And the Speech news is....

Kittyboy's delay six months ago was 28-34%, 30% being what is considered in need of therapy (hence he "qualified by four percent"). Delay today - 21%! Woohoo, not only holding fast in his own curve but gaining. Sweet. I didn't think he was losing, but the gain is a happy surprise. Bree says articulation is just borderline 50%, he still qualifies on that, but he's way more understandable than he was six months ago. Among the questions she asked was, "How does he get your attention?" By continuing to repeat the same phrase over and over and over and over and over and over until it's like the droning of bees. He doesn't raise his voice, which is nice, but if he didn't GET my attention to begin with initially, say I'm washing dishes or in the laundry room, for me it only registers as background noise. Which is why he's added the tactic of grabbing my clothes and getting right in front of me, or if he can reach, putting his hand on my shoulder, leaning in so our noses are practically touching, and repeating said garble directly eye-to-eye. SMART BOY. He's noticed Mommy doesn't necessarily "hear" him unless he makes contact. It doesn't mean I understand him per se, but hey, then I know it's not random babble, he's communicating something, and can then resort to "Why don't you just show me?"
OOH. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to teach him, "Mommy I need you." He should be able to repeat that, and I will tell him that's what he says when he needs me. Followed by, when he's got me, the request.
And, "How does he ask for help?" By bringing you the thing and waiting patiently until you decipher what is wrong, or crying if he can't bring it to you. If you prompt him, "How do you ask for help?" he will make a noise and sign it. Help is not a word I've ever heard.
The majority of the evaluation was with a large flip book of pictures, each of which came with an instruction - "Which of these do you eat with?" "Which baby is sleeping?" and progressing to my favorite, pictures of a broken bike, crayons and paper, a book in a chair, and the scenario, "Katie hurt her knee. What do you think she was doing?" YEAH RIGHT! I giggled silently, Bree nodded with an understanding smile, and Kittyboy stared blankly, then tried to turn the page. Bree said, "Well, I have to keep going until he misses seven in a row." Which he never DID. We would have been there all morning. She finally said his scores were just all over the place, there were low-level things he was missing (doesn't answer yes or no really), though he has most of that section, there was a chunk of middle stuff totally absent (for example, wouldn't point to the nest that had no eggs, the basket that had no apples, etc, and got all colors wrong except yellow), but then there's a scattering of upper-level stuff he does get. Overall it came to a 21% delay, which is acceptable, but she wants him to continue therapy, so as to fill in the blanks and start speaking more clearly. And get some basics like yes, no (he says no, but not as an answer, as imitating what I just told him when he does something wrong, or when I say he can't have something), asking for HELP, etc.
So the verdict is... whatever speech therapy the school district throws our way should be fine! I told Bree that being all over the place is what he does best - like last summer when Fe (the OT at the time) thought he was just a genius, and Terri the SLP said that verbally he had an 85% delay. And both were true, Kittyboy was doing things involving reasoning that he shouldn't have known how to do, AND six-month-olds I saw at church were using more open consonants than he was.
Predictable is boring. He wouldn't want to be boring.

