success!

Travis ate a raisin tonight! And a tiny bit of carrot! You can't imagine my delight. I started with raisins tonight, again did baby steps with just touching it with his tongue, holding it with his teeth, then taking itty bitty bites. His first raisin he ate in about seven bites, if you can imagine that, tearing tiny little pieces off. By his fourth he actually put the whole darn thing in his mouth, I could hardly believe it. So we decided to try a little bit of carrot again, he didn't do quite as well with that as he did with the raisin but it is worlds ahead of where we were a few months ago.

I just got back from the gym, Ben has been horribly sick for the past few weeks, this week the worst, so I've been on kid duty for both mornings and lunchtime. Normally we switch back and forth, I drop the kids off in the morning and he picks Travis up from school at lunch, or vice versa. That way I can use whichever one I don't have kid duty on to work out. Anyway, he was feeling a little better this evening so I gave them all baths and put Sophie to bed, and he agreed to put the boys to bed so I could get in a workout. I'm totally loving my workout time and I think Ben's pretty confident that his present to me -- the gym membership -- is money well spent.

BSU Homecoming this weekend, looking forward to seeing old college buddies. Sounds like most of us (yours truly included) are getting babysitters for the actual tailgating and the game, so we won't be the 'old people with kids' hanging out with all the college folk. We'll just be the 'old people' hanging out with all the college folk. Hooray.

My journey with Apraxia

Well here it is. I've decided to write a blog about our battle with apraxia. The battle is far from won at this point -- but I think I could get some value from expressing some of what we've been going through. I've struggled a lot with it, some times more than others -- and as of late that struggle seems to have intensified somewhat.

So, at Travis's two-year old doc appointment, I mentioned to the doctor about possible speech issues. At that point, I really wasn't worried. I thought he was perhaps a little behind but not much else. He wasn't really speech delayed - his speech was just unintelligible. I did a little research in the months that followed and any speech concerns focused primarily on speech delays. Everything said, "see your doctor if your child doesn't have x number of words by 2 yrs old". Well, he had a bazillion words -- its just that most people couldn't understand them. I could, of course, but most people couldn't. And I couldn't imagine that they expected all those words to be perfectly pronounced at age 2. Take Noah, for instance, he's a few months past two years old, has an insane vocabulary, but certainly doesn't pronounce everything correctly. With the benefit of comparison, I can clearly tell that Travis was light years behind Noah when he was that age...but as a first time mom, I didn't know for sure that the pronunciation issues were all that deep-seated, and thought perhaps they'd just clear up over time. All the parenting books and magazines said its not that unusual for a child to fall behind in certain developmental areas when they're overloading on learning another one....so, I thought, hey... Travis is such a smart kid, maybe his brain is focusing on critical thinking skills, unraveling the human genome, solving the Rubix cube, whatever... so he's not quite so focused on the speech. At any rate, I brought it up in passing at his 2-yr appointment, doc said lets just keep an eye on it and I bet you'll see it improve over the next 3-4 months.

Well, it didn't, at least not terribly noticeably, although it did a little bit. And I never really knew when to draw the line. I kept holding out hope that it would get better on its own. In retrospect, I wish I would have pushed it sooner, but I'm just not the type of person to jump immediately to outside intervention. I tried to work with him at home and just kept blindly thinking it would get better. I've done a lot of beating myself up over not getting him enrolled in speech therapy earlier, thinking he could be x percent improved over where he right now if I'd just gotten him started earlier.

So, at about 2 yrs and 9 months or so, I called the doctor and got a referral to the First Steps program which has a speech therapy component. Called them and they said it would take a few weeks to get an evaluation appointment, and then they'd only be able to treat him until he turned three at which point they have to turn him over to the school system who would have to re-evaluate so it probably wasn't worth it to go through it, we should just wait the few months until he turned three and start with the school program. So we did.

Shortly after his third birthday, we had the school evaluation, informal diagnosis of apraxia and began the one-on-one speech therapy. It was then that we learned that the problem was likely an issue of Travis's brain not sending the right messages to his muscles to allow them to form the words correctly. It was clearly not a cognition problem because the kid was sharp as a tack. He spoke primarily in vowel sounds, very few consonant sounds which he used occasionally correctly but more often incorrectly. Never used consonants in the middle of a word. The average person could probably understand about 5% of his speech. This was when it got the worst for me as I realized this wasn't something that would just improve on its own with a little time, and that we were going to have quite a road ahead of us. This is also when I started battling with the guilt of perhaps making a harder way for my son by not having been more aggressive and getting treatment started sooner.

