A Major Milestone

Hallie hit a major milestone today:  for the first time ever, she expressed an interest in baking with me.

Cooking is something I have long look forward to doing with the girls.  Way back when Sharon was pregnant with the twins, I used to walk around talking about how we'd hold 'clinics' in our kitchen where I'd teach them all about spices and how to make flavors 'marry'.  We could have 'spice of the week' weeks and 'guess the ingredient' games and do other fun stuff like that.  And this, of course, would be part of my special time with the kids since I love to cook and Sharon, to put it mildly, does not.  Well, actually, that's not necessarily the case:  she has no idea whether she likes to cook because she doesn't cook at all.  When I first met her she literally had the following in her fridge and cupboard:  salt (which she enjoys more than your average individual does); sugar (purchased for her by someone who wanted to add some to a cup of tea or coffee); Lays potato chips and cheddar cheese (eaten together as a dietary staple); and a stick of butter.  So living with me has been both incredibly frustrating (we have a million things in our fridge and tiny kitchen cabinets and this array is ever expanding) and yet delicious (I hope) since I can whip up a fairly decent gourmet meal at a moment's notice.  Should all the stores in Philly close down for whatever reason, you probably want to head here since I am fairly certain we'll be able to hold out for a few weeks or months with what we have in house.

So, given how much I love cooking (and shopping for cool ingredients), it's been doubly sad that Hallie has such a fraught and negative relationship to food.  It meant that we could not share something that I really longed to share with her.  Lea seems to be heading in the exact opposite direction (she loves to eat, but is especially fond of fruits and veggies and will try almost anything, even foods that are a bit adventurous for a 2 year old like pad thai and curries).  

Anyway, I am sort of digressing.  To return to the subject:  on New Year's Day, Hallie requested chocolate chip cookies.  We didn't have any pre-made ones in the house (I tend not to buy store bought cookies, with the exception of graham crackers and Oreos since she'll eat those).  So, being the mom that I am, I offered to whip up a batch of chocolate chocolate chip cookies for her.  Half an hour later they were ready and, wouldn't you know it, she ate a few.  She proceeded to eat a couple more per day, every day.  She would often just eat part of a cookie and then move on to another one (who knows why Hallie does this, but this is a pattern even when there is no discernible change in taste from one portion of the item to the next.  For example, she'll nibble all around the edges of a Ritz cracker and reject the middle).  No matter about the discarded half-cookies; I considered it a major victory that she was willing to eat something that I actually made from scratch.  (FYI:  I do not consider toasting wheat bread and smearing it with butter to be real cooking).

The kids finished up the last of the cookies this morning and I offered to make some more.  I took the butter out of the fridge to bring it to room temperature and set up the Kitchen Aid Stand mixer on the counter (some day I would enjoy having a kitchen big enough to allow me to leave it out all of the time).  I was taken aback, in a very nice way, when Hallie asked me if she could help.  We read through the ingredient list together and she helped me measure out the white and brown sugars and the flour and cocoa.  She was excited about cracking the eggs (which she did very carefully with my assistance) and eagerly smelled the vanilla.  Dumping the ingredients into the mixer was a hugely fun endeavor but each time I got ready to turn it on, Hallie announced that she needed to go into the living room to hide since the mixer was too loud.  I tried to keep the loudness to a minimum (I only really needed to turn the mixer on high to cream the butter and sugar; the rest could be done at a slower and quiet speed).  And by the end, when I was mixing in the flour, I was doing it at a very low speed to avoid blanketing myself and the kitchen in flour (I hate when it poofs up and coats everything because I forget to take this precaution).

I was in the midst of doing this when Hallie ventured into the kitchen and asked if she could help.  Apparently she was no longer afraid of the mixer.  So she climbed up on the step stool and watched as the flour went in and then dumped the last couple of quarter-cups in as the mixer did its stuff. 

The batter was basically mixed and I turned off the Kitchen Aid and lifted up the arm.  Hallie looked at the batter and said, "That looks yummy; can I taste it?"

I have never heard a more wonderful question in my life.  I responded, "Of course!  You can even lick the bowl!"  So I knocked most of the batter off of the spatula and beater and gave them to Hallie.  She ran to the living room and went to town:

She came back to help me mix in the chocolate chips (which she sampled first; she loves chocolate chips) and helped me form the cookies.  She was eager to make sure that they turned out right and so she asked for (and received) a flashlight that would allow her to examine their progress through the oven window.

I am happy to report that they turned out fine.

What a lovely way to spend part of the afternoon!  I couldn't have asked for anything nicer.

Lea's First Haircut

Just in time for the New Year (well, Tuesday, but I am only getting around to blogging about it now), Lea had her very first haircut.  Things were getting pretty gnarly in the back of Lea's head and she was working on a fine mullet that we had to shear in the bud, so to speak.  See the Christmas post a couple of posts back for a clear image of what I mean.

Haircuts can be, well, hairy things to which to subject kids.  Particularly kids like Lea who don't really like others (doctors, hairdressers, etc) getting into her personal space. 

Our strategy?  Use Hallie as a model.  Hallie had been asking to get her hair cut since at least Thanksgiving.  Pretty much every day, Hallie would say something like, "Let's go see Whit-mee (Whitney) to get my hair cut shorter."  [When I asked her what kind of style she'd like, she responded, "One with scissors."  Too cute].

