Two By Two

Tales from my life as a mom of 2 sons and 2 daughters

Pages

Early Intervention

Cheli On Friday, January 30, 2009
Time for an update.. I know I know aren't you excited?

School is going good. Finals are next week. I actually had one final this week in Algebra, ended up with a 97% in the class. Works for me. FInals next week in English, Anatomy and Physiology 1 and Microbiology. Then the term is over on Wednesday. Next term will be a piece of cake :) I only have to go one morning each week. Which is great since we have tons of appointments coming up for the boys.

Speaking of appointments. Journey had his feeding therapy appointment *per our usual Wednesday appointment*. She said he's doing great. She said we are free to start trying "table" foods with him as long as they are cut up. She suggested dipping the harder things like cereals in apple juice, it adds flavor and softens the food a bit. We haven't tried much. We tried Mac and cheese Stage 3 for the first time today and he did okay with it. Really had to chew for a while to get it down and was still "gulping" when he finished. He's still having issues with thinned liquids. Not like he was before or at least not at as often but still issues.

We are still waiting on Genetics to call us back to tell us what "special lab" we need to go to get the testing and typing done. We had the appointment Jan 14th, They said give them 2 weeks.. I called 2 days ago and left a message with the receptionist that I still hadn't been contacted. She said she would pull his file and put it on the nurses desk and someone would call me back.. still nothing. I'll call Monday again and be more persistant. *sigh*

Monday is also River's evaluation with Early Intervention. Someone came by today from Early Intervention to do a "first contact" appointment. The usual questions that I've become SO familiar with.. How many week was he? How much did he weigh? Any NICU time? etc. He goes Monday for a full evaluation.. should expect to be there at least 2 hours. Then sometime next week she's coming back to get all the same information on Journey. I told her to plan on being here a bit longer as there was alot more to tell LOL. His appointment with Early Intervention is the 10th and he also goes on the 10th for his next Synagis shot. Poor kid.

Other than the constant appointments for the kids and the tiredness (is that a word) from going to school and taking care of them things are going rather well for us. It's a nice change of pace. Makes me wonder when the other shoe is going to drop.


Posted by Cheli at 3:03 PM 0 comments

Journey's Speech Appt

Cheli On Thursday, January 22, 2009
Two posts in one week... don't you feel special LOL

I took Journey to his speech therapy appointment yesterday *he goes once a week*. Which I learned yesterday is actually called "feeding therapy" since they focus on feeding skills and related issues and not on speech or sounds. Whatever. She said that he is doing AMAZINGLY well from where he was when he started going 5 months ago. YAY! She said he is making really good "chewing" motions with his mouth when he has food in it. She tried a few puffs with him and he didn't gag (major improvement over just 2 or 3 weeks ago) and she got a toddler cookie and held it for him while he kind of chewed on it. She said he needs to start working toward weaning off the bottle, tried to give him some formula from an open ended cup. He choked, sputtered, dribbled, and got SOME down. She was very happy at how open he was to the new textures.

When we first got there she tried to have him sit in her lap which he does every week. This time he went NUTS the instant he was out of my arms. She tried to persuade him with a toy and he turned his head away and reached for me. Once she handed him back to me, he was peachy. Can we say stranger anxiety? Does it still count as stranger anxiety if she's not technically a stranger? LOL

Anyway.. she said she is concerned that he doesn't use his hands more. He doesn't have very good fine motor coordination and he spends alot of time with his hands fisted up. I told her about him having a scheduled appointment with EI for evaluation on the 10th of next month. She was pleased. She said she believes he would benefit from speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy in addition to the feeding therapy. *sigh* I am SOOOOOO sick of appointments and specialists.
Posted by Cheli at 2:19 PM 0 comments

School, Appts, Etc..

Cheli On Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Yet again it's somehow been like 2 weeks since I updated. I don't know how time gets away from me like this. LOL School is going well. About 2 weeks left until the end of the semester. I'm very ready to be done with this semester and these classes. I have an A in every class except for Anatomy and Physiology which is a mid B. I'm hoping I can pull that grade up by semester end and stick with all A's but we'll see.

Doug is going today to give a massage to a friend of mine at her house. She is going to pay him for it too YAY!!! His job has been going well. He's making enough money for us to get bills paid on time or even early in some cases which is great. Next semester he's thinking about working some extra hours to pad our pockets a little more. We'll see if that's actually necessary as we get closer. We filed taxes last week. The IRS accept them and we'll get a refund on the 30th of this month. WOOT!!!! We are very much looking forward to this money. The last few years we've pretty much used all our refund money to pay bills or what not. This year while we are going to use some of it to pay off bills we are going to keep some of us as well. Which will be nice.

