Another week, another set of appointments. I sometimes think I tell time not by the date but by the events. Is this a PT week or an OT week? Is Claire at home or daycare this week? The passing of months is marked not by the first of the month and change of the calendar, but by the audiology appointment. A good week has only 1 appointment in it, and those are about to become even more rare. In fact, for the next few weeks, they’ll be non-existent.

We had our first official Occupational Therapy appointment this week. Eric would have loved it; the majority of it was spent making a huge mess. We’re playing with our food, now, and calling it homework.

There was no real answer to why he’s taking so long to move to table food, only acknowledgment that he definitely is. Part of it is his own pre-conceived notions: good food comes out of jars, on spoons, and I don’t have to do anything but open my mouth. He was great about opening up for her to try foods, which was a very good sign she said; his openness means it will be easier to work with him. His ability to spit things right back out at us is also a huge blessing, because typically once kids are able to spit things out, they’re more willing to try things with the knowledge they can get rid of it if they don’t like it.

So you’ve got a toddler that refuses to feed himself and eat table foods. What do you do? I learned a lot yesterday.

• Ditch the jars. The longer he is fed out of jars, the more likely he is to believe that all good food comes out of jars and he’ll be leary of anything else. So far, we haven’t run into this a whole lot, but I can’t argue the logic. We have a million little plastic bowls and will now be putting them to good use!
• Work on one thing at a time. One of the things a lot of people do with their babies is to introduce something totally foreign: a new taste and texture at the same time. This works for a lot of kids, but when you have a child that is resisting table food or has some oral sensory stuff, that’s a bad combination. Take current favorites and add texture, or take new foods and use a food processor or fork to get them to almost baby food consistency. Once he’s used to taste or texture, work on the other half gradually.
• Mix it up. A great way to work on texture is to take something like graham crackers and crumble them into a current favorite. If he is fine with fine crumbles, make them a little bigger, then a little bigger. Push the envelope a little, slowly, and work your way from all baby food with a bit of cracker to all cracker with a bit of baby food.
• Don’t push when he’s starving. If he is extremely hungry, any attempts will just make him more frustrated. The trick to this is to keep meal time fun and enjoyable while still urging him along. Meals should never be a battle. The best time to play with this stuff is snack times, or meal times after he’s already had 1/4-1/3 of what he typically eats at that meal.
• Don’t hide food. There’s a strong urge to hide what you’re doing from resistant kids. This can make them leary to try anything, though, because they don’t know what tricks are waiting for them. Make sure he can see things being crumbled and going into the baby food, and has full vision to what is in his bowl, so he isn’t surprised that it’s different.
• Play with food – after meals. She said one of the best times for kids to explore food is right after they’ve eaten, because they’re content and there’s no sense of urgency. After meal time, if he’s fine with staying in his chair for a while, give him some food to explore. Baby food to mush between his fingers, crackers to play with, anything. Some babies want to have more awareness of food – smell, feel, sight – because they are willing to put it in their mouth.

We’re going to be working on a lot of this stuff, and also be receiving in the next few weeks some “chewy tubes” that will help Danny build up jaw strength. He has never really mouthed toys much, only starting that recently, and that’s a key part of building oral motor skills. There may be some mild sensory stuff going on with Danny too, but some of it she thinks is that he just doesn’t know what he can do yet, things like chewing back where his molars are/will be. The tubes are things he can chew on, varying soft to harder, and he can dip in food to get that concept too. She tried to get him to use the spoon to feed himself and he screamed and cried and hollered like he was a little prince, but was more than happy to pick it up to dump it and be rid of it.

Along that tangent, on the other side of OT – fine motor skills – she watched him play for a few minutes and commented, “Well, his fine motor skills are right on track!” He was showing off terribly, stacking and unstacking his favorite pans and doing some shape sorting. Once we get a little further, we’ll look at his left hand being a bit weaker, and get him using it more to assist. Like most others, though, she said that the fact that he will use it to bear weight and to reach and play when the right is restricted is a great sign that it’s a most likely just a strong preference for his right hand.

He’s not going to be a lefty.

In hearing news, audiology was this week. Danny has had both processors going for a few weeks now and has adjusted well, showing pretty equal audibility in single ear conditions for both sides. I wasn’t at the session this month, but Dad reported he’s testing now around 20dB to speech (a level about equal to ambient noises in a house at night), and tested down at 10dB for a train whistle. TEN DECIBELS. Even if it’s just on certain frequencies and pitches – wow.

