Speech update

Today Dan met with the speech team again (Casey the coordinator, Deanna the Developmental Specialist and Jessica the Speech Language Pathologist).  I was stuck at work but he recorded the whole thing on his phone for me to listen to when I came home. 

They went over the observations from the previous meeting, gave us a print out of their assessment and set up some goals to work on over the next three months.  I will repeat their summary for you:


Dexter is a very socially engaging child, and seems to enjoy the attention of adults.  His strengths include relationships to inanimate objects (how he plays with toys) and his ability to work through small frustrations to learn new skills.  Although he is not showing a delay in language skills, his speech intelligibility is reduced due to articulation errors.  Many of Dexter's words were difficult to understand.  Dexter is also displaying a 25% delay in self help, primarily because he is not able to say his name when asked and says "meh" instead of an approximation of his name.  Dexter transitioned easily between tasks, even though he wanted to take more time with some items.  For example he really liked the puzzle and did it over and over but was able to put it back in the bag without a tantrum. Gross motor - he is in the 27-30 month range, a slight delay - mostly balance delays. Fine motor - 33-36 range, age appropriate.  Dexter was able to build a three piece tunnel structure, showing again his ability to focus and complete tasks.  Relationship to inanimate objects - he is in the 36-42 month range,  Again Dexter easily masted several puzzles.  Language - he is in the 30-33 month range.  He understood prepositions such as under, on top and in and was able to follow several verbal directions.   His word production consisted mostly of vowel sounds.  Emotions - he is in the 30-36 month range showing a wide range of feelings. 

Goals:
1)  Use more consonants.  Dexter mostly says the vowels in words and skips over the consonants  either at the beginning or the end or both.  Consonants a 33 month old should be able to say are: P, B, M,K, G, W, H, N, T, D  No magic stuff here, just try and say the words for him and try to encourage him to repeat stuff.
2) Improve oral motor tone - fun things to do here include blowing bubbles, drinking a think drink through a straw, mirror play put yogurt on upper or lower lip and then try to lick it off while watching yourself in the mirror (both parents and Dexter get to play this), blow into a straw - they suggested putting a drop of watercolor paint on paper and then blowing on it to make it spread.
3) Continue to work the large muscles on the playgrounds, stairs, etc.
4) Try to get him to repeat the names of things.  If he wont say the word your trying to work on, try and trick him by saying to an alligator "what a nice dog" and hope he responds "no, gator"

Next event is Monday when he gets his hearing tested. I am sure it will be something like this:

48

Today the mailman brought me a horse puzzle.  It has 48 pieces!  It took me about 10 minutes to do it for the first time without any help from mommy.  I did my corners, then the edges and then the middle just like mommy and daddy taught me.  I just love puzzles so much! 

Potty Training Weekend

This weekend we tried to focus on potty training more.  The first half of Saturday Dexter ran around in underwear and continued to pee in his pants every 1-2 hours - It was not going well.  After lunch time we decided to take a cue from his cousin Ben and go around with no pants or underwear at all.  This was much more successful.  Instead of peeing every 1-2 hours he could hold it 3+ hours.  When he had to pee he would occasionally run to the potty and sit there for a minute but his real cue was asking to put underwear on, as if he couldn't pee without them on.  We would sit on the potty instead and he was able to go twice Saturday afternoon in the potty with no accidents since lunch.  Back in a diaper for nighttime. Sunday morning we started right off the bat with no pants and again he waited about 3-4 hours since he woke up before he peed - and this time he ran to the potty and peed all by himself. Then I got called into work and he had his nap with a diaper on so we called it a day for potty training.   We will try again next weekend and see if we can build on these little successes. 

Favorite Things

Here are some of my favorite things: Blocks, Cars & Dinosaurs!

Puzzle Video # 2

The exciting sequel to the first puzzle video!  Dexter has recently upgraded from 12 piece puzzles to 24 piece puzzles. He also decided to share his old 12 piece with his classmates and it is now one of the puzzles in his classroom.  His teacher mentioned to me the other day he does the hardest puzzle in the room all the time so I figured a new puzzle for the classroom would be nice for all the kids. 

So here is his latest puzzle video, 5minutes long, enjoy!