Anyway, Hallie really likes Whitney and enjoys getting her hair cut.

When Lea saw how happy was during her haircut, she realized that she'd be fine too.  Lea loves to do anything that Hallie does.

So the haircut itself could not have gone more smoothly:

It was only later on, while I was watching the kids during Sharon's haircut, and had to tell Lea to stop doing something or another that was going to get her in trouble/hurt/make everyone around her go crazy (as is wont to happen when she screeches in the shrillest tone you can imagine) that she melted down.

While Lea's awfully cute even when she's crying uncontrollably, we think that she looks a whole lot cuter when she's happy.  So does her new hairdo:

Potty Training Update

It's been a bit of an up-and-down week in the land of potty training Hallie.

While Hallie is apparently more or less fully trained at school, her performance on the home front has been a bit more checkered. We've been sending Hallie to school in 'big girl underwear' for about six weeks now.  (We are still using the extra thick Gerbers' undies that are very soft and more absorbent than the cuter princess and Kai-lan panties that Hallie has in her drawer.  Hanna Andersson is rumored to make excellent training pants, too, but at about 400% the cost of the Gerbers', these seem a bit too much of a splurge, particularly considering that we need about 10 clean pair of these on hand at all times just in case). Since summer camp started at the beginning of July, she's had two accidents at school, I think, and those were both in the first week.  They are on a fairly regular potty-break schedule at school (all of the kids are asked if they need to go at the transition from one activity to the next, and these transitions take place every half hour or so).  And I am sure the sheer visuals help the teachers figure out who needs to go on off times since four year olds have an uncanny way of pulling at their crotch when they really need to get to the bathroom.  But Hallie has also asked her aide or teachers to take her to the bathroom a few times in the past week and none of these were false alarms (signaled by Hallie in an effort to avoid undesired activities). 

This is all wonderful.  I still pack four outfits for her each day but these are beginning to seem a bit like overdoing it and I'm going to consider scaling back to three pretty soon.

Home potty training, however, has been a bit more hit or miss.  We began this whole adventure by using the strip down approach where we have Hallie stay naked from the waist down (sometimes complemented by a waist up strip that leaves her streaking through the living room with the exception, perhaps, of high heel princess shoes, cowboy boots, or some other accessory.  Visuals omitted to prevent parents from being referred to DCFS, of course).  This works like a charm and Hallie has no accidents when we do this.

But she cannot remain naked at home forever (we hope). So we have been trying to keep her clad (sometimes we lose this battle for sensory reasons) most of the time now.  And this has been a bit problematic on the pottying front.

We continually (and I do mean continually) ask Hallie if she needs to go when she is wearing undies at home, and quite often she'll respond in the negative.  And then go anyway.  Even in cases where we just her on the potty (which is situated in the living room still so as to not add in the problem of her having to take a break from a preferred activity) for an unproductive session, she's been wetting herself almost immediately after we help her pull up her pants.

This is a bit vexing, to say the least.  On Friday, after Hallie emptied her bladder immediately after returning home from school (and being asked if she needed to use the potty, a question to which she emphatically responded "NO!") and then again peeing on herself while in her current favorite costume (a very warm dalmatian costume that you could not pay me enough to wear on a day when the temperature was in the high 90s).  I let Hallie know that I was disappointed and upset after the first accident (exaggerating my response so that it would be clear to her) and demonstrated to her that I was even more upset the second time around.  We're working on feelings right now (and Hallie is really beginning to understand these, so much so that she is more often demonstrating appropriate empathy when Lea gets hurt and fashioning some creative, good responses to Lea's crying -- like offering her a water bottle or getting her a bandaid -- that actually are quite helpful).  So Hallie definitely got it.  But what we're hoping she gets even more is that she is not going to be seeing that (now laundered) dalmatian costume until she spends five days accident free.

I am happy to report that we just completed day two of this experiment.  Perhaps her bladder control is coincidental, but she's managed to take a long round trip car ride (about an hour in each direction) to and from hippotherapy on Saturday and went out to dinner and dessert with us and her lovely cousin Sarah, who was down for the weekend, and stayed clean and dry the entire time.  She asked to go to the potty three times at dinner/dessert and actually peed two of those times (the third time we think was attributable to the fact that the historic saloon in which we ate dinner had pretty cool bathrooms with a lot to look at--and flush).

Also interesting to us is the fact that Hallie has woken up with a dry pull up two nights in a row.  I think this has more to do with the fact that she went to bed pretty late on the eve of both of those events and hence probably emptied her bladder fully before bed.  I have no aspirations at this point of attempting to night train Hallie any time soon.

So hopefully Hallie's gotten the message about needing to win back the dalmatian costume.

