Dinosaur Toys

On Monday afternoon, Grammy and Poppy picked up the kids at daycare. They took the kids to Barnes & Noble. Jeff and I came to my parents' house for dinner. I arrived a little bit after Jeff, as I was coming from school. Miss R showed me their new dinosaur toys, of which she was very proud. Henry was too busy watching Monsters, Inc. to say hello. Henry ate fairly well at dinner. He had 1.5 bananas and some bread with special French cheese on it. Miss R was in full refusal mode.

Jeff and the kids went home a little after 8PM. I followed a half-hour later. When I got home, Jeff was reading them "Hamilton." Miss R wanted me to climb into bed with her, so I did. I've spent the last week doing lots of editing, so I haven't had enough snuggle time. As we listened to Jeff read, Miss R stroked my cheek tenderly, much like I do to her when she is lying down. It was very sweet.

I just sent off the revised edits to Oxford, so I'm hoping that I get to relax for a little while (i.e., just have normal work responsibilities). I'm planning to spend a lot more time on home stuff this week.

Tomorrow, Miss R has her bio sibling visit in the afternoon. Darn, that reminds me, I guess I'll be doing our monthly foster care reports tomorrow. Ugh. In addition, Henry has his evaluation with TUSD at 10:30AM. Basically, at age 3, early intervention ends and kids' cases get handled by the school system in a special program when the kids are between 3-5 years old. Tomorrow, Henry will be evaluated by a speech therapist (ST), a physical therapist (PT), and an occupational therapist (OT) to see if he qualifies for their program. I'm guessing that he isn't going to qualify for the program. To qualify, children have to be delayed in two of the areas. While Henry has some quirks (e.g., holding his arm into his right side when running and toe walking) and I don't think that these quirks are "normal" exactly, I don't know that being involved in the school program would necessarily help with those issues.

Currently, the right side thing hasn't inhibited him from running. It might, however, indicate an issue with balance, as his neurologist mentioned at our last visit with her. He did have that cerebellum bleed in the NICU. Balance is affected by the cerebellum. The research on cerebellar bleeds is limited, and the small number of existing studies basically suggest poor outcomes (as in half of kids with such bleeds have significant delays). As such, we are thankful that he has the kind of coordination that he does have. He has full motility on both sides of his arms. Perhaps it is just a matter of him consciously retraining his motions. In any event, I'm not sure that a school system program would really help in that regard. The most likely scenario is that we'll just have to work on it at home and/or get therapy via the neurologists office.

The other issue is toe walking. The concern is that it could be a long-term issue, and if not addressed, toe walking can cause cramping in the calves. Fortunately for Henry, he does have the capacity to use his whole foot. But his "normal" position is one in which he walks on his toes. The other day, I saw him run down a hill on his toes! There are some things that help dissuade toe walking. Shirley, Henry's PT, gave us ankle weights. And those work, but Henry has figured out how to take them off. The boy who has insisted that he "can't do it" when it comes to talking off his Velcro sneakers amazingly had the ability to take off ankle weights when he finds them annoying. Our approach to handling his toe walking has therefore been to nag him, which works, but only for a minute...then we have to nag again.

So why are we going through this evaluation if we don't think he'll qualify? Two reason. First, we want to make sure that we don't have parent goggles on (those goggles that make one's kids littlest achievements be interpreted as signs of genius). We want a real assessment of his abilities. Second, we want to establish a paper trail with the school system, so that if he does need services later, they will have all of his early intervention history on file. Alas, with preemies, it isn't unusual for problems to appear later.

Alright. It is 4:15AM. I'm going to bed.