Now, here we are, over a year and a half later, and certainly things have improved. I would say he is 85-90% intelligible to most people. If they're paying attention. I cried at back-t0-school night at his new Pre-K because his teacher told me she has a hard time understanding him. If you're talking to him one-on-one, for the most part he's understandable. If he's in a classroom with 19 other kids and he's one of many vying for attention, its probably much more difficult. So now I worry incessantly about whether he's adapting well socially in the class, if other kids avoid him because they can't understand him very well... if the teachers don't even understand him, does that mean he's all alone in the classroom? I can't be there by his side to help people understand what he's saying, how do I protect him, how do I get other people to realize what a fabulous little kid he is?

So we are doing private speech therapy on the side to address remaining issues. Ironically, since his speech two years ago was mostly just vowels, its his vowels now that need the most work. The hospital therapist said that, because jaw placement varies extremely slightly among the vowel sounds, that its likely jaw weakness that leads to his incorrect vowel pronunciation. He has a very difficult time saying "uh" and "oy" sounds, "a" sounds like "i", and short vowel sounds (short e in particular) are tougher. So we are currently working on jaw strengthening to hopefully remedy this situation.

Then there's the other issues. Fine motor skills, due to muscle weakness in his hands -- he has a difficult time coloring, holding writing utensils, changing his clothes, etc. He can do it, but its just not that easy for him. Then there's the feeding issue. As it turns out, the overactive gag reflex is a huge problem. His problem is not with the flavor of foods. I don't think its even just a texture issue. Yesterday, we did an exercise with a carrot stick where I had him hold the carrot stick in his teeth but not bite it, then put it against his tongue but again not bite it. Then I had him take a tiny shaving off the carrot stick, which he swallowed just fine (and said, yummmm, that's good....), but when I had him take an actual bite of it, it was too much for his poor tongue and he gagged and just couldn't keep it in his mouth. I then had him take just a tiny bit of carrot, place it on his tongue and hold it there for a few seconds, and then take it off. I was stunned by how hard this was for him. I told him we just have to work on training his tongue not to freak out, and we'd have to practice with carrot sticks for a while. I don't know how much energy I'll have for this....it brought me to tears yesterday seeing him struggle so much with something that most people would think nothing about.

And that's the end of my story. Hopefully in a year or so I'll be able to report that speech and feeding issues are 100% resolved. Until then, I'm just hoping not to be a total basket-case, for my children's sake. And my husband's (that's another post altogether.... its not that he doesn't take this seriously but he also doesn't stress about it, it just is what it is for him).

Anybody looking for more resources, visit www.apraxia-kids.org.

Attitude adjustment

I could learn a thing or two from my four-year-old.

Today, I went to pick the kids up after work, and Travis was asleep when I got to mom's. He'd kind of outgrown his naps, but now that he has to get up and go to school every day, he has picked the afternoon nap back up, at least on school days. So anyway, I get there, have to wake him up, he's a little groggy and definitely grumpy. And, as it turns out, Sophie had knocked over a cup of water earlier, and one of Moose's antlers was a tiny bit wet. Well, this was just too much for Travis to deal with in his sleepy emotional state, and he started crying nearly uncontrollably, going on and on about moose being wet.

So I load everyone up in the car, toss Moose into the front passenger seat, try to console Travis by assuring him I'll get Moose in the dryer as soon as we get home, to no avail and continuous wailing from the back seat. Finally, I exasperatedly flip Moose back into the backseat hoping the kid will just take hold of him and shut up for a minute, wet antler and all.

And miraculously, he does. He said, with tear-stained cheeks and a residual sniffle, "Mom, I didn't even know that Moose would calm me down even when he's a little wet. I discovered something new today. This is the best day ever!" I kid you not. I was astounded. I cannot believe how sweet this kid is. He literally tries to find the good in any situation, if at all possible.

For example, last week at speech therapy, his therapist asked him if he liked pudding. Now, mind you, this is also feeding therapy, so what he eats and how he eats it is kind of a big deal. So when she asked that, I thought, hey, great, something he actually does like. So she asks if he likes chocolate pudding or vanilla pudding, and he says "well, I love chocolate!" So off she goes. She comes back a few minutes later with vanilla pudding in hand and says, "Travis, I am so sorry, we had two big, unopened boxes of pudding and we all thought it was one box of chocolate and one box of vanilla but it turns out it was two boxes of vanilla -- so we don't have any chocolate pudding, I am so sorry! I hope this is okay!" and Travis immediately breaks out into this huge smile and says, "oh, I really like vanilla. I really wanted to have vanilla but I didn't know if you would have any. If you have vanilla I really want it." It's like he really wanted her to not feel bad about the whole thing. She was thrilled and delighted and went on and on about what a good attitude he has.

Meanwhile, I had a meltdown this weekend because... well, I don't even remember why. I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with soggy stuffed animals or pudding, but still. I could learn a thing or two from my four-year-old.

