Nolan's Evaluation

Last week we had an evaluation for Nolan's speech. He still doesn't put any sounds together to make words and reminds us a lot of Tyler at this age when he started getting speech therapy. Nolan played and acted pretty normal during his evaluation which I was happy to see. They all thought he was super cute and sweet and I have to agree. In the end they decided that why yes he does have a delay in both speech and social (I think for speech they said he was at about a 9 months old). they want to hold off on giving him services.  He is still young and because he has been working on walking - which he now does 95% of the time-  he wasn't working on talking.  If we still have concerns in 6 months they will reevaluate. Part of me is fine with this, and part of me knows that if he does qualifies in 6 months I will be upset that they didn't start services earlier. For the most part  Nolan is very easy, but there are times where he will just scream because he  can't communicate to us what he wants. He continues to just scream and cry until we can finally figure out what he wants. This is the part that reminds us of Tyler. He is much more social and a people person that Tyler ever was though, so we aren't as concerned because of that. Hopefully he will start having some words soon!

Conversations

Tyler amazes me each day with the conversations he comes up with. Last night he filled up his potty chart (he is doing great!) and gets to go to another baseball game with daddy. I asked him if we all get to go or just he and daddy. Tyler's answer "Just Tyler and daddy go. Mommy and Carter stay and hang out. Carter you play football with mommy ok? Yay football!" He knows Carter doesn't like being left out, so I think he was trying to get Carter excited to be with mommy - to bad it was right before bed time that this conversation took place.

Today on the car ride home from story time Tyler tells me this " I ride a bus one day. When I am bigger I ride a purple bus. Mommy and Carter ride bus too. Daddy ride bus too. Carter ride blue bus, Mommy ride pink bus, Daddy ride red bus, and Tyler ride purple bus. Two buses will chase my bus. Daddy drive the bus. Tyler ride in back, Carter ride in back, Mommy ride in back, Heather ride in back. Steve ride in front. No Steve drive, daddy drive. Steve sit in front with daddy." What??? When did this boy learn to talk in paragraphs?

Preschool is a

NO GO! We had Tyler's evaluation this morning and he did NOT qualify! I am so proud of how much he has grown in the last 15 months. 15 months ago Tyler did not say a single word - not even dada. When he played, he played totally silent- not even making car noises. On overall language Tyler measured in the 7th percentile. They took a picture of him the day he first got evaluated and the picture was of him with his fingers in his mouth.

Today Tyler talks in full sentences. He uses his imagination, he is caring and loving, and he plays with his brother and his friends. He will ask for help from not only me, but also any other teacher. He is measuring at the 50th percentile for overall language - right where he should be. At the end of the evaluation, he had his fingers in his mouth - I guess something will never change.

They kept commenting on how big Tyler's attention span is and how persistent he is. These will be great skills for him when he does go to preschool - but that won't be this year. I will have him with me for another year. I will be able to put him in Kindergarten when I want to put him in. And when he does go in, he will go in completely mainstreamed without a single label him. But even if he did qualify I couldn't be more proud of his progress. He has worked do hard at using his words, calming himself down instead of having meltdowns, and showing himself that he can do things. He will always have his quirks, but that's what makes him Tyler. And mommy couldn't be more proud of the boy he is.

Countdown!

In about 3.5 weeks we are flying out to Maryland to visit Oma and Opa and to go to Sesame Place. We have been talking it up to Tyler about getting to fly on the airplane and seeing Cookie Monster. Well we may have started on the talking it up a little early. Everyday he wants to go on a "plane ride". So today we made a countdown chain. I am not sure they really get what its for yet, but at least they had fun making it right?

In other news I scheduled Tyler's evaluation for preschool today. As soon as I got off the phone I felt sick to my stomach. I am not ready for my baby to start school already, and I am not ready for him to be "labeled". I am hoping that he has made enough gains that he won't qualify. But then that means no more therapy and I get to wonder if he is falling behind again. Oh the life of a worrier. I guess we will find out in three weeks.

Gotta Love Colorado...

Yesterday was an absolute gorgeous day with a high of 78 degrees. The boys wore shorts for the first time this year (which Tyler took awhile to get used to) and we played outside all day long. Today it is snowing. Back to the winter coats we go (at least until tomorrow). Carter is still talking up a storm and getting new words everyday. One of the ones he says the most "Taer" or Tyler. Whenever someone leave the room he always wants to know where they went. He asks this by saying "mommy go" (for example) and then lifting both arms up.

