Development

Today marked the end of an era for David. He graduated from speech.

David has had a journey with his speech. In February of 2010 he got his 1st set of tubes just shy of 9 months. That August, he still didn't have many words; mama, dada, uh-oh, so his ENT referred us to First Steps (Early Intervention in some states) for an evaluation. From what Dr. Trigg (the wonderful ENT) could see from his testing, David did not have hearing loss, but thought we should get the speech delay checked out. By the beginning of November that fall, he started speech. She was wonderful! We had had much success with sign language for David and she continued with that, but also worked on him saying the words he signed. We loved Jennifer! She saw him at school, but also came to our house in the summer when I was off to see him. (At that time, providers did zip codes. His school zip is in a good area. Very few providers did our home zip code because it's not the best zip code, even though we are in a great neighborhood.) In the spring of 2012, he turned 3 and First Steps stops at 3. :( David had his last session with Jennifer, and was evaluated by the school to continue services through Early Childhood. He was picked up for services at the school, and since the fall of 2012, Nate has taken David to speech every Friday morning. (Last year he went to the school he will be attending in the fall. They have a school bunny that he loved. This year he was at the district administration building. No bunny.) My little guy has now met his goals! He talks, non stop, and gets all of his developmentally appropriate sounds correct. He still has a hard time with /l/ and /r/ at times, but those are harder sounds and will come. He's done.

It's bittersweet for me. I have loved the people that came into our lives to help our little boy get to where he is today.They will always hold a special place in my heart.

As one journey is ending, another is continuing. Molley was evaluated by First Steps in August for physical therapy. If you recall, my girl was a scooter. She would scoot everywhere and on any surface. She didn't walk until November 1st. I remember that because I was home with her that day because she had a fever. She was walking everywhere! At her evaluation., it was determined that she did indeed qualify for PT services. Ladana has been in our lives helping since mind September. At first, Molley hated her and wanted nothing to do with. She asserted her divaish attitude and would ignore Ladana completely. As time went on, she warmed up to her, and would even cry when she left school. As walking was more and more, we notice more rotation of her leg, most likely due to that muscle being weaker from the scooting. We have been doing lots of exercises and used kinesio tape. Ladana is looking at the potential of derotation straps to help, but hopefully it corrects on its own soon. Molley will hate those straps!

Next week, Molley will be evaluated again to look at the addition of speech services. Her speech is, in my opinion, very delayed. She doesn't use any word purposefully consistently. We have heard baby, doggy, mama, dada, uh-oh a few times. We don't hear all of the sounds either, and bless her stubborn heart, the girl will not use sign language, leading to very dramatic, very consistent frustration tantrums when we don't know what she wants. I hope that she will qualify for services so that we can do more to help her. I have exhausted the list of things we did to help David and none of them have helped us with Molley.

So, as David's journey ends, Molley's continues.