Productive Day

Me: Dusting

Travis, age 4: Trying to help. Gets distracted. Races around room flinging dust cloth through the air.

Noah, age 2: Trying to help. Gets distracted by older brother. Races around the room following a flying dust cloth, swatting at dust speckles floating through the air.

Sophie, age 9 months. Crawling around the room, trying to get my attention, screaming bloody murder.

Ben: Snoring on the couch.

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Me: Vacuuming

Travis: Running around the room, pretending to avoid getting swept up by the vacuum cleaner. Occasional screeching.

Noah: Running around the room, emulating his older brother. Has no idea what he's supposed to be pretending to do. Constant screeching.

Sophie: Sitting square in the middle of the floor, tears streaking down her cheeks and full-on wail in high power.

Ben: Snoring on the couch.

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Me: Steam Cleaing

Travis: Sliding around the carpet. Leaving soggy footprints everywhere.

Noah: Still following his brother. Leaving soggy footprints everywhere.

Sophie: Being toted around the living room as she forces her mother to steam clean one-handed. Occasional sniffle.

Ben: Snoring on the couch.

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Baby steps and cheese

Second feeding therapy appointment tonight, Travis did very well again. Willing to try what she asked, and even ate some pudding with Cheerios that surprised me. I got inspired to try some new things on my own, and managed to get Travis to eat a few bites of chicken nugget with tiny bits of string cheese added. We gave his elephant nugget a cheese hat, and the lion an eye and shoes made of cheese. He did eat them, then I tried to get him to eat a couple bites of cheese alone, but he still gagged and choked as per usual. Baby steps.

Someone made a comment to me that if I only fed him the food I wanted him to eat (more veggies, whatever we're eating for dinner, etc.), that he'd eventually eat it rather than starve. But I kind of equate that to those people who don't teach their deaf children sign language. I don't feel like I'm indulging him just because I'm not forcing food down his throat. He truly has a physical problem that prohibits him from eating normally. Far be it from me to judge anyone else on their preferred parenting methods, but I do feel like I did the right thing by not forcing that on him. I certainly went through phases where I second-guessed myself, sent him to bed without eating since he didn't eat what I put on his plate, etc. I still do, in fact (second guess myself, that is). But I knew from the beginning that I did not want to make the food battle one that consumed our lives, so I've taken it fairly easy and tried not to get too worked up about it. (If Ben's reading this, I guarantee you he's snorting under his breath right now, thinking "this is what you call not getting worked up?!? I can only imagine what our lives would have been like if you had allowed yourself to get worked up about this...") But my point is, my goal has been to get through this as reasonably as possible without unnecessarily stressing myself out and pushing too much on my poor son, who tries so hard to please me but just physically can't force his tongue to comply.

Noah, on the other hand, he's just a stinker. He just decides he doesn't want to eat, just to be a pill. So I feel much better about telling him it's this or nothing, because I know full well he's just trying to test me by refusing. He's cute, but I'm still smarter.

Speaking of cute, here's my babies on the day of the Colts' regular season opener:

Travis and Ben have been sick with pneumonia, its been a very rough week at the Davidson household.

Also, in keeping with the baby steps theme of this post, Sophie's taken to trying to balance. She's not quite furniture cruising yet, but she does pull herself up onto anything and everything. This week, she's been pulling up, then letting go with both hands and trying to balance. Not much longer now, folks.

new digs

Yesterday I took Travis into my office building with me to make my official move from cube to office. The batteries were almost dead in my camera, so the flash didn't work, but, pictures of the new digs:

On Friday, my team surprised me with some flowers and a congratulatory card, and then we headed out for an impromptu group lunch. It was very nice.

Noah's slowly moving out of his clingy phase, I think. He still wants me to pick him up an awful lot, but he's doing much better when babysitters come over and all. We went out to dinner Friday night with one of Ben's co-workers, her daughter watched the kids, and Noah just trotted over to me, gave me a kiss and a hug, and said "g'bye mom" without a second thought. Today at church he scampered into the play room and never looked back. Afterwards he said "I had fun in the play room at church! I'm so happy to see you!" A far cry from the death grip I got last week.

Sophie, meanwhile, is picking up any clinginess that Noah's leaving behind. Most days, she crawls around the house following me, crying, tears streaming down her face, until I pick her up. Case in point, this is Sophie after finally catching up with me the other day:

Finally, victory:

imagination button

Today I asked Travis where he got such an imagination, and he looked at me and matter-of-factly said, "from my imagination button". A little more probing determined that said button is located on the back of his neck. Naturally.