Speech Pathologist

Today was my second speech meeting.  Three ladies came to my house and played with me for an hour.  They asked me to do things while they also asked me, and mommy and daddy, questions.  Various tasks I mastered - a shape puzzle (child's play compared to my 24 piece puzzle), stacking blocks, kicking a ball, threading a string through balls (the picture above), playing with a baby doll and a dog.  Tasks I did ok with - drawing circles and lines on a paper, identifying pictures (I would point to each one correctly but could not say the name for most), jumping and standing on one leg.

Observations they made and stuff I need to work on:  They think I have low muscle tone (Hypotonia - for the medical folk out there) - when I get excited I tend to jump around and stick out my tongue, I might even drool a bit. I really only eat soft foods (grapes over apples, beans over meat, etc)  While I can walk and run fine now it was a bit delayed compared to my friends.  I have always been cautious when jumping still preferring to hold on to something for balance. I also didn't even have a tooth out when I turned one so my mouth has been a bit slow to develop. 

Reading up on Hypotonia: Speech difficulties can result from hypotonia. Low-tone children learn to speak later than their peers, even if they appear to understand a large vocabulary, or can obey simple commands. Difficulties with muscles in the mouth and jaw can inhibit proper pronunciation, and discourage experimentation with word combination and sentence-forming.

So the plan right now is to keep trying to encourage talking as much as possible and they suggested trying to get me to eat more mouth muscle challenging foods - like celery sticks, carrot sticks, smoothies from a straw, even twizzlers or gummies!

We meet again next Tuesday the 31st.  At that meeting we are going to set up some goals and then working on meeting them!

Tummy Time

It only took 2 years, 8 months and 2 weeks but I finally went on my tummy in the bathtub.  I can't believe I waited this long, there is tons of fun to be had on your tummy!

Hi

Just wanted to say hi to all my friends and monsters out there.

Daddy Time

 Today was a holiday so Daddy and I didn't have to go to work or school.  Instead we went to the dentist and the dinosaur museum.  

Here is me standing in the footprint of a T-Rex.

My new dinosaur issued a challenge to one of the dinosaurs outside of the museum. Under my command, I feel that we fared exceptionally well.

"You know the difference between you and me? I make dentistry look GOOOOD."

Comic Con

Hanging with some storm troopers at the ABQ comic con - hosted at the Hard Rock Casino. One of the stormtroopers is our neighbor!

Dan, Dexter and the Hulk!  Lou Ferrigno

Iron Man!

Mystique and Dan.  Mystique is actually one of my co-workers at the hospital!

We had a fun time at the comic con.  Lots of people were dressed up and Dexter really got a kick out of seeing everyone.  There were also a few big name stars there like actors from True Blood, Walking Dead and Lt. Data from Star Trek.

Speech

First off - what is a post without a picture of Dexter?

Last month Dexter was referred to Alta Mira - it is a company that works with the New Mexico Infant and Toddler program to help with early intervention needs on kids under 3 years old.  He was referred because of his speech delay.  Today my assigned program coordinator, Casey, came out to the house to check out his surroundings and ask several baseline questions about his health history, his physical skills, his verbal skills, how he deals with situations, how he does with normal day activities, his emotional responses to situations, what he likes to play with, etc. 

Now that all the baseline information has been gathered, in two weeks (1/23/11) she will be returning to our house with a speech therapist to do a more in depth evaluation and run Dexter through some tests in various areas.  If he looks like he needs assistance at that point we will begin speech therapy with him on a routine basis.  I am sure he could use a little extra help with his speech.  He certainly understands everything we tell him and he is very self sufficient doing things but he just doesn't talk much or when he does talk its not very clear.

Tricycle

Today we all went outside while I practiced riding my tricycle.  I have not ridden it in months so I was a bit rusty.

Dog Baths

It might be cold outside but inside it is swimsuit weather! 

Today I got to help give both dogs their bath.  (Do you like the Christmas lights up behind the couch in the shape of a heart - daddy didn't want to hang them outside this year so he got creative inside)

Puzzle boy!

I really love to do puzzles.  I will do shape puzzles but I really love to do jigsaw puzzles!  I got two for Christmas and when my box arrived yesterday with all my Maryland presents I got to do them.  One is a farm and another is Cars.