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Eleven months

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (12)· January 25th, 2012

Eleven months. Seriously. I’m not kidding. One month shy of a whole year.

I’m going to say this now so that I’m not a party pooper on her actual birthday: it really doesn’t feel like it should be so close. And not just in the usual “time flies” way, though that’s always true. I just have such a disconnect between Ellie, the little person in my life, and the day that this baby was born. Obviously I remember it very clearly. But the ten weeks that followed were so surreal, my memory of March and April of 2011 will always be warped. She didn’t even come home until May. So to think of celebrating in the middle of winter is kind of strange. Plus, developmentally-speaking, she’s not doing the kinds of things that other nearly-one-year-olds are doing. I don’t feel like I have an almost-toddler on my hands, the way I would otherwise expect of an 11-month-old.

THAT SAID…

The upside of being told in the hospital that your baby could potentially have very significant developmental delays and perhaps permanent deficits? Every time she makes a new leap forward, every time she does something sort-of-normal, it’s cause for celebration. (Remember that line from Say Anything…? “Start out depressed and then everything is a pleasant surprise.”) When we were still in the hospital, and they suggested that there may be gross motor issues of TOTALLY UNKNOWN severity, I silently wondered things like, “maybe we should move to a one-story house in case she never walks and needs to be in a wheelchair.” Had I voiced that thought, I can tell you the doctors would have just looked at me and shrugged. They had no way of knowing which way it would go, either.

But my girl? My girl wants to be on the move.

Sitting up and rolling over are old news, she’s a total pro. While she can’t yet get herself up to a sit, she can go from sitting down to her belly with increasing speed, purpose, and grace. While on her belly, she now uses her arms to pivot around, and sometimes ends up pushing herself backwards until her legs are stuck under the couch. Between the pivots and the rolling, I can no longer assume she’s going to be right where I left her. That photo up there? I put her down on the quilt in the foreground, sitting up. She managed to get herself over to the TV somehow. It ain’t fast, but she moves.

In physical therapy, we’re working hard on getting more strength in her legs, hips, shoulders, and arms in the hopes of getting her to crawl. With as good as she is at sitting, we need to have her on her belly more so that she can learn to crawl before she learns to just scoot around on her butt. The physical therapists swear up and down that, once babies learn to do a seated scoot, it’s nearly impossible to teach them to crawl. So we spend time on her belly and try to scoop those knees up underneath her instead of being splayed like a little froggie.

But coolest of all, in the last week I can see her try to pick those little hips up on her own. Her stamina is improving almost every day, getting stronger and steadier in those hips and shoulders, kicking those legs, bouncing that little body.

I don’t know how long it will take, but my girl is going to crawl.

How awesome is that?

My big, awesome, 11-month-old girl. My munchkin, my pumpkin pie. What a joy you are. Happy almost-birthday.

Comments (12)

Categories : Birthdays, Child Development, Infants

Tags : crawling, developmental delays, Gross motor

Death Wish

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (9)· January 13th, 2012

[Unrelated: In case you're interested, you still have until Monday morning to join the weight-loss competition!]

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Conversation in the car on the way home from preschool the other day:

Me: So, Daniel, what did you do in school today?

D: I did my journal. [As far as I can tell, they have a set of lined paper and are welcome to write whatever strikes their four-year-old fancy.]

Me: Oh, really? What did you write?

D: I wrote: “Me and Becca don’t want to die.”

Me: mouth agape, stunned silence

D: Well, what I wanted to write was “Me and Becca don’t want to die until we’re 100,” but I ran out of space, so I wrote “Me and Becca don’t want to die.”

W. T. F.?

I have mentioned this strange fixation on death before, and you can see it has not exactly gone away. Daniel, especially, is sticking with it (and the idea that people die at age 100, which I’m not sure how to debunk in either direction). I would say it comes up at least a few times a week, most often in a totally nonchalant way. It’s really getting under my skin, and yet I am at a total loss about what to do with it.