Getting a toddler to do anything in any given time period is a tough job. A lot of mornings it comes down to one simple thing: my son doesn’t let to get dressed. He wants to sit around watching TV and playing with toys, eating breakfast and drinking chocolate milk, all in just his diaper. Any attempt to alter this schedule does not end well.

For quite a while, we tried taking a hard line with Eric. I ask first, and if he doesn’t listen, I tell him sternly that this is the way it’s going to be. I’m the parent, after all, and he does need to listen to me. Unfortunately, this is where the toddler power struggle begins.

I try to avoid the toddler power struggle, I really do. I offer choices, but he just says no and walks away from both. I try to make it seem like his idea, but he’s too smart for that. I try to work in rewards and order his activities (”you can have your chocolate milk after you put your shirt on”), but he decides the chocolate milk isn’t worth it. Nothing wanted to work.

Then I became inspired by another blog I read about how they used positive reinforcement in the morning to get things to happen. Her idea was to praise the little steps – he isn’t dressed, but he got a new diaper on! Yay! Unfortunately, some mornings he won’t do anything but wake up, so I had to work it from there.

The answer? I get silly.

A little silly goes a long way with Eric. Won’t get a new diaper? I sniff his bottom. “Peee-eww! Stinky!” Won’t put his shirt on? “OK, I’m going to wear your shirt!” I smile at him and proceed to put his shirt on my legs. Or I put it on my head and pull it down so it’s cover my face, then pretend to fumble around. Won’t go get his shoes? I pretend I can’t find them, searching everywhere but where they are.

It’s a lot more fun than taking the hard line, and it’s more effective too.

As an added benefit, Eric laughing tends to get Danny laughing, and I get to start my day to the sound of my boys cracking each other up. Could there be anything better?

A friend of mine is having a baby in about a week. It’s had me thinking a lot, lately, about – well, babies, strangely enough. Newborn babies. It’s honestly had me a bit on edge, truth be told. I remember when she had her first, how I barely even knew her at that point but was so excited! That’s what the birth of a baby is anyway, right? Exciting?

So why am I so apprehensive?

I’ve been feeling like I just want to close my eyes and cover my ears, and open them again once the baby’s here. I feel silly for it. I feel almost ridiculous for it, there is absolutely no reason or indication things are anything but perfectly fine. There’s that little voice in the back of my head though that I can’t quite tune out.

After all, everything was perfectly fine and quite happy with the last 2 pregnancies I was close to.

I feel like I’ve gone through the looking glass, and I’m struggling to ignore the worry and let myself just be excited at the prospect of seeing a beautiful little baby soon.

Driving in today, I was thinking of some of the talk and plans for once said baby is here. With the c-section scheduled so close to the Fourth of July, of course, a lot of the thought and talk is about fireworks and noise and sleepless, newborn babies. I swear to you, one of my thoughts was “Why will fireworks matter to a baby? She’ll just sleep right through them.”

I’ve been a deaf mama too long. Once again, I’ve gone through the looking glass to a crazy world where vacuuming during a baby’s nap is a perfectly acceptable activity, and if a parade is too loud for my child, I can just turn down the volume. It’s kind of convenient, in a way. It’s definitely a different way of thinking.

But you know what? It’s all good. I thought I would never be so comfortable with Danny’s hearing loss. I thought I would never be so OK with the fact that I didn’t get my last month of pregnancy. What I did think is that I would be quite fine with the fact that I missed out on the first month of having a newborn at home. It was hard at the time, absolutely, but in the long run I do not miss going through the 24 hour a day sleeplessness.

You’ve got to take the silver linings where ever you can!

They say bribing your kids is wrong. Right? You shouldn’t use food or candy or new toys as rewards for good behavior. I’m sure I read that in a parenting website somewhere. I definitely remembered it. I mean, I don’t want to be giving my kids a new toy every time they, say, put their pants on in the morning without being told a million times.

I have found myself, however, bribing Eric lately, with cookies no less! Delicious fudge-filled cookies. What could get me breaking this sacred toddler commandment?

Why, the throne of course.

With Eric’s third birthday around the corner, and his showing sudden interest with the new daycare, we are finally focusing on the potty. He knows if he uses the potty – actually uses it – he gets a cookie. He has tried a few times to fake us out, tell us he has to use the potty, hop off as soon as he sits down, and tell us we need to go get him his treat.