I find it interesting, though, that all of the problems we are having are at home.  One theory (to which Sharon subscribes, I think) is that the root of the problem is that we've been keeping Hallie stripped down at home and that this has allowed her to become a bit lazy.  Because she's naked from the waist down, she continues to dribble out her pee (which is what babies do before they have bladder control) on the potty any old time and is not self-aware enough to keep it in at home when she's got underwear on.  This seems plausible but is only part of the story, I think.  I think that another component of this is that she is so exhausted--mentally and physically--once she gets home from school that she loses it a bit (we see this with other behavior, too).  She expends so much time and effort controlling herself--staying on task, engaging with kids and teachers and therapists, and also holding her bladder--that she just can't do it anymore when she gets into our house.  Our home is a safer place for Hallie to let go, literally and figuratively.  I think she gets that we are here for her no matter what; she's not particularly in need of winning our love and respect since she already has that; and she's probably less embarrassed at having an accident at home than she is at school.  While she is beginning to understand that her behavior sometimes disappoints us (and she responds appropriately by getting upset herself), I imagine that she still feels safer with us than she does with anyone else (at least I hope so, because that is a good thing).  So I'm willing to cut her some slack (even if I really won't return that costume to her until the five days have been checked off).  She's come a long way in terms of this potty training thing (and so much else) in a very short period of time.  So we'll plod on and try not to get too disappointed by the fact that we're still only 80% there or so.

The Things Hallie Can Do

On the eve of Hallie's second IEP, I find myself a bit too antsy to settle down to sleep (though I know that I should). I hate these things: I hate what they represent (that Hallie needs some extra help to do stuff that comes naturally and easily to most other kids her age); I hate that I have to fight to get her the things that she needs, though honestly there is no better advocate than a parent; and I hate meetings. I really do. When I was chair of my academic department, I was very, very good at keeping meetings to a minimum and making sure that they were short.

Anyway, what better time but now to blog? (It helps that I am already as prepared as I can be for this meeting and that I know what she needs and what I want to get for her; it also helps immensely that the semester is over, the grading is done, and that the dinner dishes and toys are all put away).

So, in the spirit of the half-full glass, this is all about what Hallie CAN do and some of the strides she's made recently. It's not an exhaustive account by any means (I'd have to liveblog her life at this point, since she has changed so much and has done so many new things over the past couple of months), but it should give those of you who (used to) follow this blog a nice Hallie fix.

1. Hallie can ride a two wheeler. No one taught her how to do this. She just took off in the aisles of Toys-R-Us when Sharon was out shopping for a new, bigger bike for Hannah for her seventh birthday. Who knew? Hallie had never been on a two wheeler before. She just instinctively knew how to ride it (hippotherapy and watching her cousins and other big kids probably helped some, too). And here's a bit of proof. The video sucks but it should give you a clear enough idea of how well she can handle a big girl bike. Just click on the picture and you'll be redirected to the video website:

From My Videos

2. Hallie also is teaching herself how to swing properly on a 'big girl' swing. This is still very much a work in progress but she's getting there. She will repeat 'in and out...in and out...in and out..." and then tell me that she is "swinging just like Hannah." While she can't quite get herself started swinging, she can keep herself going on her own for a little bit now, which is a great relief to a mom who has spent the better part of three years pushing her swing and who now has to split her attention between two kids, one of whom most decidedly must remain in a "little girl swing" for some time still.



3. Eat new foods and like them...sometimes quite a lot.

We fairly recently discovered that Hallie loves chocolate. She can consume quite a bit of it at one sitting, too. She has been known to scarf down five or six Hershey's nuggets within a few minutes and she regularly demands chocolate bars. This, of course, made Easter her kind of holiday.

We bought a bag of Hershey's Easter Eggs for her a few weeks before the big day just to get her used to the new, seasonal shape of her chocolate. Transition from a fairly flat bar or chunky nugget to an ovaline shape may not seem like a big deal to most of you who are reading this, but put yourself into the shoes of a kid who is high functioning on the autism spectrum who has a bad case of food neophobia. Apropos of this, just today she pitched a major fit when I tried to give her a square graham cracker instead of the rectangle that she requested. I tried to explain that two squares were equal to a rectangle and that all of the crackers in the packet that was open had broken in half, but no go. I ended up opening a new packet just to avoid an escalation of her tantrum. Yeah, I know, it didn't solve anything, but honestly some battles aren't worth fighting and these include pretty much all battles over food. But I digress.

Anyway, the egg shape wasn't a problem at all for Hallie and she ate her way through two or three bags of chocolate eggs before Easter. But that did not at all dampen her delight on Easter morning when she discovered her basket full of goodies:

Of equal importance, of course, is that Hallie got the idea of Easter. If you recall, back at Christmas, she was not so clear on who Santa was, why he was coming, who, exactly was leaving all of those presents under that fake tree, etc etc.

This time, however, there was no doubt that she was mesmerized by the concept of the Easter bunny. She left carrots for him (bunnies, of course, love carrots) and had a blast hunting for the chocolate-filled plastic eggs that he left. She and Lea both had a grand time on Easter morning. Never mind that, were you to ask her what the Easter bunny's name was, she'd say "His name is Ollie!" (If you are a devotee of The Wonder Pets, as Hallie very much is and as I am by virtue of being a denizen of a home that is brought to you by Nick Jr., you know that the show regularly features a bunny named Ollie. Hence all bunnies are named Ollie in Hallie-wood.)

Hallie thus was quite enamored of the giant Easter bunny on the premises of the church where her preschool rents space and was thrilled to take a picture with him:

Anyway, Hallie's new foods are not limited to chocolate, egg-shaped or otherwise. She has also become a regular consumer of peanut butter sandwiches and, more recently, peanut butter and nutella sandwiches. She was a bit skeptical about the concept of chocolate spread but once she tasted it, she was hooked. (And who wouldn't be, really?)