My gut reaction is that he doesn’t seem to be expressing any real anxiety over this idea. My default stance is a sort of non-reaction, maybe in the hopes that if I don’t overreact and draw extra attention and allure to the topic, it’ll eventually fade. But maybe I should try to talk to him about it in case he actually is concerned? I don’t even know where I’d begin, frankly.

Weird death thing aside, I will say that Daniel is otherwise your typical precocious preschooler. Generally happy, totally flighty and distractable, sometimes bent completely out of shape by the color of his fork. He’s a bright and inquisitive kid, which maybe means he’s digesting this information a little more thoroughly than his emotional maturity can handle, but otherwise is not a particularly anxious or stressed kid.

And, no, I actually haven’t gotten a call from his teacher about this. I get a call about Santa, but not about “me and Becca don’t want to die.” I can’t tell if that’s a good sign (as in, she’s been teaching preschoolers for 25 years and is totally unfazed) or what.

What say you, moms of the internets? Is this just one of those strange developmental things, an obsession that will pass with time? Or is this starting to cross a line and warrants a little TLC before he goes all morbid on me?

Comments (9)

Categories : Child Development, Preschoolers

Ending the lockout

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (10)· December 15th, 2011

For the last six weeks, Ellie has been on strike during her weekly physical therapy appointments. Oh sure, she would seem agreeable enough with her big smiles and blowing raspberries. But rolling over? Which she is perfectly capable of doing? No thanks. Grabbing toys? No interest. Nada.

It got to the point that going to the appointments was almost embarrassing. “I swear, she really does roll over at home. She does… you know… touch things from time to time instead of weirdly recoiling her hand when you try to give her something.”

We had really been spoiled. For the first four or five months of PT, there was noticeable improvement virtually every single week. Either she’d be doing something altogether new, or would be steadier and stronger at a previous skill. Halloween came along, and Ellie decided it was time to take a little break.

She wasn’t going backwards, exactly. In reality, it was clearly just a plateau. Normal. To be expected, even, after making so much progress. But with a baby who is already delayed, it’s frustrating when you stop seeing progress you’ve gotten used to. It’s hard not to get anxious over it.

Thankfully, in the last week, Ellie seems to be picking up the developmental pace once again. Sitting up even steadier than before, and finally starting to use her hands to grab a toy or stuffed animal, instead of just using them to prop herself upright. In fact, not only will she pick up the rings from the floor in front of her, but she’ll transfer them to the other hand, AND put them in her mouth! Fine motor, cognition, and oral de-sensitizing, all in one easy toy!

The fine motor stuff was starting to worry me, but I’m happy to say there’s been a noticeable improvement recently. Lots more grabbing and reaching, and suddenly in love with one of those four-key piano toys from my mother-in-law. She was even kind enough to show off for both the physical therapist AND the early intervention therapist this week. Everyone is thrilled to have her back with the program.

Even the feeding therapy stuff has been going a little better. She likes to explore those teething biscuit cookies, and lets me poke around her mouth with this textured brush we use to try to tone down her gag reflex. They’re small steps, but good ones for us.

Though I knew on a logical level that a plateau in her progress was totally normal and shouldn’t be worrisome, waiting for new skills to show up was really stressful and had me feeling quite discouraged. On an average day, I am only just holding the worry at bay, so it doesn’t take much to push me over the edge. Seeing her master new tricks again? Suddenly all feels right in the world.

Comments (10)

Categories : Child Development, Infants

Tags : Early Intervention, feeding therapy, Fine motor, Gross motor, occupational therapy, physical therapy

Ellie, 9 months

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (10)· November 28th, 2011

I have a particular gift for dates. I can remember the date I saw U2 when I was a freshman in high school, the date of my college graduation, and plenty of other random things. I remember a lot of birthdays. Well, sort of. I can tell you someone’s birthday, no problem. I remember the several days ahead of time that it’s coming. And then the actual day arrives and I completely forget until two or three days later. Such was Ellie’s nine-month birthday. Totally knew it was coming, totally forgot on the day of (last Friday, for the record).