Tyler's speech is also improving leaps and bounds. He is down to speech therapy once a month now and no longer is getting OT services. He is also getting more interested in other children. We were at the mall and ran into twin girls that are in Tyler's class on Wednesdays. They got to play with each other for a bit at the play area and all Tyler wanted to do the rest of the day was see "the girls". Last night at dinner we ran into another boy who is in Tyler's class and Tyler recognized him right away and even remembered his name. I love how he remembers things we do each day now and can tell us who we played with at church and what they did together.

Movie Night and Cheese

Friday night Justin was covering a basketball game so the boys and I had a movie night. We have done these before and Tyler loves them. Carter's new favorite thing to do is say cheese whenever he sees the camera. Since Carter says cheese, Tyler does too and I am finally getting pictures of Tyler smiling!

Tyler had speech today and it was so-so. Every once in a while he just has these days where he is in a funk and doesn't want to do anything. I can usually tell within a few minutes after he gets up if its going to be one of those days, as it usually starts with meltdowns over little things. We think its somewhat related to the sensory stuff, but have yet to figure out what triggers it or what works to get him out of this funk. Considering he was in this mood today, speech wasn't his best effort. We have Young Life tonight, so hopefully we won't see any meltdowns there.

One of those Days

Its been one of those days. The days when the boys seemed to have lost their hearing. Tyler was in time out 5 times within 2 hours of waking up. I even put Carter in time out twice. They just can't saty away from the dog bowl. First they put the dog food in the dog's water. After that was cleaned up they decided to put their magnets in the water. Then they thought they should just splash in the water. I can undertsand Carter doing this. He s 15 months and exploring his boundaries, but Tyler. He has known the dog bowls are off limits for months now, but it's one of those days I guess. On top of all this, Tyler refused to clean up countless times throughout the morning.

I was hoping with Tyler having speech today it would improve with his behavior - nope. We were having his quarterly evaluation today, which means a lot of paperwork and going over his stengths and weeknesses. Becuase of this his therapist didn't bring her toys for Tyler to play with. So I got out the rice table thinking that would keep the boys occupied. 5 minutes later I had a pound of rice all over my floor. I put the rice table away and get out some of Tyler's favorite toys - he decided to throw them everywhere and Carter thought this also looked like fun. What a mess. Tyler finally cleaned up after everyone left so he could have lunch.

What a morning - I am so glad its nap time. Although nap will be cut short so I can take Carter to the doctor. For the past few days he has had a very mucousy cough. At first I contributed it to cutting some teeth (his top two 1 year molars popped thru on Saturday). I thought since he was drooling more, maybe all that created the cough. But since its still lingering we are going in to make sure its nothing else and we are ok to go to church tomorrow. I am already for tomorrow to be here!

A little speech update - Tyler is doing very well. We have new goals to work on before June, when he will transition out of the birth to three program and we find out if he qualifes for the preschoool program or not. We really want to work on his social/emotional skills. We would like to see him interacting with peers more, and also relating his needs to others besides Justin and me and outside of the home setting. We are also going to set up a sensory consult to make sure everything is ok there. This is more precautionary than anything, but we are trying to rule everything out before June. I am already nervous about June and the decsions we will have to make for Tyler. Hopefully some of these issues will be resolved by then.

Speech! Speech!

We had Tyler's speech therapy today. We usually do it in the morning, but we had it right after lunch today. We all agreed this was a better time for Tyler as he was more interactive. He did pretty well. She is very impressed with the language he uses and his vocabulary. For example we were playing a matching game. There was a picture of a horse, a cat and a dog. The cat had its eyes closed so Tyler said it was asleep. He then said the dog was awake and the "horse was awake too". She was blown away that he uses the word too, as in also. I guess that it's not that common among his age group. She says he still is a little behind in how he says some of his sounds. He doesn't always give the first sound of a word. Horse is "orse" for example. She also is concerned about the language with the questions. She thinks he understands what we are saying/asking him. He just doesn't understand the language to use to respond to those. So we will be working on that for the next few weeks to see where that gets us.

I was telling her how I was going to hold him for a year before Kindergarten. The cut off is one week after his birthday. He can go when he is 4 almost 5, but we will hold him til he is 5 almost 6. I am going to do this just because in my experiences, its better for boys to have that extra year. Plus he would not only be the youngest in his class but also the smallest. She commented on that he would have 3 full years of preschool then. I was kinda taken aback by this as before she didn't think Tyler would qualify for the preschool program. I guess only time will tell.