In feeding therapy, which continues to go well, Hallie is learning how to eat slivers of grapes (adding another fruit to her repertoire of avidly-consumed apples and watermelons and more skeptically eaten slices of banana). Her food journey remains slow, but she is branching out and learning to be a bit less afraid of new things.

Snacks, and crunchy ones in particular, are easy for her to integrate into her diet and she now regularly requests crackers; enjoys popcorn; and made a happy discovery in the form of crunchy cheetos. But she is straying further and further into food regions uncharted. For the past few weeks, she's been intrigued by berries. She won't eat them yet, but she likes to hold them and offer them to me, to Lea, and to her Wonder Pets figures (whose faces ended up smeared with blackberries the other day). And she's been willing to lick strawberries even if she doesn't eat them. We take it slowly around here, and that's fine.

But sometimes she surprises us. Tonight I made pasta for dinner (wagon wheels with a fairly mild shrimp fra diavlo sauce). I served up portions for Sharon and myself and put a bunch of wagon wheels, sans shrimp, into a bowl for Lea, who was sitting at the table with us. Hallie came over and asked for pasta and then proceeded to actually eat the whole bowl and request some more. She probably had fifteen or twenty little wagon wheels and pronounced that she "loves pasta." I am not sure if this experience will be replicated any time soon, but it was wonderful to have her eat the same thing that we were eating.

4. Another great thing that is happening is that Hallie is developing real friendships.

Hallie tends to gravitate towards kids younger than she is, like Lea or Taylor, or friends who are slightly older than she is, like Alex (pictured below in a very nice shot of our girl).

But she is also beginning to initiate more real interactions with the kids at school, which is great to see. The other day, when I went to pick her up from school, the kids were all outside in the yard playing. Uncharacteristically for her, Hallie did not sense that I was around and continued to play a very fun looking game of "Red Light, Green Light, 1-2-3" with a couple of the other little girls in her class who are her regular playmates. It was wonderful to watch and, even though Hallie still speaks less than her peers do, she finds a way of engaging with them and the kids really do seem to enjoy her presence.

4. Hallie is also speaking more, and more fluidly.

At home, Hallie is turning into a bit of a chatterbox. She regales me with discussions about animals and lets me know the natural habitat of each of them. Sadly, for Hallie, the lion's natural habitat is not just the jungle but also the zoo. She is going far beyond just labeling these days. For example, she says things like: "bees live in a beehive. They make honey. Bears love honey! Three little bears live in the woods! They eat porridge with Goldilocks. Goldilocks is the big bad wolf!" (I blame Sesame Street for that piece of misinformation; one of their shows is about mixed up fairy tales; Goldilocks goes on vacation and the big bad wolf takes her place. The two shall forever be confused in our little girl's brain, alas).

Anyway, the point is that Hallie can go on and on now and, while conversations tend to revolve around things of interest to her and don't involve a huge amount of back and forth, she's making huge progress and I imagine that, with a little work, she'll move into real, functional, meaningful conversation with us and with her peers.

5. Hallie's pretend play skills really are emerging. She's not quite at the point where she is crafting really extensive scenarios and she is using her favorite shows (especially The Wonder Pets) as a jumping-off point, but these days, the Wonder Pets and Hallie regularly rescue various creatures. Her little Lego people regularly take adventures in various vehicles. And some of her toy figures have embarked on submarine voyages in the bathtub where they go diving to see lots of different kinds of fish and crustaceans who apparently live on the sea floor of our bathtub. I am always thrilled to ride along with Hallie on whatever journey she is crafting and enjoy seeing where it may lead.

So, even though I feel a bit of trepidation and a bit of sadness that tomorrow I need to go through the ordeal and hassle of Hallie's IEP, one of the really great things about being Hallie's mama is that the journey we're on is not about special education or services or fighting the school district. The journey we're on is about Hallie and watching the miraculous progress she is making unfold. And that's kind of the point of parenting, isn't it? Sometimes it takes euphemistic adjectives like "special" to make you aware of how special, used in no sense euphemistically, your kid really is.

PT, Orthotics, CP Rant

I interrupt the generally upbeat tone of this blog to do a bit of ranting.

Finally, two months after Hallie's IEP went into effect, she finally started getting PT at school this week (which is the last week of camp, so now she has to wait another two weeks to see the PT again). The PT took one look at how she walks, runs, climbs stairs (tries to climb, really), jumps, etc and said that she was very concerned about her gait and that she believed that Hallie had mild left hemiparesis and needed orthotics.

This makes me upset and stinking mad. I have been telling everyone who is remotely involved (Early Intervention, Hallie's ped, the developmental pediatrician) that I thought that Hallie needed PT and that I was worried about her left side. I go to the playground and run around with the kid all the time and I know how often she falls, how far she's fallen behind on the milestones, how much it hurts her or tires her out to do a lot of the stuff that kids her age can typically do, etc etc.

The response I've gotten so far has been a great big thud. Early Intervention (birth to three) responded by saying that it would take too long to get a PT evaluation (this was about six months before she aged out of the system) and that we should just add another session of OT so that the OT could work on gross motor skills (I guess she assumes that all therapists are interchangeable and that PT doesn't require additional training...quite an assumption to make). The pediatrician, who spends fifteen minutes with us per visit and most of it involves Hallie sitting on an exam table or my lap, said he saw nothing wrong with her gait when he watched her walk up and down the hall for fifteen seconds (I pointed out to no avail that walking up and down the hall is not one of Hallie's problems). The developmental pediatrician watched Hallie walk up and down the hall at her office for thirty seconds and came to the same conclusion. My request that both of them watch her on the stairs went unheeded.

