Going Away Present

Some kind, anonymous soul (no note was left!) decided to give us a going away present between 7:30 last night and 7:30 this morning, three days before we pack up everything we own and move several states away.

Wasn't that nice of them? I am thrilled beyond belief. Thrilled.

S-P-E-E-C-H

(Warning: This post is not edited for clarity, content, or brevity. I mean it. If you don't want to read 487 pages of stuff, quit now. You have been warned.)

Today we had some people come from the Infant and Toddler Connection (ITC) of our county to evaluate Everett's speech and language development. This is a really great program, and they specialize in early intervention so the kids don't have even greater problems later.

My mind is still doing a bit of a crazy dance with all the information, thoughts, and knowledge I have floating around in there right now, but here is the gist of their evaluation:

Everett is normal or above average on everything except:

Expressive Communication (making sounds, gesturing, and talking), and they listed his development at 18 months.

And, surprisingly:

Gross Motor Skills, specifically his muscle tone (not elastic enough), which could be affecting the way his mouth creates the sounds in the words he tries to say. There was only a slight delay here. However, I think it might be even less than they said, as he tends to be less active and more lethargic/schlumpy when confronted with strangers.

So, what does this mean? Well, at his age Everett should be able to say 150+ words that other people can understand, and he should be combining words into short phrases. He is not even close! He has very few sounds that he uses for a lot of words. I made a spreadsheet of some of the words he knows last night; it was filled with about a hundred, and those were just the words that fit into four or five sound series that he makes. He knows many, many more than that.

Most of his words are monosyllabic, and sometimes the sounds he uses to say a word aren't even close to how the word is supposed to sound. Sometimes he will even pronounce any given word a variety of ways, depending on the day (or the hour).


Basically, they affirmed everything I was thinking. However, rather than classifying him as just "delayed", they said his speech was developing abormally. In a strange way, this was reassuring as well as worrying. I was reassured because through this whole process I was questioning myself as a mother. I was thinking of all the things I think I should be better at, and unfairly wondering if any of those had to do with Everett's delays. Sometimes Everett watches movies too often, and sometimes I don't have a good reason for putting them on for him. I was beating myself up about all of this, and thinking things like "if only I had done _____. Maybe it would have helped." Knowing that his development was abnormal rather than slow made me realize that this isn't something I can necessarily blame on myself.

BUT, this was also worrying because now I know this isn't something he will just grow out of. I kept hearing people say how a child they knew didn't talk until age 3, suddenly blurting out whole sentences, and I kept thinking that Everett must fit into that category. I didn't have the knowledge or the tools to think otherwise--this is not my area of expertise.

Now I know that we are going to need to roll up our sleeves and really get to work. It is too bad that we are moving, but it may actually be a blessing. Indiana has a program like this that I am going to find out more about, but Virginia's program has session fees that are quite high for us to consider paying. In Indiana we will be students and will qualify for a much lower rate. Also, we are near the University, so we might be able to find additional help there through some of the graduate programs.

For any of you who are trained in this area, these are the speech therapy programs they recommend for Everett:

PROMPT, which from my understanding is a method in which the instructor places her hands around the child's mouth and nose in a different way for each sound, enabling the child to feel how it resonates and how their mouth makes the sound.

Touch Cues, which seems similar.

I have a lot to learn about these. Does anyone have a good book to recommend me buying to use as a resource?

Also, they recommended that I teach him more sign lanugage. We stopped because he was refusing to actually say those words, but they think that if we teach him more, he can start to combine the signs to make phrases and sentences. That way, his language can keep developing while he is working on his sounds. I think this makes a lot of sense, and I am excited to begin. He picks actions up incredibly easily, so it should be a lot of fun, and I think he will enjoy being able to say what he wants to say.

Does anyone know of a good sign lanuage book for us to use? I need to learn it too!

This is quite strange, but I feel drained. I feel emotionally and mentally drained after this morning. And I keep having to tell myself that this isn't my fault, and that I am not a bad mother. Isn't it funny how we do that? How sometimes we make the things our kids are struggling with our fault? I don't know. I guess it is all part of the "mommy guilt", and that things are easier to understand if you have someone to blame them on.

This summer, and this next year will be an interesting one for us. I am going to find out as much as I can about these programs and methods, I'm going to get the outside help Everett needs, and I over the next few weeks I am going to work out a schedule so I know what to work on with him and when. I think this will end up being a good thing for us, as some days we are less structured than I'd like to be. I talk to him a lot, I describe things with him, I ask him to recall things about activities he has done, I teach him about animals and bugs and nature, and we sing songs and read stories. But we're going to need to do more, and we will find a way to be successful!

So anyway, thank you to those of you who recommended this program. I have been thinking about it for a long time, and I am feeling bad that I didn't get him evaluated sooner. Had I known that his development was abnormal rather than delayed, I would have, and I feel terrible about this now. But we can't turn back the clock, right?

The only thing I wish about the evaluation was that Everett was truly himself. But truthfully, I am surprised he did as well as he did with three adult strangers trying to talk to him. The speech therapists were very complimentary to him, saying that he is very bright, and they were very complimentary to me as a mother as well. I was grateful for that--it was something I really needed to hear.


(phew.) I'd better end this post before the rest of my jumbled thoughts flood the computer. You'd all like that, wouldn't you?! If anyone has any advice for me, I'd love to hear it. I am definitely in for a lot of learning!

Stalled

Yesterday Everett found the camera and started taking lots of pictures (without permission). He had very sticky hands.

After cleaning it off, I put it aside in a really good place.