Why I now wear a knee brace - A Cautionary Tale

I now have a knee brace, courtesy of my doctor. I am a size medium in knee braces, which will be useful to know in case someone decides to buy me medical accessories for Christmas. I don't know why they would, but anyhow.
When Kittyboy came home, he had to be held at a goofy angle for bottlefeeding, and so to keep him at the right angle, he got fed propped on my crossed legs, and I spent a lot of my day on the floor sitting crosslegged. Up and down and up and down. Not that great for knees. One day I bent down from the changing table, screamed, and thought I wasn't going to be able to get back up. My left knee was in agony. My first thought was "No, this is really bad, I just blew out my knee." I did get back up, and of course I kept going, because I had an infant and a husband at work and had no choice, and by the time Husband came home, I thought the worst was over. And my knee did slowly get better, though it was stiff while it healed. But when it still hurt a month later, I went to our public aid doctor, because we had only public aid for insurance, and explained that I'd damaged my knee a month before, and though it was moving well again, it still hurt along the sides like it wasn't healing up well. She said it was arthritis. I said no, it isn't, it felt as if I'd torn something, and Tylenol doesn't do jack squat. She said to try other over-the-counter stuff. I went to Walmart, bought one bottle of everything generic, tried them all one after the other, and went back later to say, "They don't work completely, and I still say it's not arthritis." She said again that it WAS arthritis, and prescribed me Tramadol. That is a very powerful don't-mess-with-it painkiller. It's an opiate. I took one - my knee didn't hurt, for the first time in over a month. I was happy, I was so happy. My gosh, I could sleep pain-free again. Then I started noticing some balance problems while taking it (at the minimum dose of one a day). Basically, I got more and more sensitive to it, until I bought a knee brace and decided I was only taking it if I really, really could not stand the pain. I told myself, I've got a high pain tolerance, this stuff is scary, I have to do this. Then one day I just had to, I couldn't even sit comfortably, and an hour after taking it, I had the feeling of bugs in my skin. I was shaking. I had the symptoms of a heroin addict. I couldn't sleep. It took 24 hours before the "bugs" went away, and that was scary enough to make me not take it ever again no matter what, because obviously it and I were not compatible. Mind you, my knee didn't just hurt when I was moving it, it hurt at night when it was still. Our friend Carel and his brother were over that night, so I asked THREE football players (Husband played in high school) what they thought of what had happened with my knee, and all three said yes, it's a sports injury, everything I described was consistent with that, the doctor was an idiot.
And then we got insurance (nine months after the injury), we changed doctors as fast as humanly possible, and Dr. B said I'd ruptured a bursa (yes! I was right!), and a week of anti-inflammatories made everything better. Problem solved.
Moooostly.
Since then, every so often, I'll step wrong and put my knee out again - feels a little like the joint's going to bend in a way it shouldn't, hurts like the dickens, and then it continues to hurt for a couple days. After all that time that I kept using it until we got insurance, I figured there was no point in going back to the doctor, my knee is just as healed as it will ever get and I just have to put up with it.
So I put it out again Monday night, got up Tuesday morning, and thought it was better until I got out of bed and bent to pick up my jeans. THAT hurt. I went to our wonderful Dr. Hendricks at last, because I'm just tired of it and I can't keep up with a toddler this way. I was explaining the whole loooooong story to the nurse, said, "I went the first time, said I had a joint injury that didn't seem to be healing right, the doctor said it was arthritis and to try different OTC stuff, I went home and tried one of everything, went back and said nothing worked and 'by the way, I still say it's not arthritis,' and the doctor said, 'well I still think it is!' and gave me a prescription for Tramadol," and at that the nurse's eyebrows went up, and up, and up. I liked that expression. So writing a scrip for a powerful painkiller is indeed NOT typically the first thing you do when something hurts. I'm thinking you usually try to figure out WHY.
Dr. Hendricks' first question was whether ANYONE had thought to x-ray it, the answer to which is no. Dr. B diagnosed based on my description of what happened and the stiffness when it was healing, i.e. exactly what I told the first lady who swore it was arthritis, except the medicine he gave me worked, which is how we know he and I were right. But no, no one's x-rayed, so Dr. H ordered x-rays to see if there had been any skeletal damage. There hasn't been, which is really good to know - the knee's not growing any spurs or looking ground down, it really is JUST the bursa being re-aggravated.
And now we know that when this happens, I should wear a knee brace for a couple weeks, rest the joint as much as possible, elevate when possible, take anti-inflammatories, and let it heal again. With arthritis you do exactly the opposite, since there you want to keep the joint moving so it doesn't freeze up. This is why you should make very sure what the injury IS when a joint hurts, because if it's one and you treat for the other, you WILL make it worse, either way, guaranteed. Taking pain relievers to keep moving was the worst thing I could have done.
If I'd gone immediately and gotten treated for the right thing immediately, it could have healed completely and this wouldn't be an ongoing chronic thing. It also might not have - the initial damage felt pretty significant - but at least it would have had a chance. Yesterday I told Husband, who was REALLY upset with the first doctor, that it's truly both our faults, because I KNEW she was wrong, and I should have either kept harping until I got somewhere, OR said, "You know what, she may be clueless, but I do know what happened, I'll just ask around on my own and find out what to do for a sports-type injury." I didn't even do THAT, I just ignored it. I could also have tried to change doctors at the clinic. What I should NOT have done is sat down and shut up after the second appointment.
I now realize that telling myself "Well, as long as my knee doesn't hurt, whatever..." is the same thing as saying, "If I don't open the overdue bills, they'll just go away."
REALLY DUMB.
But my knee IS feeling better faster with the brace during the day and the Lodine, and a lesson has been learned!