The Wheels on the Bus

I have come to terms with Tyler's (and Carter seems to be headed down the same path) oral fixation. He is a very oral child, always has been - remember the biting problem? So I have now taken off every rubber wheel that is on any of his cars, trucks, or buses. Mostly I did this because I was tired of calling the pediatrician saying that he once again swallowed a wheel. Do all kids do this?On another note - Tyler's speech therapy. I was talking to his coordinator yesterday how I think his speech is going great, but I am concerned about some of his other quirks. He still does not answer yes to a question or even nod his head. If you ask him do you want to go outside, yes or no, he will either answer "outside" or "yes or no". It seems to me that he also does not process questions, although maybe most 2 year old don't do this either I am not sure. But if I ask him what he had for breakfast 5 minutes after he finished eating he will make something up - usually pizza since that's his favorite. We have been going to the church nursery for a year now and Tyler still does not talk to any of the staff or engage with the kids (except for Carter now). I can understand if he is shy, but I would think he would interact some. He also has no coping skills. We were eating tacos last night and his came apart and he couldn't control himself. He totally lost it. Is this normal or do most 2 year olds have coping skills? I don't know. So we were going over these quirks with his coordinator and Tyler may be getting more services now since there could be more there.

When I went to pick up Tyler from his classroom today I was informed that he was saying yes. They asked him if he wanted to do his craft and he said "yeah" and went and sat down! I was then talking to some other staff and they were saying that he does talk to them when he needs help. He will say "help me please" over and over until someone can help him. So he does talk to others - just not one on one with people. I guess that's not so much of a quirk, huh? It will be interesting to say the least at his speech appointment on Tuesday.

Updates and other ramblings...

Just some updates on Tyler. He had speech on Tuesday morning. His therapist thinks that he can now go to once a month for "maintenance" work, instead of therapy every two weeks. She is pretty confident that he is now at age level. While I see everyday how much better Tyler is doing, it still somewhat worries me. If he is talking about something out of context, its hard for me to understand what he is saying. This is happening more and more lately as he will tell me things that happened earlier in the day. It usually takes me a good time to finally figure it out. Other times I never truly understand what he is saying.

The therapist also asked me if I wanted Tyler to see a child psychologist. This totally put me back. Tyler is already showing signs of being a perfectionist. He is very much a Type A personality. I have no idea where he gets this from. Anyway, say he is building Legos and they topple over. Tyler gets beside himself. The first few times he will be ok about it. He will scream NO, fuss a little and then build it up again. However if it keeps falling over he will get beside himself. Have a total meltdown, where there really isn't much I an do to help him. I try to intervene before this happens and ask him if I can help. But this doesn't always work. Because of these meltdowns, the therapist wants a psychologist to work with Tyler on how to deal with these things. I thought this was normal two year old behavior? She says this behavior should be getting better and with Tyler it seems to be about the same, if not getting worse.

I have decided that I am not going to worry about it. If I get a call for him to see a child psychologist one day then we will go to the appointment. However I will not go and seek one out myself. I guess we will see how worried the therapist is about Tyler. If she really think its that big of a deal she will call our service coordinator to set it up for us. Gotta love the wait and see game.

Tyler also bit in the nursery yesterday! I couldn't believe it since he had been doing so well. The director, as usual, was very nice about it. I isolated Tyler for a little bit, made sure I sat at his table for lunch so it wouldn't happen again, and then he was allowed to play again. I am not quite sure why he bit the kid either. It was during circle time that I was leading. The kids were suppose to be singing songs with me. This doesn't interest Tyler so he was climbing on a foam structure we have with another child. I am not sure if there was pushing involved or what, but he bit him on the back. Luckily the kid's mom was very nice about it. Her response was "good, now he knows what it feels like when he bites his brother". Man I love it when other moms understand! I just hope this doesn't become a daily thing again.

Justin decided to put all the ornaments up. So the bottom two feet of our tree has zero ornaments. However this has still not worked. Carter now just reaches up and takes off the ornaments he can reach. Do we make it so half the tree has ornaments and the other half doesn't?