Nice try, kid.

We’re having moderate success. They say he does very well at school, which is wonderful, and no doubt from the fact that a bunch of other kids use the potty too. It’s the thing to do, there. At home, not so much; I don’t know if it’s that Danny is in diapers so he doesn’t feel the need or what. He’s wearing pull ups typically, but now and then he requests a diaper instead.

Oh, and the incredulous look when I suggested he go poo on the potty.

Not happening.

Eric is definitely a slow trainer. We have moments of great success! The other night he told us he had to go potty, ran upstairs, and sure enough, “made water” on the potty like a big boy. Yay! Good job! He did something similar in a grocery store of all places, which amazed me. However, it doesn’t always work that way. He just doesn’t pay attention at home, I guess. Spurred by some success, we tried cloth trainers last weekend, and by 9am he had 2 wet trainers and was back in pull ups for a week.

Close, but no cigar.

So, we bribe. We bribe, we praise, we do everything we can to finally be rid of diapers. Oh, to have only 1 in diapers again! It would be so delightful.

I’m a number person, and I always have been. Through school, math was always one of my favorite subjects, and once I was in high school physics became a close second. I’m good with them, good at memorizing numbers, analyzing, and manipulating. It’s what I do, and it’s no surprise to find myself married to an engineer. We like concrete results and equations and results.

Not a very good way to be with children.

Sand tables: brotherly playtime and sensory therapy in one!

It seems like everyone, at some point, wants to test and score and rank Danny. Every 6 months or so from the time he got out of the hospital, it’s been similar stuff: developmental tests, followup clinics, motor and mental ages, questions all over the place. I think it was doubled by the fact that we also just did our occupational therapy assessment, which was another list of questions to answer and results drawn from a test instead of a child.

I’m not a big fan. I’m not sure many parents are.

See the trick about having a kid with developmental delays of one sort of another is that you learn, fairly quickly, that you can’t look at the numbers. On paper, Danny doesn’t look so great. His scores on a Vineland developmental test are below average across the board, some areas further behind than others. The NICU followup clinic scored him at 10 months motor and 10 months mental development. Reading the reports from those paints a rather grim picture.

That’s not what my child looks like to me.

The largest difficult with the tests is that there is no developmental test for deaf children, at least that we’ve seen. There’s no test that skews it for a hearing loss. So yeah, he comes up looking pretty far behind – but he’s of an age where all the tests and scoring methods are looking for first words and the ability to comprehend language (point at a shoe, identify your nose, etc). These are things there is no way Danny should be doing yet, but it brings his score down.

It’s just as difficult on the other side right now, though. When the neurologist was giving us the results of Danny’s motor scoring, the first thing he said is that the normal age range for walking is 10-16 months, but to score at or above 12 months a child has to be walking – he was basically capped at 10-11 months developmentally because he’s not walking yet. Eric would have been the same way despite the fact that he has no health or developmental issues.

So the key is to take it all with a pinch of salt. That can be hard, as a numbers person, to look at a piece of paper that says my son is developmentally 10 months old. I have to qualify, and I don’t like to qualify. Numbers person, remember? Precise and concrete – qualification feels like giving excuses.

But it isn’t.

My son isn’t a number. My son is a fabulous kid who has come so far in such a short time, and has truly come to life since receiving the gift of sound just 4 short months ago.

No test can tell me different.

It takes kids quite a while to learn language, both to understand it and to model it. First words usually sprout up around 9-12 months of age. I keep reminding myself of that, because even though my 15 month old hasn’t said a word yet, he’s completely on track. His hearing age is 4 months, after all. It’s sort of, kind of that really. It’s hard to say exactly, because from there is varies on so much. Mentally, he’s sharper than a 4 month old, more aware. But then, he had to spend longer learning HOW to hear with his cochlear implants, because that is totally different from how he heard before he became deaf. So, we say roughly, he should be reacting and understanding the way a 4 month old does.

And that is exactly where he’s at!

He turns to his name pretty consistently. Of course, it is hard to tell whether he is turning because it is his name, or because someone is talking loud enough to pull his attention, but hey – he’s turning either way.