Finally, after yesterday's pronouncement, I got referrals for neurology and orthopedics from Hallie's pediatrician who changed his tone a bit, saying that 'of course she's at risk for these problems'--meaning cerebral palsy, ultimately--but that he wouldn't want to just get one opinion on whether she has CP but that we needed a second, confirming opinion before he would buy it. He's got a bit of a problem with Hallie being labeled -- which also pisses me off. He was dead set against her having an aide or services in the classroom because that would make her seem different and essentially wanted us to enroll Hallie in any old school on her own to see how she'd do without help. He said that he would (reluctantly) provide us with a neurology referral if we insisted but that he didn't think that we needed to go down this route.

All of this seems to us to be tantamount to throwing Hallie to the wolves--something Sharon and I are not now and not ever willing to do. The kids at school don't care that Hallie has an aide and the therapists who visit spend time with all the kids so Hallie doesn't stand out. And at least this way she is not overlooked and learning stuff.

It's a good thing that Sharon and I always take medical advice with a grain of salt and realize that we know Hallie better than any one professional whom she sees knows her. And it's a good thing that Sharon and I are in relentless pursuit of the best possible care for our children.

But it makes me so angry that no one listens to us--we know what's going on with our kid and if we notice a problem, we're not making it up or looking for attention. The issues we've seen are very real and I just wish that the professionals would take us seriously and that everything wasn't such a fight.

So the upshot is that we will make appointments to see an orthopedist down at DuPont in Wilmington and a neurologist over at CHOP (both recommended by our pediatrician; while we don't think he's as proactive as he needs to be, his referrals have proven to be stellar). And we will do what we need to do to ensure that Hallie can keep up with her peers to the fullest extent possible. But the whole thing sucks tremendously and I hate it that the other shoe (or orthotic) has dropped yet again and that we are most likely cruising for yet another diagnosis in the near future.

***

On other, happier notes: stay tuned for an update about Hallie's excellent performance at her camp (preschool) end-of-session show; the positive news concerning Hallie's early attempts at potty training (courtesy of Hallie's excellent school aide); and how our new feeding approach is going. In the midst of all of our concerns about gross motor skills and CP it's essential to remember how far Hallie has come. Her progress is substantial, and as far as I'm concerned, the sky is the limit for her. She is talking A LOT more, making friends, not vomiting as much (157 days and counting...), and is the best little three year old two moms could possibly want.

Little Lea is on the move!

Little Lea, who is, after all, no longer so little (though I suspect that her nickname, "Baby Lea" shall always stick, even when she's a whole lot taller than I am), is on the move.

First the stats: at her six month check up, Lea weighed 15 lbs, 11 ounces, which is precisely what Hallie weighed at a year old (8 months adjusted). She was just over 25.5 inches tall, which places her firmly at the 42nd percentile for both height and weight (making her seem sort of square, I guess). Her head was just over the 50th percentile, which probably means that Hallie will be able to wear Lea's hats for a lot longer than Lea will (Hallie's head is at about the 10th percentile, though they stop measuring it at 3 years of age).

Speaking of Hallie, she somehow managed to weigh in at 32 lbs 13 ounces and was 38.25 inches tall, and consequently at about the 60th percentile for both weight and height. The weight seems a bit high (it was with a diaper on and prior to a bowel movement....sorry about the excess of information there!). But nevertheless, it's clear that Hallie has managed to start gaining weight again. We thank periactin, a bit of duocal and a relative lack of vomiting (we're now at 156 days and counting) for this.

But this post is not really about Hallie. It's about Lea's newfound mobility.

Lea has been commando crawling for a while now, but she's gotten a whole lot better at it. Instead of going backwards and in circles, she's now able to head in her direction of choice. And she's able to get where she wants to go pretty quickly.

Oddly, perhaps, where Lea wants to go mostly is under the furniture. She has a particular thing for chair legs.

She also rather enjoys getting between pieces of furniture:

But what has brought particular joy to Lea's life has been her newfound capacity to get up on all fours and rock. She can only go backwards right now, but the kid is on the verge of really crawling. And this has her very, very happy and the adults in the household very, very frightened but.

But what frightens us even more is something that Lea did last night. While happily cavorting in her pack and play bassinet, Lea grabbed hold of the top bar and pulled to stand. I literally leapt off of the couch and across the room to grab her (Sharon momentarily--and I do mean for a single second--having averted her gaze from the little elf). Needless to say, we dismantled the bassinet portion of the pack and play within minutes of this event. From here on in (until she can find a way to climb out of it), Baby Lea will be using the pack and play as a play pen.

And in case you don't believe that the kid looks like an elf, take a peek at this smirk:

"Good Job, Hallie!"

