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.