Sunday, January 8, 2012

These are Happy Days

Life is good here.  The girls are both healthy and happy which is a nice change.

Angel is climbing onto everything so I'm sure the bumps and bruises are going to multiply for a while.  She doesn't just climb, she conquers!  Angel has zero interest in walking, but she sure does enjoy this new found freedom of climbing.



Sweet Pea is starting to be so much more independent!  She will often completely feed herself with her spoon or fork and not require us to even load the utensil with the food.  We used to have to load it and feed her so this is a huge step for us.

She also self entertains for a much longer period of time now.  The only issue is that she HATES when her sister tries to join her in some of her playing.  Sometimes they play great together (parallel more than together), but other times...not so much.  Little sisters sure can be pesky. :-)  (I'm a little sister so I can say that.)

And she is walking without fighting so much more!  We walked to the park on Saturday with Aunt R & Uncle R and she walked the entire way there without one complaint.  It is only 3 blocks, but for her that is HUGE!  On the way home it was a little more challenging, but I only had to use one goldfish cracker as motivation to keep walking which is unheard of.  She was asking for Signing Time about a block from the park but clearly we didn't bring a tv with us to the park so she had to walk home to watch an episode while I cooked dinner.  Silly little Signing Time addict...


On the walking and behavior front...I was able to take both kids to Trader Joe's this morning without wanting to pull my hair out after just a few minutes.  The trip took about 40 minutes in total and Sweet Pea was great during it!  Angel sat in the cart and Sweet Pea walked through the aisles with me.  She would help me pick out food to put in the cart and she only touched three items that she shouldn't have.  We used to have issues often even in the parking lot before getting into the store!  Getting through the entire shopping trip without one fit is a dream come true.  We got a little help from an employee when she gave her stickers for being so cute, but still...Sweet Pea did it!  I am so proud of her!!!!

Back to the park...both girls enjoyed the trip.  Sweet Pea showed off her climbing skills and her lack of fear of the big winding covered slide immediately.



Angel decided that going down slides on her bottom was for novices.  She much prefers this new method:




Angel was having a blast on the rocking animals with a little assistance from Auntie R.


This doesn't fit with this post, but seeing as I don't do many posts I better include it while I'm here...Completely random, but it's so strange that I have to write it...Angel has a few different toys in her crib that she has two different versions of the same basic thing (often because one was Sweet Pea's but she never played with them)...two pink my first dolls, two Tiggers, two chewy blanket things, etc.  The other day I walk into her room after a nap and find that all 6 of these items on the floor.  Not a big deal.  She tosses her toys out all the time.  Daddy says she is interrogating them and if they don't talk, they are goners.  Anyway, the toys on the floor wasn't the interesting part.  The fact that these toys were paired up...even on the floor was!  She had dropped them in such a manner that you had the 2 dolls right on top of each other, then the two Tiggers next to that and about a foot away the 2 chewy blanket things.  It was very odd.  I should have taken a picture, but didn't think of it at the time.  On Friday when I saw her manhandling her two Tiggers again I had to get a picture of that.  She has both of her poor Tiggers by the tail and is loving every minute of it.  And yes, I love it even more because of the twist on "Tiger by the Tail".


Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Professional Photos!!!!

Yep, you read it right...we finally had family photos taken again!  The last time this happened Sweet Pea was only about 6 months old.  So much has changed since then and I really wanted to capture our new family in a professional manner...my daily photography skills are definitely lacking!  We were very lucky to be able to work with an amazing photographer, Andrea Moore (www.mamamoorephotography.com), who wanted to build out her portfolio a bit more.  It takes a daring individual to take on the monumental task of photographing this family!  Take a look at some of the moments she was able to capture.  I tried to narrow it down to a smaller set of photos, but it was too hard so I'm sharing many of them with you here:

































































I hope you enjoyed them as much as I do!

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Merry Christmas

We wish you all a merry Christmas!



Friday, December 16, 2011

Happy Friday!