The Next, and Last, IFSP

So, the next and last IFSP for Kittyboy is going to be two weeks from today. I don't know why therapists don't get more than two weeks notice, considering the paperwork involved in evals and reports, but there you have it.
As I've mentioned, we anticipate Kittyboy TOTALLY clearing OT. There's nothing going on sensory-wise that we can't handle. And I would have expected him to leave Speech behind as well, except... the older he gets, the higher they raise the bar. He MAY still qualify, because although he's attained two-year-old level verbal language (a stranger could understand probably 50% of what he says), a three-year-old is expected to be understood 75% of the time (again, by a stranger who is unfamiliar with his particular "dialect"). The equation is 25% per year of age. Yes, that does mean that you should be able to understand one hundred percent of what your four-year-old tells you. When Bree told me that this morning, I STARED at her, and then I said I'd known many kindergartners in SCOPE who REALLY, REALLY, REALLY qualified for speech therapy.
I once had a conversation with an absolutely precious five-year-old girl, who was getting anxious because her mommy was running later than normal. I asked her what her mommy's car looked like, and she said it was a "gavudabu". A what? "It's a gavudabu!" And that was the only description I could get. Clearly, that was supposed to tell me something very significant about her mother's vehicle. After some time, the light came on - CONVERTIBLE. "Is her car a convertible?" "Thas wha I said, a gavudabu!" Yup. (Should I ever have a convertible, my license plate will be GAVDBU).
We've got Kittyboy saying "potty" when he needs to go, because "toilet" (though he does say it) sounds like a fourth of his vocabulary. It has to be something we can understand. I guess a lot of his speech we do translate from context - tractor and chocolate, for example, are not much distinguished from each other.
And he'll be three on Christmas, so that's the standard they'll be using. Since what he will say far outranks what even WE actually understand, he may well still need Speech, I don't know. It's not vocab, his vocabulary is GREAT - it's enunciation. (Man, they're picky!) But yeah, I can see where enunciation would be almost as important as vocabulary - can't communicate if you're not understood.
Dilemma - if he still qualifies, it will be the school district which picks up his therapy. Good news, they do have to provide services whether or not he goes, and what they provide will be free - bad news, they do not provide as MUCH to children who aren't attending. A kid in Early Start or Headstart or whatever they call it might get half an hour twice a week - one who's not attending might get half an hour every other week, or even just once a month, in which case, what's the point. We can go to Childrite where he's been going, privately, though insurance would NOT pay for it (we already know this).
Off the top of my head, if he does still qualify, my ideas are as follows -
Discuss by what percentage he still qualifies, and find out how important they think it is that he does continue to receive services. If it's the same small percentage by which he qualified six months ago, then he's just continuing to progress at the same delayed rate, no big deal. If, on the other hand, he qualified by 4% six months ago, and now qualifies by much more because of the higher expectations of being 3 (i.e., he's not maintaining the same learning curve, but instead falling further behind others in his age group), eeehhh, we'll see how much the district WILL do if he doesn't attend preschool, and whether Bree thinks it's enough to be worth it.
IF the delay, relatively speaking, is something that warrants continued therapy, and IF Bree thinks the "out-patient" district services aren't going to be enough, we would have things to think about. One thought being, eeehhh, find out how many hours a day Headstart, Early Start, whatever it is, is, and how flexible they are on attendance, and go from there.
It's all academic though, until the evals are done. I just like to keep in mind, "Okay, worst case scenario, what would we do next?" Something I learned from my dad, WHO, by the way, has a blog now, speedscreed.blogspot.com. I highly recommend it.

Killed a Spider - Still Jumpy

I have so far managed to not raise a fellow arachnophobe, only because Kittyboy's not that observant. I took down a basket of stuff for him to play with, out crawled a white recluse. And since Young-And-Impressionable was at my side, I could NOT scream my head off and leave the room. Worse, my son sat down NEXT TO the basket, and started pulling things from it oblivious to the large white spider running around the rim of the basket. I managed somehow, I don't know how, to keep from actually making any sound whatsoever, I grabbed a book, knocked the spider off, and tried to smoosh it. Spiders are resilient. Since it was on carpet, the first THREE TIMES I picked up the book, it kept running around. I had to put ALL my weight on the book and move it around before I picked it up and spider was no more. Kittyboy sat happily playing the whole time completely ignoring me. So then I just sat there holding my knees and shaking for a few minutes. I. HATE. SPIDERS.

Half an hour later, I'm still twitching.
I. SERIOUSLY. HATE. SPIDERS.
Give me a bull snake in the bathroom any day of the week.