When we eat, I do a lot of modeling of the /m/ sound. Mmm Mmm. Yummmmmy. Want mmmore? Danny is starting to imitate it right back to me! He gets in his highchair and grins at me. “Mmmmm!” he says, watching intently for the jar. He recognizes the pop sound the jars make as well, if he is playing around and distracted in his high chair and I pop one open, he looks at me expectantly.

Very excitingly, he understands his first words too! Frequently (not always – when do babies do things ALWAYS – but quite frequently) when we say “Hi, Danny!” he busts out a grin and waves at us! I especially love doing this in the car, I’ll glance over my shoulder at a red light and say Hi to him and he’ll give me a goofy wave back.

I feel a little silly sometimes getting excited about these things, because my first instinct is to share it with everyone. Friends, family, coworkers, strangers. “Guess what my son did today!!!” I have to be careful, of course. To those near me, they get it; I shared some of these stories with a coworker the other day and he gave me a high-five, busting into a huge smile. But when I’m chatting with people at work from other locations, and they ask how my son is (because it was known fairly far and wide that he was in the hospital and quite sick for a while), I start explaining and get a sort of blank silence.

He’s how old?

And you’re excited that he’s turning when you say his name?

Yeah. So I pick and choose, depending on how much time I have to explain about his deafness and cochlear implants. I love to tell the story whenever I get a chance, because I love spreading the word, but sometimes it just isn’t the right time. There’s a part of me that wonders, though.

When isn’t the time to get excited about the fact that my deaf son waves when I say hi to him, without any visual cues to help?

The new daycare is proving to be a wonderful thing and a terribly hard thing all at once. I think some of it is just me: it’s strange for me every day dropping them off and picking them up. I don’t know the people, I don’t know the routines, I don’t know the personalities. I’ve gone from dropping my boys off and hanging out for 10-30 minutes chatting to being in and out hardly saying a word. It just feels … off. I try not to convey that at all, so that the boys don’t pick up on it, but I never quite know what to say or do.

I didn’t expect the transition to be hard for me! I was too focused on the boys’ reactions.

For their part, the boys have taken the change pretty well. Danny, as expected, took it easier than Eric did. He is Mr. Laid Back, plus he is used to a million different people and also younger, so not quite as attached to the place as Eric.

Eric has a hard time in the morning, as you can see because I’m a mean mommy that sees tears as a photo op instead of a signal to soothe. (OK, not usually.) We turn onto the street that is the first variation in our route from old daycare to new daycare and it begins. “No, Mommy, I don’t need to go to school!” “Not THIS way!” “Noooooo not this school!”

Break my heart.

I coax him out of the car by lifting him up and cuddling him, and then he’s Mr. Happy again. He bounces along to Danny’s side, opens the door, climbs up, and gives him a rousing “Hi, Danny!” He shows me the way to the door, opens it for me, tells me to go in first…and quiets back down again. Then, he refuses to go into the room they start the day in.

It’s a rough drop off, and I take off the bandaid and leave without prolonging it and making it more difficult. Within a minute of my leaving, he’s fine, and he’s cheerful and enjoys himself the rest of the day. Yesterday in the car he gave me a verbal rundown of some of the things that stood out in his mind from his day, without prompting! He definitely likes it…but the change is hard.

For what it’s worth, though, I am still pleased with the place. It’s having some positive impacts on the boys, too, because with a change in daycare is a change in routine. I think that’s opened them up to have a chance to change themselves. Eric voluntarily goes to the potty, and actually uses it, while he’s there! Not 100% of the time, but pretty often. Danny sits at a table with all the other 1 year olds during snack. He doesn’t eat snack with them of course, but he has put a few things in his mouth. He spits them out, but it’s a start.

Change is hard – but definitely has positive opportunities. Now if only I could find something to change at home to get Eric using the potty there more often too!

Every mother does it: they put their kids before themselves. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, after all. Becoming a parent means taking on responsibility for these little lives with huge potential. It’s a compromise, and a pretty easy one to make. You give up some things for yourself, time alone, a few old hobbies, and in return you get an amazing and life-enriching experience.

The trick is to make sure you don’t give too much.

I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been to the gym since Danny was born. I say I think because I can’t even remember if I’ve been or not…which is pretty sad. There was always an excuse: Danny in the hospital, adjusting to getting back to work, pumping and breastfeeding, appointments, therapies, babysitters… I was pretty much the queen of finding excuses.