Unfortunately, I wasn't quick enough to get this one on camera (could this be, perchance, because I was walking around the living room feeding Lea, who prefers to eat on the go rather than with me sitting in the living room easy chair?) but here's a cute Hallie-ism of the day (that, as you will see, could have ended badly):

Around five this evening, or so, Hallie asked me for some chips (specifically for  "a big round one").  I got out the bag of chips and gave her one (no big round ones left, so she had to settle for a few broken medium-sized ones) when Lea began to cry.  I picked up Lea to walk her around and feed her a bottle when Hallie decided to climb onto the dining room chair and serve herself a few more chips.  She ignored my request that she get down off of the chair before she knocked it over and broke her head (or at least bruised some part of herself badly), and instead proceeded to grab a chip or two from the bag.  The second time she did this (again ignoring my request that she stop climbing), she said:  "Good job, Hallie!"  It was very cute, although obviously it doesn't pardon her from the reprimand she deserved for scaling furniture.

Anyway, Hallie was full of 'good jobs' this weekend.  On Sunday, we paid a visit to Gina and Jake to hang out with them and their whole posse of friends and family and check out the water slide (really more of a water park) that Gina had installed for Jake in their backyard.  Hallie was thrilled and demonstrated just how fearless, brave, and strong she is.  She grappled up the wall (kind of a cross between a ladder and climbing wall) to the top of the slide multiple times and enjoyed splashing into the pool below.  She couldn't get enough of that.

 

And she couldn't get enough of Jake, either.  She enjoyed lounging in his toddler bed (making us consider putting hers together for her before she gets too long for it), trying out his tricycle (Jake has moved onto a cool two-wheeler but Hallie's a bit short for it still, never mind that she's only just beginning to get the hang of the pedaling and steering aspects of riding), and especially taking his roller skates for a test run.  She was remarkably poised on these, so skates go onto her birthday wish list (and not only because she actually seemed to enjoy them either. Her new PT mentioned that having her roll around on skates would help build core strength and balance which might prevent her from falling when walking so much and might assist her in negotiating the stairs.  I think that play is always work for kids, but parents of kids who are developing a bit differently are particularly keenly aware that they are not just buying items to amuse their children but therapy tools).

Here are a few shots of Hallie hanging out with Jake and trying out his stuff:

And here's a lovely picture of Gina, Jake, and Lea (or "Baby Lea" as Jake likes to call her):

And, speaking of Lea, Lea is now chuckling and laughing a lot. I am assuming that she's doing so with us, and not at us (though the latter would make some sense, too!). Lea finds us very amusing, and is particularly enamored of Hallie. The feeling is quite mutual. Often, when Hallie wakes up, the first thing she does is say "Hi, Lea!" to her sister (ignoring the two of us until she wants something from us) and, today, after spending some quality time pretend playing with her various Sesame Street pals, she decided that they each needed to kiss Lea, one by one. It was very cute to watch her bring over Abby and Zoe and Elmo and Telly, one at a time, and put them close to Lea's face and go "Oh...Lea!" And tonight, after dinner, while playing the "turn-taking game" with us (this involves Hallie coming over to us, usually while we're still eating, and telling us that it is our turn to do something like dance with Hallie). Usually she just says, "Mama, come dance!" or "Mommy's turn!" but tonight she incorporated Lea into her routine and expressed that it was Lea's turn to pretend to be various animals. Indeed, she was more interested in Lea having her turn as a cow, moose, and dog than she was at involving us in her game. I sense that Lea will experience much more of this as she gets older and more able to participate in Hallie-directed antics.

Which brings me to the final observation of the day: Hallie was very much alpha girl at gym class today. The class was much bigger than usual and there were about fifteen kids there instead of the more typical ten. Most were newcomers to the class and not terribly familiar with the general structure, which involves a bit of free play followed by circle time, skill building, ball playing, bubble catching, and the goodbye song. Miss Kristen, who runs the class, had been out for a few weeks and its structure had devolved in her absence. So few paid attention to her attempts to run the show today. But not Hallie--Hallie was in tip top circle time form this morning. The second Miss Kristen made a move to get the rubber circles, Hallie was right behind her offering to help distribute these. She gave me one and then proceeded to help distribute the rest. Instead of sitting with me, she took her place right next to Miss Kristen and was thus the first to introduce herself. Usually she whispers "Hallie" very softly to Miss Kristen's inquiry about her identity, but today she shouted out her name. Then she went around with Miss Kristen and high-fived the other kids who identified themselves. She handed out the bells and really got into the routine (though she was a bit flummoxed about where her hip was located when Miss Kristen asked the kids to ring the bells on their hips). And she collected the bells and circles the second Miss Kristen asked the kids to do so and then Hallie proceeded to take my hand and the hand of another kid's mom during our little dance around the room and was happy to demonstrate her backward walking skills when asked to do so. All of this happened with at least ten kids and their parents still racing through the gym and jumping on trampolines and the like. Her friend Gage's grandmother, who was down visiting the class for the first time, was so impressed with Hallie that she called her the "class leader." I was very proud of how organized and together she was today (and this after no naps this weekend and getting home really late last night). And I was also impressed at how social she was with the other kids (saying hi by name to one little girl she knows from class whom she's also seen on the playground; offering balls to a little boy who is one of the youngest and shyest members of the class; playing catch with a third). It's moments like these when I think that she really is ready for preschool and that she'll be totally fine there.

So, all in all, good job, Hallie!

Great Un-noted Milestones

I was just sweeping through the house, picking stuff up, collecting laundry, and righting it after a day of being subjected to our use when I noticed something. Something important. Something momentous. And something so utterly uncelebrated by me as to potentially serve as the focus of therapy sessions years hence: Hallie peed on her potty tonight. For the very first time. And received no fanfare, no ballyhoo, and most importantly no Mo Willems Time to Pee stickers for doing so.