A Day at the Park; or, Kittyboy Not Allergic to Bees

The knitting group I've attended off and on (more off than on), and a homeschool group I need to start attending are merging experimentally at a great time and a great place - Tuesday afternoons, at Washington Park! Take the toddler, take a washcloth-in-progress - best of all worlds!
Turns out, there's a limit how much you can knit while chasing Kittyboy. But it was still a really fun afternoon. First I had to convince him that he COULD play without me looking over his shoulder - that he was perfectly fine playing with me sitting on a bench instead of following him. Then I had the opposite problem, trying to get him to play at the jungle gym near where I was sitting, instead of the one across the park! (So, that's a "Yes!" to independent play!)
He had lots of fun with the other random toddlers who happened to be playing where he was. They spent a lot of time pointing at each other and saying various things that weren't all that intelligible. WHEE, however, is understood by all! WHEE is universal!
He also got pointed out as a good example! His climbing skills are QUITE proficient, and another mom used him to try and teach her son who was maybe a few months younger how climbing works. "See where he puts his feet? And then he uses his legs, and then he pulls himself up!" Again and again, time after time, as both boys enjoyed the tornado slide - the one scampering up with ease, while the other used the "mommy elevator".
He did a somersault down the tornado slide once, apparently because he couldn't decide whether to go down sitting up or feet-first on his tummy, and so he decided to do both at once. Didn't phase him. I'm not sure he realized what happened.
He wanted very much to do the rock wall - if he were just an inch taller, he'd be doing it, easy. Boy loves to climb. And is good at it. 'Nuff said.
I learned a few things. 1) apparently any mom in a skirt can substitute for me if he wants one and she's closer. He chatted at length with one lady about a ball he had found. His end of the conversation was mainly, "Ball - yeah!" He grabbed his Aunt Carey by the hand, said, "Mommy!" (news to her!), pulled her over to the teeter-totter, and said, "Bounce! You bounce, up-down!" and she did the teeter-totter with him until I rescued her. Which I admit to not doing as fast as I could have.
2) Kittyboy is not allergic to bee stings. Useful knowledge, since a hive has taken up residence in a hole in our yard (we put shoes on him when he plays in the yard, and have pointed it out as a spot to stay away from). There were several flying around the playground, evidently he put his hand down on one and it stung him. He came running to me with that high-pitched squealing cry that means Something Actually Is Wrong, and the bee still stuck in his palm! Yeah, that was fun. I flicked the bee off, carried him squealing over to Carey and her friend Shannon and asked, "So have you ever removed a sting before?" Shannon got it out, by which time he'd calmed down considerably. He snuggled for a while, but went back to playing pretty quickly. All that swelled was his hand, and that not too much. So hey, now we know - not allergic. Or afraid of flying insects - after the bunsen burner/candle equation, I would have thought a bee sting would make him afraid of anything small and winged. Not so, to my great relief.
3) Somersaults down tornado slides - fun. Somersaults down stairs - not. More tears, a bleeding lip and skinned nose, more snuggling. While we snuggled and rocked, I asked him, "Do we want to go home now?" He sobbed, "Nooooo!" And soon went back to playing.
All in all, it was a very good day with moments of not-so-goodness. But a wonderful day overall!

Tot School

I have found a lovely blog for homeschooling preschool - the creatively named 1plus1plus1equals1 (think about it... think about it...) written by Carisa. "Tot school" is a Montessori-style of preschool based on educational play (which is what preschool is, or should be, right?). And Carisa has all sorts of wonderful ideas, tips, tools, and just plain encouragement for anyone homeschooling under the age of five. I found Tot School by following another wonderful homeschooling blog, Making the most of being at home.
Montessori is SO the way to go. I keep reading again and again, "Just give the child what you want him to learn with and see what he does with it." So that's what I'm trying to do now. It makes things a lot less frustrating, actually, and come to find, the lesson gets learned anyway.
Example - I have been beating my head on a brick wall trying to help Kittyboy match things. He has these word cards that he loves looking at (they're Winnie the Pooh), and I figured we could use them for matching. Lay out two cards, hold up one, and ask which one matches the one you're holding. We both HATE this game, him because I'm interrupting his fun and he doesn't know what I want of him, and me because beating your head on a brick wall starts to hurt after a while. But therapists want him to match things, and I want him to match things, and I'm sure he wants to match things just so I'll quit bugging him.
Better idea - give him the cards and see what he does. I ended up with matching pairs carefully strewn (I love that phrase) all over the living room. He's getting there, just in his own time, under his own steam, and in his own way. And how he did it, he was actually picking matches from more than two at a time, because he dumped the whole box and THEN started sorting. He just didn't like how I was doing it.
Next I'm going to just give him his whole "colors drawer" and see what he does with all the fabric swatches! Will he sort them by patterns, or by colors? Or will he use them all as blankets for small toys? Whatever he does, it'll be a learning experience!

(Carisa, if you read this, I am going to try and do a weekly Tot School post, assuming of course that I can figure out how McLinky works!)

Oh my gosh, he's NAPPING

My son has not taken a nap since last Saturday. Which is bad enough on its own, but since evidently he does still need the sleep, his 7-7:30 bedtime has been creeping backwards. Wednesday night, I believe it was, I had to put him down at SIX. That's insane. No one goes to bed that early. I wouldn't mind except that A) I would prefer a break in the middle of the day, and B) I am then trapped in the house until Husband comes home at 9:30. No after-dinner, "Oh drat, I need such-and-such for breakfast tomorrow," really quick errands or anything. And, at his old bedtime, a 7 p.m. church service is only stretching his awake time by an hour or so, that's doable. When he's melting down at 6, nighttime services are impossible. If I thought it would ensure a nap, I'd keep him up until 8 - but when the toddler needs to sleep, the toddler NEEDS TO SLEEP. You can only mess with bedtime just so far.
Shucks.