Anyways, my sweet girl is now nine whole months old. Three-quarters of the way to her first birthday. We’ve just had her nine-month pediatrician visit and her semi-annual Early Intervention evaluation, so I’ve got a pretty good picture of where she stands.

As for the vitals, she’s about 17lb12oz, and 25.5″. That remains a perfectly average weight and a WAY BELOW AVERAGE length. Short and squishy, that’s my girl. Lucky thing got four shots this morning. It was supposed to be three, but the ancient pediatrician accidentally gave her HepA instead of HepB, so she got them both. When is my regular pediatrician coming back from maternity leave, again?!

EI re-evaluates kids every six months to make sure they still qualify for services (the child has to show at least a 30% delay in one or more areas to qualify). Ellie qualifies automatically based on feeding alone. They scored her at “0 months / newborn” in the area of “self care,” which is entirely feeding at this age. Frankly, they’d probably give her a negative score if they could. She eats nothing. She wants to eat nothing. She gags on everything. The feeding specialist we see through the hospital is visibly disappointed by her total lack of progress, and has proclaimed Ellie a “tough nut to crack.”

Feeding therapy sucks. I literally dab my pinky finger in the smallest amount of baby food you could imagine, and try to get Ellie to let me put it near her mouth, on her lips, or even just barely inside her mouth. Sometimes it’s borderline acceptable. And then sometimes it touches her tongue the wrong way and we have a two-minute gagging fit. It is so, so demoralizing. But we have to keep trying to walk the very fine tightrope of gently pushing her to try to get her used it it and to tame the gag reflex, while not going too far or too fast and creating/strengthening an aversion that will set us back several more months. It’s awful. I hate it. Period.

Gross motor skills scored at 5 months. On the one hand, Ellie’s sitting is getting very good. She’s rolling back and forth quite a bit, especially at naptime. She has even (after the evaluation, of course) started to get herself from sitting, down to her belly, then rolled over onto her back. It’s not terribly graceful and usually involves a slow faceplant, but it does seem to be quite intentional. She still lacks a lot of strength in her arms, and puts very little weight on her legs. Much work yet to be done here.

Fine motor skills were even lower at 3 months. That might be a little low, in my opinion, but regardless, she still needs a lot of work. One problem we’re having is that she is not terribly motivated by toys, so trying to entice her to grab something is very hard. Her own toes? No problem. Your face? For sure. Bright shiny baby toy? Meh. She is a lot more likely to grab things and play with them if she’s reclined or supported while sitting. When she’s sitting on her own, it seems like she’s using all of her energy to keep upright, nothing left for those little fingers.

Cognition was placed at 7 months, and the evaluator even wondered if it would have been higher if her fine motor skills were better. Some of the things they look for the baby to do to demonstrate understanding involves using their hands to manipulate objects. So it’s not necessarily that Ellie didn’t understand something, but potentially that she just didn’t have the fine motor skills to act on it. Regardless, I’m very happy that she falls with a fairly normal range on this one.

Receptive and expressive language were at 5 and 7 months. She makes a lot of different sounds, consonants and pitch and range and all of that, which is excellent. She doesn’t consistently respond to her own name, though.

And finally, social and emotional development. Clearly, she is Daniel’s sister – they scored her at 10 months. I couldn’t tell you exactly what it is she does that makes her a social overachiever, but she is most definitely an interactive baby. She loves to smile at people, loves to have company, loves to be entertained.

Feeding crap aside, I am really happy with all of this. I am especially thrilled that, at least for now, her cognition, language, and social skills are reasonably within the normal range. Every delay has its challenges, for sure. But the fact that she is so sociable, the fact that she seems to be making strides toward communication… well, that makes the rest of it downright bearable if you ask me. Motor skills I can work with. We can practice, we can strengthen, we can adapt. That spark in the eyes? That seems harder to cultivate, harder to compensate for.

Maybe I’m way off base, I have no idea. All I know is what I’ve got, and I am so glad that my girl has plenty of spark.