River has an Early Intervention appointment scheduled for Feb 2nd. They are going to do a full evaluation of him to see if he qualifies for special help. I'm really hoping he does qualify because he seems to be getting worse with his sensitivity to loud noises. If he gets into the program he gets to start going to a preschool program right away where they will work with him on a daily basis to help him. They will also help us with him and potty training because he still doesn't seem the least bit interested. His hand healed up nicely. It never really bothered him. And we discovered a few days ago that he STILL has lice. So we have been going through the rounds again.. can I just say this getting OLD. He will be 3 years in about 3 weeks. I have no idea where the time went.


Journey is 11 months old now. He's getting so big so fast. He went to his follow up GI appointment on the 7th and they said he is doing exactly what they expect him to be doing at this point. He has some good days and some bad days and that in the next few months they expect the good days to get more frequent and the bad days less frequent. He goes back in April for another follow up. He went for his Genetics appointment on the 14th of this month. She said that she can see some of the physical attributes that would make the doctors think he has Noonan's She said that only someone like a geneticist could see those "differences" though but it's enough to make her wants to do further testing. They'll do gene typing and chromosomal testing. They'll only have to stick him once for blood and they'll run the tests on that sample. And then we'll have to wait. Whether he has an abnormality or not he's supposed to follow up with them in a year. If he does have an abnormality they will bring us back in to discuss the results.. Otherwise he's doing very well. He's eating stage 3 baby foods now, puffs, and biter biscuits. He's doing amazingly well. He sleeps through the night most nights now which is a wonderful change of pace. He goes to bed at 7pm and usually sleeps until 8am the next morning :)

Posted by Cheli at 3:09 PM 1 comments

Back to Reality

Cheli On Sunday, January 4, 2009
It's back to reality for me tomorrow. Winter break is over. School starts back up in the morning. In some ways, I'm ready to get back to the routine of it but in other ways I could use another few weeks of "nothing". It seemed like around the holidays everything just stopped. Doug had more time off work, I had 2 weeks off of school, Journey's appointment with different doctors disappeared and we entered this calm period. Now it's back to the jumping daily activities it seems.
I have approximately 4 weeks left of the 1st semester of school. I've got A's in all 4 classes that I'm taking this semester WOOT. I've decided that I'm going to pick up my weight loss adventure and start again. I'm not happy with how I look and I've got to change it so for the last week and a half I've been eating better. I also went and signed back up with the Y for now and have been going at least 3 days a week for a work out. I don't know that I will ever reach my ideal weight but if I could lose another 25 lbs from where I'm at now.. I think I'd be happy. My birthday was yesterday (I'm now 25). It was a pretty laid back day. Doug had to to work from 1 to 6 and then we went out for Sushi (YUMMM) and to the bookstore in the mall for a new book for me.

Doug's work is still going wonderfully. He's been there about 4 months now and he still loves it. He's building up a good amount of return clients that request him specifically when they come which is great. Once he's been there 6 months he'll start recieving 10 dollars every time someone requests him for a massage. YAY. We've been busy the last few days organizing the house and cleaning. The house looks clean and happy and clean. LOL If only it would last HA!

River is doing well. He LOVES his bike that he got for Christmas and rides it outside almost every day. He is SO full of energy from the moment he wakes up until the moment he falls asleep. I only wish I had a portion of his energy. A few days ago he was in the kitchen with daddy and reached up and touched the eye of the stove when Doug was cooking. He has a nice wonderful blister to show for it now. Guess he will remember better not to touch the stove like we said. 6 weeks or so and he'll be 3 years old. WOW. He seems to have some sibiling rivarly with Journey now. Doesn't want him touching his toys, doesn't want him touching even his own toys. We took him to the pediatrician a few days ago because he has been having FITS over noises. It started with his fear of the vaccum and has spread to tons and tons of other noises. He complains that everything is "too loud". So she wants to have him evaluated by Early Intervention just to make sure there isn't something going on. I'm still waiting on a call back from them. She also referred him to a dermatologist because of something going on with his ear. We are waiting on a call from them as well. He was weighed and measured but I'm not going to say what they are just yet.. I'll wait for his 3 year appointment in Feb but I will say this... my 2 year old is the size of an average almost 4 year old LOL. But he has a BMI of only 21 so he's well within his range for height and weight which is awesome :).

Journey is closing in rapidly on 11 months old. About 6 weeks to go until he turns 1.. craziness. He's babbling away now. Dada Baba Ga, Go. He's EVERYWHERE all the sudden. He's crusing furniture (although not well), he is finally hands and knees crawling and he is super fast. He still only gets solids (baby food) once every other day or so. If we give it to him more than that he has tummy issues. And he's stil on thickened liquids. He saw his speech therapist this week and she said he is doing beautifully. He is still significantly delayed but he's making progress. Which is good. He goes again on the 7th and he also goes for his GI follow up. Hopefully they'll release him from their care and it'll be one less doctor we have to deal with. Then on 14th we go for his big Genetics appointment that we've been waiting on forever.. finally.

Other than appointments and River burning his hand life is good. We are getting out of debt slowly which is awesome and we're taking all the right steps toward building a great future for our family. YAY
Posted by Cheli at 3:15 PM 0 comments
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)