Bird on the Street

The Part Where I Freak Out

1:15 am

So, it’s after one in the morning and I’m working on my web site that needs to be finished by Saturday. Saturday I’ll be handing out little cards with my web address on them, so I’m understandably nervous about the whole thing.

I’ve had a couple of serious freak-outs where I decide that I’ve lost my mind. Lost it.

But then I pick up my to-do list and get back to work.

Despite my best efforts, life in general continues to happen and we’ve had therapy and doctor’s appointments this week.

We visited with the ENT and have ear tube scheduled for next Thursday. I had a nightmare about the whole thing, but then he’s been tugging on his ears again, so I do think that this is the best course of action.

Charlie had to get a hearing screening before he saw the ENT and he flunked with flying colors. Fortunately, everyone involved took my word for it that he has excellent hearing. They just didn’t have good enough noises! There’s no way Charlie is going to turn his head for a loud static-y sound. Hello! It’s hard for him to move around–he’s not moving for static. For Lady Gaga? Maybe.

The ENT did comment that he seemed to be doing extremely well despite his diagnoses and I couldn’t agree more–he’s doing fabulous these days.

He still has no interest in standing, but he kick butt in his floor work. His kneeling is continue to look great. He’s really pushing up his upper body, and making attempts to get up on a little stool while crawling and today he–gasp–got his booty clear off the floor. Basically, the back half of him looked like he was true crawling, but his front half was in the commando crawl position. Still–that’s major progress for us.

The no standing thing is starting to freak out his PT and she’s hinting heavily that she’d like me to take him in to see the physiatrist to get a hip x-ray. We’re due to return in June, so I guess I could move it up a little just to please her. Yay! Another doctor’s appointment!

And the other big news is that Charlie has seriously increased the use of his right hand. I feel like I’m always saying that, but twice in the last week he’s tried to feed himself using it and he’s even passed things from his left hand to his right, which is just incredible. His right thumb is still pretty disagreeable, but he’s definitely starting to realize that his right hand might be good for something.

So. . . I’m freaking out, but Charlie is good.

Can’t wait til I have real time, so I can write a real post.

Filed Undermedical, other stuff, therapy

They Didn’t Warn Me About This

11:25 pm

I’ll admit, gleefully, that this post is a joy for me to write. There are so many things that I worried about, so many things that I wasn’t sure would ever happen. But I digress. . .

It all started when I turned Charlie’s car seat around. Seems harmless, right? He’d met the weight requirement a while ago, and I thought his neck strength was ready, so about a month ago I went ahead and turned his car seat to the forward-facing position.

The thing is. . . now he can see me. Sounds good, right? Well, not so much.

Despite having visual impairments and severe brain damage, Charlie quickly figured out that Mommy has control over what songs play on the radio. When we make our 45 minute trek across the lake, I plug my iPod in and jam to whatever I feel like it.

But times, they are a’changin.’

Dammit.

Charlie has no patience for Sarah Bareilles, anything country, or Billy Joel. He lurves Leona Lewis, Gavin DeGraw, the Black Eyed Peas, Britney, and Lady Gaga. Anybody else know that Britney’s middle name was Jean?

The other day I had to listen to Poker Face twice on the ride home. Also, he seemed to find Blame it on the Alcohol quite entertaining. For the record, I hate that song and wouldn’t purposely listen to the entire thing without coercion. Also, for the record, I’ve had to employ a lot of my own discipline techniques as we navigate the scenario where my not-even-two-year-old thinks he should have say on what plays on the radio.

So, apparently it isn’t enough that I didn’t sleep through the night for almost a year or that I have a four inch scar as a result of his birth. No, Charlie will not rest til he’s King of the Radio.

So, damn, that was quick, and also, That’s My Boy because I don’t think there’s anything more normal than driving your mother crazy.

That’s my boy!

Filed Underother stuff, whining

Home

9:14 pm

Barbara’s doing a Blog Carnival and I was determined participate, so here I am, sliding into home at the last minute with this thing. The topic is “how have you arranged your home to stimulate your child’s development?” Since I’m putting this together at the last minute, I don’t have any current pictures. I wanted to put pictures in, though, so here are a bunch from the last year to illustrate my points.

I think I really wanted to participate because this is a topic that really speaks to me. I am one of those people that loves to peek into other people’s homes and see what they’re doing for their children. Here’s a chance to peek into mine–please pay no mind to giant pile of laundry on the floor.

The majority of our time is spent at home. On a perfect day, we’ll leave the house for a very short time or not at all. This is not because I like it this way–I actually love to get out and do things–but because Charlie’s has the most productive days when he’s home.

I think that every parent struggles with finding a routine/strategy that not only work for their family, but that is easy to keep up with. For us, I set up our home like a series of stations. Each area of the house has different equipment and different toys for Charlie to play with. This way, he’s in different positions throughout the day and stimulated in different ways.

When we’re in the kitchen, Charlie sits in his high chair. He has a few toys that he uses only in that spot, but we also work on self-feeding. Typically, I’ll put a few snacks of different sizes on his tray and let him experiment with that. While he still hasn’t mastered the pincher grasp, he can get almost any size object off his tray now. We also work on cup drinking while we’re in the kitchen. Charlie’s favorite activity while in the high chair is throwing things on the floor, which I am slightly less enthused about. Before Charlie was able to operate toys, we would hang bells off the kitchen counter so they rested very close to his hands. He would move his arms and the bells would sound, which he loved. It’s also fun to let him smell whatever we’re cooking with–garlic, lemon, cilantro–a little sensory stimulation.

When we’re in the living room, Charlie is typically on the floor. We make a circle of different toys and he crawls from one to the other, rolling and crawling along the way. When Charlie was younger, floor time was a lot more abbreviated. We would lie him face down on a crib toy and his movements would activate it. I would also put him on his back and let him kick a crib toy, which was the first toy he was able to activate.

We also usually work on weight-shifting or kneeling while we’re in the living room–something that doesn’t involve equipment.

We keep the equipment in the room with the computer. I’m cheating here because there are no pictures of the computer room. It’s also an office/guest bedroom/general junk room, so I’d rather die than take a picture in there. That is where we keep the stander and the Rifton chair, though. It’s a little personal bribery on my part. I love to be on the computer, so I put Charlie in his equipment while I’m on the computer. That way, I’m encouraged to use the equipment. I never put him in equipment back to back, so we’re usually in and out of the room a couple of times a day. Typically, I put him in his Rifton chair during the day and my husband and I put him in the stander at night and we all hang out in there as a family.

When I’m taking a shower, we put Charlie in his bed with one of those baby gym things overhead. He’s too old for it, but he loves it, so that’s fine with me. Plus, when it was developmentally appropriate, he wasn’t strong enough to really enjoy it.

We also put him in a reclining chair in the living room–usually in the evenings. He plays with toys here too and since it’s reclined he really has a chance to play with the toys without worrying about gross motor skills.

So, that’s our home. As you can see, we’re not equipment-crazy. Rather, I prefer to look at us as position-focused and just let the rest fall into place.