Comments (10)

Categories : Birthdays, Child Development, Infants

Tags : cognitive development, developmental delays, Early Intervention, feeding therapy, Fine motor, Gross motor, NaBloPoMo, Social/emotional development

Ellie, seven months

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (21)· September 28th, 2011

Ellie has spent the last few weeks working on a new trick.

One of the main characteristics that her providers have mentioned from the very first day she was born was “low tone.” For her age, she is noticeably weak and floppy. We had to support her head when holding her for much longer than you normally would, and tummy time was a complete non-starter. While her squishiness does make her extra cuddly, we’ve obviously been working on trying to help her get stronger. She gets physical therapy once or twice a week, and obviously we practice on our own. Thankfully, we have noticed steady improvement since starting PT back in May.

Since last month, tummy time has gotten much much MUCH better. She’s lifting her head way up high without any help, is starting to push up and support weight on her arms, and is generally a whole lot more tolerant of actually being on her belly in the first place.

It’s still hard work, though.

Even more noticeable is that, when she’s sitting on my lap, she no longer wants to lean back against me. She is constantly pulling herself forward, doing a little crunch with those core muscles to get into a more upright sitting position. The first time she did it, I was so surprised I almost let her fall off my lap. In PT, we started working on a little tripod/supported sitting. She’d manage it for a second or two, but she still keeps her hands in fists a lot of the time and doesn’t have a lot of arm strength, so there’s a lot of collapsing and folding in half. We keep pillows nearby.

Still, we’re working on it. Sometimes you can position her just right, help her lock those elbows and bend her legs for a nice supportive base, and she can almost get the hang of it.

And then, every now and then, you’re supporting her and you can feel those muscles engage in just the right way. And you have five or ten seconds to back up with the camera, and catch this:

With all those weeks in the hospital, talking about “abnormal MRI” this, and “hypotonia” that, and vague references to potentially severe cognitive, language, gross motor delays… I never imagined she’d be this close to independent sitting at a scant seven months. She’s still not what you would call “developmentally appropriate.” There’s still tons of work to do. But man. This is freaking awesome.

Almost as awesome as consonants. Did I mention she is babbling with consonants? Two of ‘em at the moment, “m” and “b.” (And I may have heard “p” this morning.) Again, much closer to the range of normal development than I could have dreamed five or six months ago.

I love this stuff. LOVE IT. Oh, and this sweet, delicious little girl. She is just too much.

Comments (21)

Categories : Child Development, Infants

Tags : developmental delays, Gross motor, language development, sitting

Ellie, Six Months

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (7)· August 25th, 2011

Half a year? Honestly? Six months, already?

Well, in truth, February 25 feels like it was about three lifetimes ago. And of that six months, she’s only been at home for three and a half, so I suppose it’s understandable that I feel a little confused as to how we got here.

But here, indeed, we are. Six months old, my sweet Ellie Bear.

She is really a very happy baby, very much of the time. Her smiles have gone from few and fleeting to freely shared with all. So sweet, watching her face light up when she sees me or M or Daniel or Becca. Even better, she’s really starting to laugh. Again, like smiling, I first thought I heard her chuckle about six weeks ago. But it was so brief (just a single “heh”) and so infrequent, I wasn’t even completely sure that’s what it was. But now, with a little hard work and some silly faces, you can actually draw out some real giggles. She’s also pretty talkative, sometimes a sweet “aaahhh,” sometimes a gutteral growl. But you can always tell if it’s a happy sound or a grumpy one.

With the help of twice-weekly physical therapy (one through the hospital and one at home through Early Intervention), she’s making really nice strides in strength and motor skills. She’s reaching and grabbing more (especially her lovey or anything fabric), holding her head much more steady, and I’ve noticed a lot more strength in her core and legs. I feel like, now, I can look at her and say “yes, she’s going to sit on her own at some point.” It won’t be next week, but she’ll get there. For that, I am very glad.