Unfortunately, somewhere in there I started to pay for it too. I chase Eric around in circles in the house and run out of stamina quickly. I pull out my driver’s license and realize what I weighed before I got pregnant compared to what I weigh now. It’s not huge, but it’s added up. After both of my pregnancies I congratulated myself on getting “close” to my pre-pregnancy weight, but I never reached it, and it just keeps sliding up.

I don’t want it to keep going.

So, accepting and defeating the guilt that came with it, I gave myself permission to do something about it. 5 days a week, I will go to the gym. I’m getting up earlier, taking the boys in minutes earlier, and arrive at work a little later. I’m getting active, and being first thing in the morning, it isn’t near as easy to come up with excuses.

There’s been no changes physically yet, but I feel better for it anyway. I’ve embraced the fact that it’s OK to take care of myself too. Just because I’m a mom, a wive, and an employee, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t focus on me.

I gave myself permission. You should too.

Pop quiz time! What’s wrong with this picture?

If you answered “he’s about to let go, fall flat on his face, and cry,” you’re right, but that isn’t what I was going for.

Since Tuesday, Danny has only been wearing his right processor. While orienting Danny’s new teachers on his cochlear implants, we went to demonstrate the LED indicator light using his left processor and discovered that it did not indicate! I described how if the headpiece was off, it would beep (it did); when the headpiece connects, it will beep once and then stop (it did); and when louder sounds are presented, the green light will flicker. The green light (clap clap)…SHOULD flicker (clap clap)…when loud sounds are presented (clap clap clap).

No flicker.

A day of intermittent flickering later, the processor was officially declared “on the fritz.” Because this seems to have been an intermittent problem – the light was flickering Monday evening again, but the not Tuesday when his AV-therapist visited daycare – we aren’t sure when this started. We did notice, last week, that he wasn’t responding as much as normal. Now, we might have a reason why!

So he’s a one ear boy. The left is tucked away, waiting for a call Monday morning to say the replacement has arrived from Advanced Bionics so that I can run down and swap them out. Danny’s responses are definitely less with one implant, but it makes me thankful he does still have one! I can’t imagine if he had only received one implant and this happened, sending him back into silence. He’s still getting sound, he’s still getting that input and opportunity to learn, even with a processor out of commission.

Just another reason to love bilateral.

From a young age, Eric has taken interest in being clean. As a baby, he hated to have his hands dirty. He would fuss and cry and hold his hands up, wanting to be wiped off. As he got older, he would avidly point out any little bit of dirty on him – a bit of spilled drink, a fallen piece of food, dirt and sand and mess. Anything around him, too; after eating, he would request a wipe or napkin for the longest time, wanting to “wipe it off” like we did when he was tiny and always making a mess.

For our part, we encouraged it, of course. We’re no fools.

What I don’t understand is how this came to be! I am hardly a neatnick, nor is my husband. We aren’t slobs by any means, but we are hardly the type to make a huge deal about cleaning up a mess as soon as it occurs. Eric, on the other hand, is quite upset when things are messy and demands they be cleaned up. So when Eric announced, “that’s dirty!” in the kitchen to something that had come in off a shoe, it wasn’t a big surprise. I expected “Clean it up, Mommy – clean it up!” to follow shortly after.

Nope, not my son. He is rarely predictable.

He raced off, and in the distance I hear the sound of him messing with the door to the laundry room. No problem, I thought to myself as I surveyed the offending mess, contemplating that there were no paper towels in the kitchen and thinking of where they might be. The laundry room, also home to the kitty’s water (aka, splash time fun) and the litter box (aka sandbox mommy doesn’t want me playing in), is protected by a door knob guard to keep little hands from opening it. It’s safe.

Right?

A minute later, Eric returns, proudly carrying a dustpan and brush. I double-take. That would be the dustpan and brush that lives in the laundry room. A peek down the stairs confirms it: the brush and dustpan were enough motivation to get him to best the not-so-kidproof guard. I look back to see Eric holding up his prize – “Look, Mommy, I got it!” – before bending down to sweep up the mess.

“I’m sweeping it up, Mommy!”

…He sure was. And he dumped it in the trash, too, then put the brush back in the pan and handed them to me with an accomplished, “I’m all done!” And he toddled off to play with something else, leaving his mother to stare at the now-clean spot of floor with 2 important questions on her mind:

Where on earth did this child come from that loves to clean so much?

More importantly, can I teach him to run the vacuum??