the interior life of Thomas Cromwell.  I've also recently read Mantel's memoir Giving Up the Ghost.  I must of read part of it before, because it seems awfully familiar.  In any case, I thought it was a good book, but not quite what I wanted.  I don't know if I'm just over the memoir, maybe I get my confessional fix from blogs now, or maybe all I want from Mantel is more Wolf Hall.

Language Explosion

How I hated that phrase, and then, at some point in the last few months it happened.  At LB's developmental appointment in late September (22m), she had fewer than twenty words that she spoke without prompting.  Now she must know hundreds.  She asks for her books by name, and her toys, and her DVDs.  She knows the names of all the foods she eats regularly and all the people in her life.  Last night, I was reading to LB and I had to pull apart some sticky pages.  LB grabbed the page and said "Rip! Book rip.  Harry rip." She managed to tattle on two of her school friends using words. She told us that our dog is cute. Amazing!

Back when it seemed like LB would never walk, I worried.  I worried that she wouldn't walk, or talk, or put stupid pegs in a pegboard, and I also worried that her childhood would enfold like a scene from Dicken's Hard Times or Walden Two, as every moment of our living became an opportunity for training.  I do want LB to learn, but I also want her to relax, to be silly, to do her own thing, to eat candies and watch Elmo, to have a life of little joys.  The worst of our developmental doctors pushed something very different, a life of pegboard practice and gross motor exercises divided into half-hour and hour increments.  At our last developmental appointment, the evaluator may have actually clucked her tongue at me, as she explained that LB's stair climbing performance was "weird" and would require close monitoring in the future.  At the time, LB was able to walk up and down stairs with some effort and a spotter.  The stairs at the clinic were a moveable unit that looked like a piece of playground equipment, and LB responded accordingly.  She climbed, but she also crawled and slid, and generally acted like a playful Bug.  For the evaluator, there was no place on the sheet for a child's organic understanding of an unfamiliar structure.

I'm sure my frustrations with boxes to be checked on sheets will come back in full force once LB is in school, but for now I feel like we are in a good place.  As LB learns more and can do more, it's easier for me to feel confident that she can and does learn organically.  It's also easier to casually play little games that will build skills, but are still fun for her.  It's easier now that we can read books and LB understands them and interacts with them.

LB Update

The good news is that LB knows a new word: puke.  The bad news-she learned this new word after puking copiously in her crib.  She then seemed worried that the mamas were planning to put her back to bed in the puke crib, and closely examined the entire (clean) crib while saying "puke, puke, puke" until she was convinced that it was puke-free.  We are hoping that this is just her usual winter ick of mild respiratory symptoms and postnasal drip that lead to coughing and puking.  I don't like all the reports I've been reading of flu and RSV.  We're lucky that I'm currently in a month of semi-employment, so I can take care of LB without our usual stressed negotiations about who will stay home or made scramble to find care for a sick baby.

Despite being sick, LB has been hard at work today diapering dolls and stuffed animals, making them go night-night, and now giving them all nebulizer treatments.

Yesterday we had our first daycare conference about LB.  The scored her at only 15m for language development.  Eeeep!  According to her teacher, LB doesn't use two-word phrases at school, and wouldn't name object on command for the test.  That information made us less worried. LB does seem less developed in her language than any other toddler I read about on the internets, but she definitely uses a lot of two and even three or four word phrases at home, and she uses a lot of different words.  From our perspective her big issue is articulation, but I do wish she was talking more at school just for practice.  It might be time for another speech eval just to see where we're at.

Otherwise she is doing well at daycare.  She's happy and smiley and gets along with the other "friends."  I had noticed that one little boy at daycare always seems to want to be near her, and her teacher said that the other kids generally like LB and want to be near her.  Definitely good to hear, since at our interim daycare I would always peek in and see LB sitting alone at a little table.

Mamas

LB is in the midst of a modest language explosion, which is incredibly fun.  She knows she has a mama and a mommy, however, she calls us both mama and collectively we are the mamas.  This weekend my parents were visiting and she also called grandmom and granddad "mama."  LB definitely uses mama in several ways.  Mama refers to me and to B specifically, and even if she uses the same word, she knows exactly who she wants.  Mama also refers more generically to grown up or maybe grown up caregiver.  I know that she has called her old DCP "mama," but would also call her by her name.  LB can point out mamas and babies in books, which is pretty simple: mamas are big and babies are little.  It occurred to me when LB kept pointing at my dad and saying "mama!" that she doesn't have a language for men.

LB has a gramps and a granddad, and she also has a few friends she likes very much who are men, the man friend of her old DCP, the husband of her babysitter, and several neighbors.  But we have never talked about these people as a category.  If we knew these people through LB's friends, it would be natural that they would be "daddies" or "papas," but they are just a random assortment of people who happen to be men.  So, without meaning to, we seem to have realized the lesbian feminist separatist dream.  I'm sure Paul Ryan is choking on his communion wine as I admit publicly that my gayby has no language for men.  Without language, does a category of men exist for LB? Do men have any power in her world? I told B that it's probably time for us to head out for Wimmin's Land to keep this thing going.  Instead, being the hopelessly conventional types that we are, I expect that within the next month LB will know both "granddad" and "gramps" and all men will be some variation on those words.

LB in her new "boys" shoes.

ENT the Second

A few days ago we went back to the ENT, where we spent an hour waiting for a three minute exam.  Results: better, the infection in one ear has cleared and there is only a little fluid, and the other ear is completely clear.  She continues to say and understand new words.  LB will also be graduating from physical therapy at the end of the month.  She did very well at NICU follow-up, her language development is the only thing they are keeping an eye on.  And she also had an uneventful 18m appointment, so all good news for a girl.

She may not talk, but she sure can text

Ladybug Ear Update

No stickers. Much screaming.  Exam results: fluid in one ear, low-grade infection in the other ear.  LB got some antibiotics.  Follow-up in three weeks.  Some talk of tubes, but Badger and I are pretty strongly opposed.