She has been, all told, a very good sleeper. She’s been consistently sleeping through the night since about four months. Well, sometimes I think she’s awake, but she’s quiet and/or happy and doesn’t require anything from us to go back to sleep. So, close enough. I’ve been playing pretty fast and loose with her daytime sleep, often getting just catnaps in the morning and then a good long nap in the afternoon. It had been working well until a few days ago, and now I think I’m starting to pay the price for the lack of morning sleep. She’s having a harder time settling for that long afternoon nap, and then totally falls apart by bedtime. Bedtime itself is, usually, pretty good. We got into the habit of doing a bath every other night instead of every night, mostly because she screamed bloody murder every time. But now that we’ve got her nasty recurring diaper rash under control, she’s much happier in the tub. Go figure.

She has teeth. OH MY GOD does she have teeth. Four so far, with at least two more clearly visible that will probably be through in the next week or two. For the record, Daniel got his first tooth on his six-month birthday, and Rebecca didn’t get one for another two months after that. RI-GOD-DAMN-DICULOUS, especially for a baby who doesn’t eat.

Oh, right. The eating/feeding thing. It blows. The “practice” with the bottle is going absolutely nowhere. She used to sometimes try to chew on it, but now she just screws up her face and turns away. I’ll talk to our speech pathologist soon (she’s the one guiding our feeding therapy stuff) and we will probably just go for purees on a spoon in the near future, but no idea how that’ll go. In the meantime, the g-tube feeding stuff is going fine and is relatively easy and portable. But, yeah. No noticeable progress there, and the gag reflex is as bad as it ever was.

That said, she’s growing just fine. Well, sorta. She’s packing on the pounds like nobody’s business (15lb7oz/44th percentile at her checkup this morning), but is still pretty short (24″, which was probably generous, around the 5th percentile). We’re working with a nutritionist to gradually tweak her formula intake to try to even those two things out.

She has been really great this summer, tolerating a lot of being dragged around with relative ease. The time has clearly come for me to get serious about planning and respecting her naps, but all in all she has done amazingly well between the endless doctor’s appointments and following along with the big kids and their activities. While she might not be THE most easygoing baby in the world (see: stroller and carseat aversion that, while improved, is not gone), she really has been great. One of the things I’m looking forward to about the big kids going back to school is the chance to actually focus on her a little more, instead of just dragging her to gymnastics.

There you have it, snapshot of my little girl at half a year old. Time has alternately flown and dragged, but mostly flown. I know I’m going to blink and she’ll be a year old, and two, and four, and eighteen. Unbelievable.

Comments (7)

Categories : Birthdays, Child Development, Infants, Sleep

Tags : feeding therapy, g-tube, Gross motor, low tone

Four Months

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (15)· June 25th, 2011

Ellie is now four months old. A few more weeks and she will have been home longer than she was in the hospital. Even though it was only a month and a half ago, I still look back and can’t believe we actually were there that long. Oh well, may it drift farther and farther away in my memory…

She is up to 13 pounds, 38th percentile for her age. Length, however, is 22.5″, which is only the 4th percentile. She’s a short little thing.

While I’d hesitate to call it a schedule, we seem to have a somewhat predictable sleep routine. Since we are generally out-and-about in the morning, she’ll take catnaps here or there. She’ll doze off in her bouncy seat or on the playmat, or sleep for a little bit while we’re in the car. After we get home for lunch, however, she’ll usually go to bed in her own room a little before her big brother and sister, and will sleep away the entire afternoon. Along the lines of 1-5PM. It’s unbelievable. And even after that marathon nap, she’s very much ready to go to bed for the night by 7. And then, believe it or not, she is pretty much sleeping 11-12 hours straight. Not every single night, and sometimes she’s awake but quiet (whatever, if it doesn’t require action from me, it totally counts as sleeping through). But she literally went from one night being awake every hour or so, to the next night sleeping 12 hours. Unswaddled, for sure.

Ellie is NOT a fan of her carseat. She doesn’t necessarily protest from the first moment you put her in it, and she will often fall asleep once the car starts moving. But if I dare stop to pick up my latte at the Starbucks drive-thru, I will hear her thoughts on the matter. NOT PLEASED. My new method for running errands or hanging out at the park is to put her in the Ergo instead of bothering with the carseat and stroller. Despite the fact that it’s summer and she is a very warm, sweaty baby to begin with, the Ergo seems to be much more acceptable than the carseat.