I've been wanting to take some pictures since then. . .but I can't seem to locate the camera!

Anyone want to tell me where it is? Anyone? Anyone?

The Post Without a Point

This rainy weather has been killing me! I have wanted to take the kids out on another long walk like we did last week.

It was a good walk. We got a chance to say our good-byes to the pond, just in case we didn't get to go back before we leave. It's been almost two years, and Everett still loves going. His favorite thing is to splash sticks in the water and throw rocks. Ashley is usually content to hang out in the stroller.

I just took a picture of Everett by the pond so I could compare it with this older one, but his smile escaped the camera. Here is a picture of him THEN:





and NOW.

He looks much more like a boy now. He stands and runs instead of crawling and sitting. His eyes are browner. His hair is browner. But it still sticks up the same way it did then.




Something I find interesting when I watch both my kids is how different they are. When Everett was Ashley's age, he kind of liked slides. Kind of. He would smile when he went down them, but I think that was mostly because he saw that he was coming to me. He didn't enjoy them enough to want to go more than once or twice.


Ashley, on the other hand, is a lot more fearless. As soon as she gets close to a slide she starts giggling excitedly, and she doesn't stop until after the ride is over. She will slide over and over again, but she also loves to climb up the slides. She is pretty good at it, too! Everett tried to climb up the slide once, and as soon as he began to have trouble, he quit and couldn't be persuaded to try again. Later he figured out how to do it, but it took him a while to muster the will to try. The first time Ashley tried, she took to it right away and kept going despite slipping several times.

Now she is a pro at climbing slides.

And now, Everett loves slides. When we go to the playground, he will spend all his time climbing up to the slide, sliding down, and running back to do it again. Swings are not his thing--they're too confining, I guess.

Everett especially enjoys seeing Ashley enjoy the slide. He also likes to go down with her, but this is tricky for me to manage when I'm by myself.

Oh, and the other game he loves at the playground is poking me through the little holes in the floor of the climbing equipment.

This is kind of a crazy picture. But he sure has fun playing this game!

Moving

Well, our walls are bare. Thanks to a generous woman from craigslist, I have boxes all over the house, some filled, some empty. I've set aside things to get rid of. I feel like we are making good progress (I'll feel this more thoroughly when I get my kitchen done).

Last time we moved, Everett was at the age where he cried whenever I wasn't holding him. I got good at packing with one hand, but it sure wasn't very efficient.

Now, Everett is the best helper in the world, which is good because it is almost midnight and Joel still isn't home from work. They sure are getting their use out of him while they can. But that's okay--it will just make him all the more grateful to be going to school.

Everett and I boxed up all his toys and books today except for the few that he plays with every single day. He was so happy to be helping me pack them all away, which was really funny. You'd think he would have a major problem with saying good-bye to his toys, but he has somewhat of a box fetish, so I think it evens out. Mostly I think he feels the whole scenario is fun and different. If I go get a box, he goes and gets one. If I put something in the box, he has to do the same. If I write on the box, he has to write on the box. The best part is, it makes it more fun for me to have a little company, since I'm obviously pretty much on my own with all this packing stuff.

And no, I'm not stressed about it, and we'll be able to do it all with no problem. Really. We've made good headway, and we have ten days before we need to be loading it all. Besides, today I breathed a sigh of relief when I remembered that I don't actually have to pack all the things in our drawers.

But I don't think I'll be surprised if I dream tonight about cardboard boxes.

Our New Family Member

We recently bought a double stroller. I have looked on craigslist for a long time, but ultimately we decided to go new, thanks to Deloitte's help. The best part? We get to pick what we want AND have the full warranty. Nice.

Thanks to Amazon, this is what we got:

It's not exactly the cadillac of double strollers--it's more like a nice, practical, smooth-riding jeep, but we are loving it. Schwinn was one of the only companies who made these strollers with a good shade at the top. After days of researching and looking at reviews, I was happy with the choice we made. It has been a lot of fun! It has quick release wheels for easy storing, which Everett now knows exactly how to put on. We will definitely use it in Indiana, and especially when we walk to campus to meet Joel for lunch. This is going to be our entertainment this summer. The kids have been loving it so much that yesterday we took a walk lasting over two hours!

The walk made me realize how much I'm going to miss our town. We found a great playground--one of many within walking distance--with a good playground, and Everett had a blast. Everywhere we went, people smiled and greeted us. On warm days, people are out with their kids, their dogs, or their friends. Wooded trails lead anywhere and everywhere. There are parks all through, most of which have at least one well-kept baseball diamond.

It has been a dream living here, and I am really going to miss it. I don't know if we'll live in an area like this for the rest of our lives.

The biggest thing I'll miss is looking out our windows and seeing this. . .and knowing there are miles of trails in here for us to walk on.

Pronounce-iation

You know how when you first start reading more difficult chapter books and you come across words you're somewhat familiar with--you get the gist of what they mean, but you're fuzzy on the pronunciation--and you kind of gloss over them and pronounce them however it makes the most sense to you at the time?

And you know how if you pronounce it incorrectly in your head enough times, when you finally find out the proper way to say it, you still hear it the wrong way in your head?

This happens to me all the time. Blame it on the fact that I liked reading.

One word I can never say right in my head is "plethora".

I know how it is pronounced, but every time I read it, my first instinct is to pronounce it "Ple-THORE-a." Another is lapel, which I seem to always read as "LAY-puhl."

Every single time! I haven't been able to stop myself. One of these days I'll actually say it out loud that way, and it will be a little embarrassing. . .