Quel hureur and shame on unmindful mamas!

The scenario went down like this: around the witching hour of 9:00pm, Hallie began to lose it and needed to go up to bed. Sharon got the bedtime meds and bottle ready and took her own prenatal vitamins. I headed up the stairs--with Hallie walking, and not crawling, up them, and holding onto the bannister like a big girl. This is no mean feat in our home, which features boxed in winding stairs worthy of the hardy early 19th-century Swedish workers who built our home (and violated, a priori, all building codes in force not much less than two centuries later). I celebrated this, of course, because I noticed it.

What I did not notice was that, after stripping Hallie of her pants and diaper (Hallie had previously removed her own shirt and socks), I asked our girl to sit on her potty to brush her teeth and pee. Brush she did, but I didn't think she did number 1. This is none too surprising because we've been putting her on the potty for more than a week now, morning and night, sans diaper, and asking her to pee. So I didn't make much of it, and when she got off, raced around the bathroom a bit, and then headed, naked tushie and all, down the hall to her room and flopped onto the bed, I took it in stride. I got out her diaper, her jammies, and we began the typical night time ritual.

But, just now, I noticed what before went unacknowledged by me (in yet another demonstration of inept mama-hood): a teeny, tiny, trickle of pee. Her very first use of the potty (unless one counts drumming...she does quite a nice solo on the lid).

I wonder if it's possible to give her a sticker tomorrow in reward for what she did today? I also wonder if she'll repeat her act. I certainly hope so, and this time I'll be armed with the marching band and all.

In other milestone notes: on Sunday morning, Hallie strung together her first spontaneous three-word sentence: "One red ball." She has uttered three-word combos before ("How are you?" "I am fine" and any imaginable combination of words from Mo Willem's Pigeon series). But never before has she spontaneously said anything that consisted of three distinct and completely articulate words. One red ball, indeed.

Finally, in other milestones: we have officially been put up against a wall by the ped and are stripped of our maternal control over Hallie's feeding regimen. Our ped, who, as it turns out, does not live with Hallie and has not witnessed the extent to which her eating issues are not mostly behavioral, is convinced that he has no proof that her responses are allergic. (This is the same ped who refused to refer us to an allergist to begin with and for whom her neither her phenomenal growth only after being taken off of cow milk, nor the famous fourteen week cold that never went away while Hallie was on pediasure and nutren jr., apparently is not nearly empirical evidence enough to convince him that Hallie was responding negatively to dairly). He thinks that we're the problem, not the solution and will hear none of our side of things. So, against our better judgement, we've decided to let Ami, our nanny, whom he has charged with allowing Hallie to 'graze' (how one grazes on Stage 2 purees is not only beyond our grasp but also beyond Ami's) on a variety of foods. Why have we gone along with this? After answering, curtly, 'I'm simply not sure', I will elaborate: both Sharon and I are convinced that a component of Hallie's issues is not allergic, per se, but related to her delayed gastric emptying. We both think that she probably can tolerate small amounts of some foods--fruits and veggies in particular--but we're not sure which foods or how much. So what we have Ami doing is feeding Hallie more liberally from a diet of available (and lord knows we have more than enough rejected jars of various baby foods to do this without going out and purchasing a thing) fruits and veggies on a rotation. We'll see how this goes, but it kind of kills me to take a kid who seems to be doing better than ever before and muck things up. That said, it would be nice to choose from a broader diet of foods and there is a strong chance that her system has matured some and might be able to tolerate a wider variety of things.

So far...hard to tell. She ate a jar of sweet potatoes with gusto at brunch (since we were at the ped's through the late morning and she never did get breakfast) and seemed okay. She had some apple/blueberry later on in the day, and did urp a few hours later---ruining the potential for adding another notch for a vomit free day to our belt--up a few mouthfuls when I returned home at 6pm. But she went down okay (meaning that she thumped on the wall of her bedroom with her feet for a while but did not vomit) tonight. So the jury is still out on this. We'll see.

Otherwise, like I said, Hallie is doing great. She is pooping well (which is critical), is quite happy and giggly and talking up a comparative storm for a really quiet kid. And she's gained more weight. At the official weigh in this morning she was 29 lbs. 12plus ounces, and this is great. I suppose we need to experiment in the way that we are when Hallie is doing well, and doing well she is. Yet the empathetic, paper-towel- and vomit-averse part of me hates to muck things up. Like I said, we'll see.

And speaking of seeing, I do promise to get some pics up soon!

How Fun!!!

Lately, Hallie has taken to exclaiming "how fun!" or "that's great!" when she's having a good time and really enjoying herself. We're fairly certain that she's picked these up from Sesame Street, so it's only fitting that the first shot of this mostly picture post is this one, which Ami took last Thursday:


Note that the penguin, while not officially a member of the Sesame pantheon, does count among these gods of Children's Television Workshop as far as Hallie is concerned. Trust me: there are an awful lot of penguin segments on the "Street". That, and chicken scenarios. It's a whole lot harder, though, to find a plush chicken than it is to locate a plush penguin.