Remember-y

Travis had his first feeding therapy appointment today; the eval so we can start actual therapy finally. He did good, answered questions, talked about pictures, etc. Its really a combination speech and feeding issue, since it primarily involves muscle weakness which is contributing to the problems in both areas.

At any rate, Travis was a real crack-up during the appointment. Kind of a chatterbox, which is a little unlike him (around strangers at least), which is a good sign I think. She had him look at pictures and then she would ask questions about those pictures to elicit certain responses. And then all of a sudden he'd go off on some tangent about how "my dad bought me my very own Nemo fishing pole. I caught two fish on it. One was really little but the second was a little bigger. We fish on a lake at grandma and pa-pas house on my dad's fishing boat. It's fast and sometimes I get to help drive it. Sometimes we stand on the dock on go fishing...." and on and on. Later on, he was describing the therapy appointment to my mom, and he commented that he told the therapist a "remembery". He meant "memory". I love it.

So, here's hoping we're on the road to recovery. Maybe soon I'll be able to get this boy to eat a hot dog. Or a candy bar.

As I type, Sophie is strapped into her high chair drinking a bottle. Every so often she drops it on the floor. I've perfected the art of slave-driving my children, however, so I just have to say, "Noah! Sophie dropped her bottle!" and he races into the kitchen shouting "I can gick it!" (get it) and quickly retrieves it for her. Then he bounds in here exclaiming "I did it!" and is very awful proud of himself. It's quite a racket I've got going here.

Jumping Jacks

Today at Pre-K, Travis filled up his sticker chart, meaning he got to pick a prize from the prize box. He picked a jumprope and jacks set. He's very excited about both. It's also his first encounter with both. (Yes, even with a superstar jumproping aunt, he's never actually jumped rope before. I fully expect, however, that she'll turn him into her protege, teach him the 'ropes', so to speak, and he'll be an expert before spring. Got it, Jody?)

In other school news, rock-throwing incident has not recurred. I'm staying out of it for now.

Went to free museum day at Health Works. Some pics below, full set here.

Travis Davidson, DDS

Showin off his ink. I mean paint.

Noah made a friend. They're holding hands. Very cute.

They made "unusual hats" as Travis calls them. I'll say.

I think Noah might have a touch of some kind of bug. He's not feeling too well.

I'll be making the move to my new space at work later this week. Finally, my own office.

And that's all. Davidson OUT

Cows and cousins

Ahhh, Labor Day weekend. Saturday went to the in-laws, kids played with cousins. Sunday went to my sister's, kids played with cousins. Today went to a ball game, no cousins there, but at least a bouncy house for the boys to enjoy.

This morning Travis and I went to the bookstore to pick out a few chapter books for him, then decided to stop by Chick-Fil-A on the way home, where we ran into what can only be described as utter chaos. It was apparently chicken-sandwich-giveaway day at Chick-Fil-A, unbeknownst to me. I just picked it cause it has a play room with a slide. Anyway, when we got there, the restaurant was only mildly packed and we got our food fairly quickly. Three minutes later, the place was swarming with people. And a cow. Travis was pretty pumped up about the cow. I got a short video of him on the way out. I mean, for real, its not that often you run into people dressed as livestock at a fast food restaurant.

Other pics of the weekend.....

Sophie doing what she does best

Big fan

Travis in the fun zone

adorable headache

Thanks to my fabulous photographer, looks like the session yesterday will turn out some pretty nice pics. (Look for her Sept 3rd blog entry for the sneak peeks.)

www.jennyhokephotography.com

Thanks Jenny!

As per usual, I could barely get Noah to cooperate in any fashion. Did not want to sit for pictures. Did not want to stand for pictures. Did not want to smile, laugh, or stay in one place for pictures. Did want to run around screaming like a maniac showing off his dance moves and his jumping abilities. I tell ya, its a good thing he's cute.

Travis did great. Sophie did reasonably well. I was a mess.

backyardin' it

Decided to take the Flipcam outside for a few shots of the kiddos playing in the backyard. View the whole set here, but here are a few of my favs:

Toughest job in the World

I feel like I should get paid to change Sophie's clothes. That's pretty much the only reason someone would take on that kind of a job...if they were guaranteed a steady paycheck. I mean, it's seriously a 20-minute endeavor. The girl weighs eighteen pounds soaking wet, but still, she somehow manages to outsmart me every single time. Take pajama time tonight, for instance. I get one leg in, then the other leg but now the first leg is out, then I get the first leg back in and the second leg is out so then I give up on the legs (first leg back out by now anyway) and try for the arms.., so I get one arm in, then try for a leg again, and then the arm is out. I work in a frenzy for a minute or so and then it turns out both legs are in one leg hole and her arm is in but the arm hole's inside out. Finally I give up and put her in a sleep sack.