She is getting a little steadier with head control, and is starting to grab and hold onto things, though not reaching for them. She’s very responsive to people, and the smiles are a little easier to come by, but no laughing yet. We’re working on a regular bedtime routine, and she’s much happier in the bath now that I’ve gotten the temperature right (and am no longer attempting to poach her). She likes her bouncy seat, especially with the buzzing vibration turned on, but would rather not be left anywhere for too long. She is most likely to make happy sounds with her voice when first waking up from a nice long nap, or when you set her down. Once you’ve picked her up, she has less to say. She needs her space, apparently.

She is adored by both of her siblings. Rebecca always wants to help take care of her, and keeps asking when Ellie will be old enough to share a room with her. Daniel’s level of affection never ceases to astound me. While he’s still a typical, wild four-year-old boy who needs to be a little more careful around the baby, he truly cannot get enough of her. It’s a constant stream of hugs, kisses, and a ridiculous-sounding echo of baby talk. I could not have asked for a better reaction/transition from my big kids.

Comments (15)

Categories : Birthdays, Child Development, Infants, Sleep

The Magical Mystery Patient

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (40)· April 30th, 2011

When people ask me what’s wrong with Eleanor, why she’s in the hospital, I stumble a little bit. I say “um” and “well” a lot, before finally coming up with “she doesn’t eat.” That is simultaneously true, and completely NOT the whole story. I mean, the feeding stuff is what keeps her admitted to the hospital instead of at home, so that’s the big focus for now.

But even that single piece of the puzzle is a little hard to explain. In a nutshell, she has never taken feeds well by mouth, and was aspirating liquids when she tried. In addition, she has extreme reflux, which makes it darn near impossible to keep much of anything in her stomach (and is also a nasty deterrent any time she tries a bottle – it all comes right back up). So, she no longer takes anything at all by mouth, and is tube-fed straight into her intestine, bypassing the stomach. To that end, she is having surgery on Monday. She’ll have a g-tube placed to deal with the fact that she can’t feed adequately by mouth, as well as a procedure called a “fundoplication” to tighten the opening between the stomach and esophagus, to deal with the reflux. I can barely express the degree to which we tried to avoid the surgical option, but here we are. At least it’s a ticket home. I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say about life with a g-tube baby in the weeks and months to come.

After all this time and the unbelievable number of tests she’s had done, Ellie has no single, consistent, comprehensive diagnosis. She remains, for the most part, a collection of unusual symptoms and characteristics. Now with a few inconclusive test results thrown in. While the feeding problems are our current focus, it’s entirely possible that they are simply a symptom of something else.

One of the things the doctors picked up on from day 1 is that she has very low tone. Not in the extremities – her arms and legs move pretty well and are reasonably strong. No, she has low tone in her trunk. Even as a one-day-old newborn, she couldn’t pull her head up the way you’d expect an infant to do. That is still the case at two months old. While most babies are starting to gain some control over those big noggins of theirs (and Ellie’s is bigger than most), hers still flops backwards alarmingly and is only showing slow, small improvement. Is the feeding trouble related to this? Maybe, since the low tone also seems to affect the smooth muscle of her organs (like the stomach). Sure. Possibly. No one can or will say anything definitive.

The low tone seems to (maybe? we think?) be a neurological issue. Or maybe a genetic one? Let me tell you something about genetics and neurology – these are two specialties that like to run LOTS and LOTS of tests, and then say, “well, we’re not sure. We’ll just have to wait and see how she develops.” Yeah, that’s the best I’ve gotten over the last two months. Of all the tests, she had two come back with some kind of abnormal result. She had an MRI that showed “simplified folding” in her brain, but neuro is hesitant to say what that might mean. And she had a chromosomal study that showed a duplication in one small piece of one chromosome. Genetics, shockingly, is also hesitant to make any grand statements. Both departments, however, are fascinated by Ellie and want to follow her as she grows. Lucky us?

The area affected in the MRI result might relate to gross motor or cognitive development. Maybe. The genetic duplication has shown some correlation to Autism Spectrum disorders or developmental delays. But we all remember the first lesson from statistics class: correlation does not imply causation. It’s possible our entire family has the same duplication, and you’d never know if you didn’t have this test done. Also, the two test results are not necessarily connected to one another.

I’m sorry, am I being vague? Well, yeah. Welcome to my world.

All I want to know is how this is going to affect my kid, and what that will mean for her life. But, absent a crystal ball, no one can tell me that. My hunch? I think we will see developmental delays, but I have no idea in what areas or how dramatic. Will she walk at 9 months, at 19 months, or not at all? No idea. Will she have a feeding tube for six months or six years? No idea. Will she talk or read or do multiplication or make jokes? No idea.

She’s a big question mark. I suppose you could argue that all babies are, that you never know what you’re going to get until it happens. But when you start out your life with more than two months in the hospital, surgery, and a feeding tube, when you know you’ll need physical and occupational therapy from the moment you get home, and when neuro and genetics find you “interesting?”

Yeah, we’re in for a wild ride.

But let me not forget what is right with my sweet girl. She is generally pretty mellow, and when she gets upset she is relatively easily soothed. She sleeps for nice stretches of time, even if those stretches are happening during the day instead of at night for the moment. She looks right at you, and if she’s interested, will track with her eyes and move her head to follow an interesting sound (or that pretty baby in the mirror). She passed her hearing test. She likes to chew on her hand. She’s incredibly snuggly. And if you’re lucky, she’ll give you her sweet, sly smile.

Oh, the smile. It’s elusive. It’s fleeting. But both my mom and my friend swear they saw it a few weeks ago (while I was in another room pumping, of course). My husband saw it the next day. It took me a while longer, but I’ve seen it myself. Not just the one in her sleep, and not because she’s got gas. A real, honest-to-goodness social smile. Not only is it a beautiful thing to see on her sweet face, but dammit, it’s a milestone. Right. On. Time.

Ellie has her own plan. I just wish I knew what it was.

Comments (40)

Categories : Child Development, Feeding, Hospital, Newborns

Tags : delays, fundoplication, g-tube, genetics, hypotonia, low tone, neurology, NICU, nissen, surgery

Representational

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (5)· April 23rd, 2011

Rebecca has always been the more artsy-crafty of my kids. She loves crayons and markers, finger paints and stickers (oh, the love affair with stickers, it is epic).

It has been interesting to watch her drawing evolve. First, obviously, it was just plain old scribbling. Then the arm motion changed, and it was more of a swirling, circular scribble. Since she started school, a lot of what she brings home seems more purposeful, if pretty abstract to my eyes. But the bits of color have become increasingly discrete, clear that she’s putting each mark in a particular place on purpose.

When there are coloring sheets, there is a noticeable effort to color in the vicinity of the lines. (This one was later embellished, to my wicked delight, with the Plague stickers.)

Previously, she would sometimes assign meaning to a drawing after the fact, finding a particular shape in amongst the scribbles (“I made a triangle!”). Or she will claim she is drawing a particular scene (“this is Daniel jumping on the bed”), though the visual can’t be fully appreciated by an artistic low-life such as myself. But, still, the drawing continues to be much more purposeful from start to finish. (The brown one, she will have you know, is the “really bad guy,” Darth Vader.)

And then, I spied something on one of her coloring sheets, and asked her to draw me some more.

She made flowers. Multicolored, totally recognizable flowers, with grass and everything.

I love art.

Comments (5)

Categories : Child Development, Milestones, Preschoolers

Tags : art, drawing

If I May Brag for a Moment

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (11)· March 14th, 2011

In one of those “oh my god we’re somebody’s parents” moments, M and I went to our first parent-teacher conferences last week. I hope I always look forward to and enjoy them this much.

Of course, we did not have any particular concerns about how Daniel and Rebecca were doing in school. They get out of the car every day with huge grins on their faces, and all of the teachers seem genuinely happy to see them. There were no surprises at the conferences, but it was still both fun and gratifying to have some of our own observations and suspicions confirmed.

Rebecca’s conference was first, and her teachers immediately beamed and pronounced her “the perfect Montessori student.” She should practically be on a brochure or something. She’s constantly busy, very independent and self-directed. She’s friendly with the other kids and teachers, but works very well on her own. The teachers were surprised to hear that we hadn’t taught her any letter sounds/phonics before starting school, so quickly has she picked them all up.

It was especially fun to hear the things I wouldn’t necessarily know – which number-related works are her favorites (if it doesn’t result in a paper that comes home in her bag, I wouldn’t know about it), and the fact that she and Daniel seek each other out on the playground and give each other a big hug most days. She likes to raise her hand to talk at circle time, but seems to like being called on just for its own sake – it then takes her a while to decide what, exactly, to say, and often ends with something like “look, I have flowers on my dress!” When we asked if there was anything we should work on with her, the teachers just smiled and shrugged. She’s doing exactly what she should be doing and is a delight to have in class.

Then we went off to Daniel’s classroom. While the teachers acknowledged his Daniel-ness, his tendency to be a little flaky and distractable, they also said that he amazes them with how much he really is paying attention. He seems to be looking everywhere but at the person who’s speaking, but when you try to snap his attention back and ask what you just told him, he will repeat it, verbatim. His recall is unbelievable, and he will often cause the entire class to stop and look in wonder as the littlest kid in the class spouts out the craziest little facts and stories.

Daniel is two or three steps ahead of himself. He only wants to do what the big kids are doing. He practically begged to sit in on a lesson the teacher was doing with the 5- and 6-year-olds about addition in the 1000′s and doing carrying in your head. He loves math-related works, especially subtraction and geometric shapes. He also spends a lot of time on letters and sounds. His teacher confirmed our suspicion that he is showing every sign of being an early reader, and thinks if he isn’t reading by the end of this school year, it will be early next year.*

If there is any “problem” (and she emphasized that it is not actually a problem, but fairly typical for a boy his age), it’s that his fine motor strength and control is well behind his desire and need to write. Most of the 3-year-olds spend a lot of time in the “practical life” area of the classroom, which includes things like pouring, sorting, coloring, snaps and buttons, and the like. Some of them are, indeed, very practical discrete skills. But the larger point of most of them is developing hand strength, so that the kids will be ready to hold a pencil and write as they get older. Rebecca spends a lot of time in that space, and (whether the chicken or the egg) has nice fine motor control. Daniel? No interest, whatsoever. He’d much rather do the math. It’s just that he’ll soon come to a point where his mind wants to do works that his hand can’t keep up with. Thankfully, his teachers had a list of fun activities we could do to work on that hand strength, if we were so inclined.

Not to read too much into it, but M and I each seem to have found our academic doppelgängers. Rebecca, like me, is all about the rules of the classroom. She focuses on works that she knows she can do well, and does the same ones over and over again. Bright, certainly, and a bit of a goody-two-shoes. Daniel not only has some of the same interests and skills as M, but could care less about the rest and will not work on the skill unless he feels an actual need to do so. He’ll probably have M’s horrible handwriting, too. I’m fascinated to see how this continues to play out as they get older.

All told, it was a lovely morning to hear just how brilliant and wonderful our kids were. I was more than happy to spend the hour getting those extra boosts of good news.

*Just for kicks, on Sunday I busted out the Bob Books, which I picked up after reading LauraC’s recommendation. Daniel read the first one to me like it was nothing. That night at dinner, he read every short word I could write down on his placemat. No kidding, he blew through them all and nearly got “lobster.” It was downright freaky. The kid can seriously do it. Plus, we were at a restaurant with some interesting light fixtures. Daniel pointed to them excitedly and said, “Mommy, look! Cubes and rectangular prisms!” God, I love Montessori.

Comments (11)

Categories : Child Development, Preschoolers, School

Tags : cognitive development, montessori, parent-teacher conference, reading

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