On Friday, Hallie and I were both happy to have our mood lifted after the rather annoying IFSP (mentioned in the previous post, and, yes, we are taking it in stride) by the unexpected and delightful appearance of Carmen and Vicky at our doorstep. They brought another fun book from Karen Katz, Ten Tiny Tickles, for Hallie as a gift. Hallie thoroughly enjoyed herself (and then proceeded to match up this book with the several other titles she has by Karen Katz. I guess she knows that the graphics are the same. I find this a bit astounding if only for the reason that Hallie has hundreds of books and yet manages somehow to keep track of them in her little brain which, yeah, I think is pretty well developed and chock full of great factoids).



Later on, Hallie modeled her new footwear for Carmen and Vicky:



Yes, those are pots on Hallie's feet. They are kind of an all purpose toy, serving just as well in the pretend-play kitchen, as drums, and as shoes.

On Sunday, the three of us had a preemie play date over at Elizabeth's house. Elizabeth, another 23 weeker, and her mom, Wendy, live in the Philly burbs and our friends Anne and Eliza drove in from Princeton. The three girls generally did well in the parallel play department (there were no meltdowns or moments of tears related to snatched toys) and Hallie and Eliza managed at various points to play within inches of one another in what could have been construed as engaged play. As moms used to questions about such things on IFSPs, we all took pictures to offer proof to the Early Intervention folks next time they come around:



Here the girls are taking some important calls:


While Hallie might be the more likely of the two to make the first approach (with her usual gleeful "HI!!!"), Eliza is making sure here that Hallie knows who is in charge:



Hallie didn't seem to mind, though. The girls actually gave each other a few hugs (and high fives) at the end of their date, and we managed to get one on camera:



Next time we'll try to get some pictures of Elizabeth, too. Sharon, Hallie, and I arrived at Wendy's a bit on the late side and Elizabeth was already getting close to going down for her nap so, sadly, we had no opportunity for a good picture of the three girls playing together.

Monday was a beautiful day---the morning was sunny and hot (upper sixties), and Hallie and I headed out for a marathon park session. I tried putting Hallie's lighter coat on her, but she would have nothing of it and requested her pink puffer coat instead. She was a bit too bundled for the weather but did not seem to mind.

When we got to three bears park, she needed to swing first thing, as usual. I put her in the toddler swings but, to my shock, her feet practically dragged on the ground and she seemed way too big for the bucket seat. I had her on the regular swing for a few minutes but she hasn't quite gotten comfortable on these yet. I suspect this will come this summer.

Then I tried staging a cute shot of Hallie sitting on the bears at Three Bears Park, but she was less excited about this than I was. The results were not as cute as I intended them to be (mostly because there wasn't someone jumping up and down behind me to get Hallie to smile) so they won't serve as a good holiday card option for us, after all.





I guess we're destined to keep the appointment I made for a holiday card shot at Kiddy Kandids at Babies R Us this Thursday (after our dental appointment. How potentially exciting).

Then it was back home for lunch and Occupational Therapy. Jenine, Hallie's OT, is going to be doing a bunch of physical therapy stuff with Hallie from here on out and we began this on Monday. I dragged the yoga ball back up from the basement, along with Hallie's hippity hop kangaroo, and Jenine and Hallie got to work.

Just one look at the expression on Hallie's face and you can tell she's going to have a blast. A really nice tumbling mat is now on the Holiday list--Hallie loves all sorts of physical challenges and, if we had our way, we'd turn the whole place into an OT/PT gym for the kid (sadly, there's no room for everything, but easily foldable equipment and inflatable stuff like balls works out quite nicely).







In sum, Hallie had a great few days. She was eating better than usual, vomiting less than usual (and we could have avoided this altogether had it not been for a failed attempt to get her to take an antibiotic the taste of which she found absolutely repulsive). Not too bad. We are now up to 164 days without vomit this year. I'm hoping that we make it to 170.

Today, however, marked the beginning of our medical marathon. We had ENT this morning followed by Ophthalmology this afternoon. The ENT appointment was blissfully brief and not terribly traumatic. However, we did find out that the left ear tube is out altogether (they are designed to fall out after six months to a year and Hallie's made it a bit over a year) and the right is falling out. However, the right ear has some granulation tissue and fluid build up, so our girl now needs ear drops (we feel a bit like a pharmacy around here, sadly). She is not very thrilled with this and it's clear her ear was hurting her tonight after her bath (she may have gotten water in it or poked herself in the ear with her finger--unclear which). She consequently spit up a bit (didn't have much in her at the time, thankfully) and cried louder than I remember hearing her cry in a long time (remember that she has a paralyzed vocal cord). She did go to sleep quite quickly thereafter, but we forgot her evening dose of Reglan and Axid amidst all the fuss and attempts to calm her down.

The eye appointment was great, in contrast. The doctor, who has been following her since she was in the NICU, was amazed to find that Hallie shows no signs of the pretty pronounced retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) that brought her to the cusp of laser eye surgery. Hallie is seeing around 20/30, which is normal for a toddler, and is a bit less far-sighted than she was last year. The eye doctor was also pretty amazed that Hallie read letters off of the screen, and not the more typical shapes, and said that we can just have our ped follow Hallie at age 3 to see how well she reads the chart and, if neither he nor we have any concerns about her vision, we don't have to come back in until she's around 4 for another ROP check. That sounds good to us!

Tomorrow is a dreaded weight check, and I'm not feeling great about it. But I am feeling great about our little girl, who is not really looking much like a toddler anymore. Judge for yourself: