The last time I blogged, I had a 1 year old. Now I have a 2 year old. This is pure insanity.
On Eddie’s birthday, we had a little party with family. We went to a local pizza place, then came back to our house for snowman cookies and presents. I’m not coordinated enough to put pictures up on the blog tonight, but there are some great pics up on Stuff Growing (Mark’s sister’s blog), and a handful have been put up at mrbaby.shutterfly.com, with more to follow.
Last week I took Eddie in for his 2 year appointment. The first interesting thing was that they gave us a postcard so they could remind us to schedule his “next appointment,” which isn’t until his 3rd birthday. When they told me that, I laughed. I think it’s fairly likely that we’ll go to another doctor’s appointment or two or ten or fifty before then.
The labs they did indicated that Eddie is a bit anemic, so he’s back on an iron suppliment and has to go back in a month. So much for not coming back for a year…
Official two month stats: 22 pounds, 9 ounces, 31 inches. That’s 2nd percentile for weight (improvement!) and less than 1st for height (un-improvement…). To put that into perspective, he’s the weight of an “average” 11 month old and the height of an “average” 13 month old. He usually wears a 12 month, though we are BIG fans of adjustable waists and rolling cuffs. (However, he has monkey arms, so shirts we have to go a bit big on.)
There’s other stuff to report on: Babies Can’t Wait, jobs, and rheumatoid arthritis, but that’s going to have to wait for another time. My hands are tired of typing. (Oh, look at that. A hint as to the RA update.)
Here’s a little Christmas gift to you, from Eddie and Mark.
The camera didn’t pick up Eddie so well (may have something to do with the fact that his hand is stuffed in his mouth…), so here’s a transcript:
Rudolph the red-nosed nona (snowman) Had a very shiny nose And if you ever saw it
You would even say it goes
All of the other reindeer Used to laugh and call him knees They never let poor Rudloph Join in any reindeer games
Then one foggy Pissmis ee (Christmas eve)
Santa came to say Rudolph with your bright so bright Won’t you guide my say tonight
Then how the reindeer ruv him (love him - the first time he didn’t say “ruv ooo!”)
As they shouted out with peace Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer You’ll go down in historeeee
This has been a rough year, and it’s doing its best to go out with a bang. Three bits of less than stellar news:
1) Remember that Thanksgiving post I wrote, including the bit about how thankful I am for my job and my coworkers? Well, that’s going to be going away. The Tuesday after Thanksgiving we were notified that they’ll be closing our office “on or before” March 31. It’s a sad situation, but as far as these things go, this is the best it could get. We got tons of notice, it wasn’t that any of us had to be chosen to be the ones to go, and there is a decent severance package at the end of the tunnel. It still sucks, though.
2) On Tuesday, Eddie met with the opthamologist about his constantly goopy eye. (I was there, too.) He agreed that Eddie has a clogged tear duct and that, at the ripe old age of almost 2, it isn’t going to correct itself. So, they’re going to have to go in and open it up in a little surgical procedure. I’ll spare you the details since eye stuff grosses me out, but the only stuff worth noting is that it will be on January 5, will require light anesthesia, and will only take about 10 minutes.
3) I’ve been having pain in my hands, which is new and very different from what I’ve been experiencing with the fibromyalgia. Tests have been run and specialists have been consulted, and the rheumatologist thinks it’s early stage rheumatoid arthritis. I have a follow-up appointment in a month, and if the symptoms have improved then we’ll figure it was just a virus. But if they haven’t, I’ll get the official diagnosis and start heaver meds.
Okay, enough of that. Next post will be happier, I promise.
I don’t think Eddie understands the concept of “peace.” He seems to think it’s a number in the vacinity of two and three, and also believes that it directly equals being attacked with tickles. I think learning his numbers is going great.
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I have been asking Eddie questions for a very long time, but he’s never been very good at answering them. If you give him two options, he’ll usually just repeat the second one, and open-ended questions usually go ignored until I answer them for him. Tonight, while we were playing with cars, he just started cracking up. I asked him what was so funny, and he told me “crash!” Later, I asked him if he remembered the puppets, and he said, “puppets.” I asked him if he remembered what kinds of puppets there were, and he told me “dinosaurs!” When I asked who he played with at school, he told me “Alex.” I asked him what he did at school today… and he said a full non-English sentence, and then started his stemming. Oh well.
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As I’ve mentioned before, Eddie is loving the whole Christmas thing, especially snowmen. He pronounces snowmen as “nona,” which is very confusing as we don’t know if he’s talking about snowmen or Nonna. The other night, we were watching Christmas shows on TV, and he got very, very upset when there was no snowman on the screen. He would look around, shaking his hands, saying “nona!” There was often pouting. Also, he knows most of the words to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Raindeer, but in our house, Rudolph is a snowman. Of course.
So remember that post back on November 12 where I went through the 10 appointments in five weeks and said that we may be done until January?
Well, that didn’t quite pan out.
Thankfully, it’s mostly because I FINALLY got things moving with the state-run Babies Can’t Wait program. To kick that off, we had to have an intake appointment where they asked a bunch of questions and provided basic information about the program and an evaluation appointment where they determine where Eddie is delayed and what kind of services he should receive.
We had the evaluation appointment yesterday, and I felt it went really, really well. We met with a developmental expert (a doctor, but not an MD, I think), a physical therapist and a speech therapist. After they evaluated him, we set forward three goals for Eddie for the next year: one dealing with gross motor skills, one with sensory processing, and one with language. Next, he will be matched up with therapists who can help him meet these goals.
I’m not entirely sure what kind of therapies Eddie will get yet. I mentioned that Dr. Rubin (developmental pediatrician) had strongly suggested Floortime, or play-based therapy, and it seems that it may be a good way to address at least two of Eddie’s goals. The people we met with yesterday didn’t know if Babies Can’t Wait still offers these services, though, and we are unable to pay for it on our own. It does look like Eddie will have a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, and a speech therapist.
I was especially pleased with the physical therapist yesterday. She really pushed for separate occupational therapy, and was very specific on the kind of physical therapy he should get. She even provided the contact information for the exact PT she wants him to work with so that, if Babies Can’t Wait isn’t able to secure her, I can contact her directly.
Now we wait. Again. It should be two weeks or so before we hear from our service coordinator, and the hope is that he will start receiving services in January.
Back to our appointment counter: We had those two, plus one appointment for what turned out to be a sinus infection, and another one scheduled next week to have an ophthalmologist look at what may be a clogged tear duct. And then, after that, maybe we won’t have another one until January?