Love you too

I think Justin and my hearts just melted. First a little background. Tyler has a speech delay, we all know this. Becuase of this he didn't say mommy until close to 20 months old. He actually had about 20 words before he said mommy, including Carter. When he first said mommy I immediately teared up. It was the most precious thing I have ever heard...until tonight (and just as a fyi - Carters first word was mama, so at least I had one that said it before doggy). Tyler is also a little parrot so if I ask him to tell me he loves me, he always does, but I always have to prompt him first.

Tonight I had to work so it was Justin's job to put the boys to bed. When I got home I hear Tyler saying "mommy home". I go up to his room to find him wide awake with his pants off (his new favorite thing to do). I put his pants back on, give him hugs and tell him good night. About 5 minutes later he is crying and I tell Justin to go get him, as usually that is who he wants when he wakes up crying.

Next thing I know Tyler is walking down the stairs and Justin says he wanted me. Well after singing a few songs and Hana licking his feet making him giggle with delight I finally understand that he wants me to sing the prayer song. So we sing the song and say our prayers and he is on his way upstairs off to bed. I guess Justin forgot to say them tonight and Tyler can be very particular about his routines. Justin lays him down and rubs his back and says "love you Tyler". Tyler responds "love you too". Melt Melt Melt. Hopefully I will hear this soon too.

*Justin came and told me all this with tears in his eyes, making it even that more precious. My boys sure do have a wonderful father.

ABC's, 123's, trees, and please

So because of Tyler's speech delay he is also behind in things like counting, singing ABC's, etc. Well lately he is, in Justin's words "doing so well".

He will now try to sing the ABC's with me! I will start singing and stop and he will add in the letter. He usually gets S, Z, P and C. Also we have the Leap Frog Letters . I highly recommend them. He will grab a letter and tell me what it is. He knows T and O with 100% accuracy. About 50-75% of the time he gets C, D, S, Z, and G. Yesterday he also came up to me holding the B and said "B ba". Oh the teacher in me gets so excited to see this!!

Its the same with counting. Counting used to be "two, two, two". Now he can count to 3, sometimes 4 with no help. As I count on he can add in 6, 8 and 10. I guess him learning how to be patient is paying off (when we tell him he has to be patient we make him clasp his hands and count).

Tyler is also not the best veggie eater. At best he will eat green beans once in a while and corn sometimes. This kid doesn't even like sweet potato fries! Anyway the last few time I have made them he has gobbled up his "trees" or broccoli. Maybe we are turning a corner?

Justin and I are trying to make our boys grow up learning that there are other people in the world besides them. They need to be respectful and loving of others at all times. This goes along with teaching them manners. We have been working on please and thank you with Tyler for who knows how long. Please was actually one of the very first signs he learned. Well, he is now saying it without prompting. During lunch he heard a trash truck go by. He looks at me and says" see tash tuck peas". He wanted to go see the trash truck. Usually when he is eating I don't let him get down until he is done. But because he asked so nicely I let him go see it. He came back after waving bye to the truck and finished up his trees. A mother couldn't be prouder!

Much better day!

Well so far today has gone much better! I feel 100 times better than yesterday and the boys are enjoying their mommy back. We all woke up (still at 6:30, I hope they adjust to this change in time soon) and went downstairs to have breakfast. Much better than yesterday, today was waffles, bananas and eggs. After breakfast we went downstairs and played. We played with Mr. Potato head, our trucks or course and threw some balls around.

We then did one of my very favorite things that Tyler loves to do - read . He will ask me to read to him a book or two and of course I always oblige. I love this time because its one of the few times he will actually sit in my life. But then when he is done with me reading to him he will sit down and read to himself. I love watching him do this. He will read to himself for up to 30 minutes. He carefully takes one book off the shelf, reads it, and then takes down another.

Brenda, his speech therapist then came over and worked with Tyler for about an hour. Working with Tyler means pretty much just playing with Tyler. Tyler does not usually talk in front of Brenda even tho she has been coming close to 8 months now. Today he did do a little better tho and she think he is doing great - as do I. The only concern right now is that he doesn't answer to questions. If you ask him do you want to go outside, instead of saying yes he will just say outside. Or if Carter is napping and you ask where he is he will just point, not answer. So I have to try to prompt him more to answer in words. I am not suppose to give in until he answers. This will be accompanied with a lot of crying and whining I am sure. Tyler does not like, nor do I, when I have to frustrate him on purpose.

After speech as a special treat we all went to Chick-fil -a (with fruit instead of fries of course). The boys love the chicken nuggets there and its one fast food that I don't mind too much giving to them. It was so nice to have such a great day with the boys after yesterdays debacle.