It's been a very long week with Angel being sick and dealing with the ups and downs that come with potty training so when I was handed a copy of Sweet Pea's latest testing results, I was more than a little nervous.  Did I want to read them or should I put them in a drawer until the new year.  If you know me, you know that I can't put them in a drawer so as soon as I got home and got the kids settled I pulled them out and pulled out the last test to do a comparison.  This test puts age equivalents to Sweet Pea's skills in a variety of areas.  It's sometimes extremely heartbreaking to read because while I know that Sweet Pea is delayed, seeing how delayed right there in black and white is rough.  There are often times when I am surprised by how far behind she is in a certain area, but I'm often pleasantly surprised by how well she is doing in another.  This time I was thrilled by most of what I saw!  This was called the discharge report, but since she has three more months until she turns 3 I'm a little confused by that.  They tried to explain it was due to the holiday, but even still it seems a little early, but oh well.

The specific report they did was the Hawaii Early Learning Profile (HELP).  "This is a non-standardized assessment that examines seven domains of development: regulatory/sensory organization (self-regulation capacities and a child's capacity to perceive and organize various sensory experiences), cognition (mental processess related to thinking, remembering and reasoning), language (expressive and receptive), gross motor (whole body movements such as crawling, walking, jumping, and climbing), fine/perceptual motor and finally self help (oral motor, dressing, feeding, grooming)".  Here are the results from the previous test and the current test:



Chronological Age 28 mths 33 mths
Regulatory/Sensory Atypical - Concerns are with hypersensitivity to
vestibular and proprioceptive processing
Atypical - Concerns are with hypersensitivity to
vestibular and proprioceptive processing
Cognition 20-24 mths with scattered skills up to 29 mths 28-30 mths
Receptive Language 22-24 with scattered skills up to 30 mths 26-29 mths
Expressive Language 15-18 mths 21-24 mths
Gross Motor 18-20 mths 25-29mths with delays in jumping and stairs (22 mths)
Fine Motor Foundations intact with exception of bilateral and midline skills
(8.5-12 mths)
intact with exception of grasp and prehension (23-25
mths)
Perceptual-Motor
Integration
18-23 mths with greater concerns in paper/scissor tasks 26-28 mths
Self Help 20-24 mths 30-34 mths

Just writing that out made me question a few things in it, but overall I am extremely proud of how hard Sweet Pea has worked these past few months.

One of the things that gets me frustrated is that she has finally started to sleep better and I wonder if that has anything to do with how strong she is developing in so many areas.  I know I do a lot better with sleep!  The only two things we changed were 1) putting Angel in the same room as her and so Sweet Pea had to learn to sleep through crying 2) giving her Nexium at night instead of in the morning.  I wish I knew if either of those were the magic bullet for her sleeping better, but as long as it continues I really don't care.

I need to try to get the data behind these numbers on Monday as it seems that some might not be completely accurate.  For example, in the 28 mth results she was intact on fine motor foundations except for the bilateral and midline skills which would typically be in the 8.5-12 mth range.  From what they explained to me last time that meant that she had met all the skills (except for the bilateral and midline) up to the 28 mth level.  This time it says she is intact with the exception of grasp and prehension (which I just looked up in the dictionary as "The act of grasping or seizing") which is listed as 23-25 mths.  Did she regress?  If she was intact up to 28 mth before (except midline/bilateral), how is she now missing this other area?

This is good practice at trying to understand the tests and trying to figure out what they really mean since I'm told I need to learn to do that when it comes time for IEPs.  I have a lot of learning ahead of me, but I do enjoy most of it.  It's fascinating learning about development!  I just wish that my child's education didn't depend upon it!

Now for some random pictures...

The girls are having fun playing together these days and I can't adequately express how much joy it brings me to watch them.






Christmas Parade with Grandma and Grandpa.  We are surprised Angel survived as she had 102 fever and was doped up on Tylenol, but she rallied and made it through.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Nearly Wordless Wednesday: Santa's 1st Visit

We are still alive here!  In my dreams I would catch you all up on what has been happening with us the last couple of months, but I know that will never actually happen...so here we are with today at least.

Santa and his elves came to visit Sweet Pea at her center based therapy.


She's checking him out...




Angel's first encounter with the big man is red...




Love her face here!






Sweet Pea had a fine time with the big man, but Angel wasn't so sure.  She survived, but not by much!

I hope everyone is doing well and I hope to be back soon to catch you up on our potty training saga that is still going...and going...and going!