New schedule

I heard from Erin, our new speech therapist, this afternoon, and she is going to start this Thursday at 10:30 am. She knows Monica, having worked with her before, and is taking a couple of her kids. She sounds really nice on the phone, so I hope Dominick takes to her. He's been doing so much better lately that I don't think it should be an issue. He's going to have a busy Thursday morning, though, because his parent educator is coming at 8:30. That will leave a slight break in between visits.

Dom's become quite the little chatterbox. He provides a running commentary in the car which is quite amusing: "light on. stop sign. more stop signs. yield sign. fire hydrant. more fire hydrants. stop sign. tree. more oozic (music). Mommy in the dar (car). new darseat," that kind of thing. At home, he's more likely to string words together , like "follow me, truck fall down, light on please, three fans downstairs, I see tear, turn the page, sit on Mommy," etc. And he really does repeat everything. Then again, he'll surprise me by spontaneously using a new word, like when he picked up a toy fish today and said it was squeaky. I'm sure he's heard the word, but it's not one that comes up terribly often.

Dominick did something else new (and funny) recently. The other day, he held a pretend phone conversation while I was talking to Mike at work. He picked up the other phone, pushed a button and started talking, using lots of "ohs" and "mmms" in a conversational tone. Then he said "bye" and pushed the off button.

And finally, another car update: we bought a 2002 Honda CR-V that's at a dealership in Kansas City, so if all goes as planned, Mike and a friend are going to pick it up on Thursday after work and arrive back very late. The rental car went back last night, so we are down to one car for about three days. Oh well.

Bye-bye, Monica. Bye-bye, car.

How fitting that on Monica's last day, Dominick finally said her name. He said it before she got here, while he was watching out the window, and when she left, he said "Bye-bye, Monica." When she heard it, she said "How cute is that?"

The last session went pretty well. Dom threw a little fit when he wanted to play with the cups and bears his own way, but other than that, he behaved and used lots of words. Monica said he was a little parrot, which is exactly where he should be at his age. Yay!

Supposedly, we have a new therapist named Erin, but we haven't heard from her yet. If we want to start next week, I'd better contact her today. We need to make sure she has openings in the morning on days we are available, too.

Here's an update on the car situation: we found out Tuesday afternoon that it was indeed totaled. We have the rental car until Monday, so we've been scrambling to locate another car and start setting up financing. The car we're most interested in is actually in Kansas City, but if we buy it, we can't pick it up until next week when we have a check from the insurance company (we just mailed the title today) and the loan money. So it's looking like we'll be down to one car for a few days.

A little off-topic

Things have been a little crazy around here lately. Perhaps the craziest is that Mike decided to tackle our chimney repair project himself after we were unsatisfied with the bids we received. He spent all of Saturday and Sunday up on a rented lift, cleaning out and repointing mortar joints and patching the spalled bricks. It looks pretty good, I have to say, though we still have to have it painted. Goodbye, bright-red painted bricks! (They're actually white.) I can't wait.

Only slightly less crazy is the fact that Dom and I were involved in a car accident on Friday morning. I guess after 16 years of driving, it was bound to happen at some point. It was the other driver's fault, which he freely admitted, thank goodness. Our car was damaged pretty badly along the entire right side, perhaps enough for it to be declared a total loss. We took it to the the repair shop this morning and are awaiting an estimate. In the meantime, we've got a Sebring. The insurance will also replace Dom's car seat, now that it's been in an accident. And yes, Dom and I are both fine.

With all this going on, I've still been trying to line up a new speech therapist. I gave Carol a couple of names today, and she is waiting to hear back from them. I hope it will be soon.

Dom's still doing very well with his speech, using lots of labeling and mimicking. He's started saying "bless you" when someone sneezes, and with my allergies, he has plenty of opportunities. Today he sneezed, so he said "bless you," then he sneezed again and said "other bless you." I thought that was remarkably cute. It's also funny how any triangle he sees is now a yield sign. We're still working to get him to say "I want ___," and sometimes he does, though he's still more likely to fill in the blank.

That's it for now. My champion napper has been replaced with a very uncooperative little boy. I knew it was too good to last.

PS. I just realized that Dominick is 2 1/2 today. How time flies.

Monica's news

We are losing our speech therapist: Monica is moving to New York. We will see her next week for the last time. Not only is this extremely disappointing, as we like her a lot, but it means that we have to find a new therapist for the remaining six months of Dominick's First Steps services. Monica thinks it won't be too difficult because with the school year just starting, most of the therapists should have openings. I need to revisit the provider matrix and give Carol one or two names to contact. Ideally, we will find someone fabulous who has a Wednesday, Thursday or Friday morning opening and can start two weeks from now. Wish us luck.

IFSP review/SSD transition meeting

Today was a busy day. OT has moved to Mondays, so we had that at 8:15 am. I'm glad, actually, because that makes Tuesday mornings less crazy.

At 2:30 pm, Dom's IFSP review took place. It was combined with the Special School District transition meeting because both were due so close together. In attendance were Carol from First Steps, Jacqui, Monica, and the two district representatives, Marty from the Webster Groves School District and Angela from the Special School District. Mike was also able to be here. Brandie from Parents as Teachers could not attend but is going to call me tomorrow morning to find out how the meeting went. Dominick napped through the whole thing, just as I was hoping he would.

First we went over Dom's progress, comparing it to our original IFSP, which is basically a plan for goals and strategies. Where necessary, we revised them, but a lot of the points remained the same. Our focus for the next six months is going to be on continuing to improve Dom's vocabulary and conversational speech and helping him adapt to social situations.

Marty and Angela mentioned a PAT program I'd heard of before called Stay and Play. It's a weekly, two-hour playtime that runs for 10 weeks beginning in October. When I talk to Brandie tomorrow, I will ask her about it. We're very interested in this program, especially as a sort of stepping stone to a more structured preschool setting.

As for the SSD program, it sounds really wonderful. The (half) days would be somewhat structured, but there would be different activities within that structure. The teachers make a concerted effort to mix things up so that the kids don't become accustomed to one set routine. There's also a mixture of IEP kids (those who have a diagnosis of a developmental delay, which is what they are given when they are accepted into SSD) and non-IEP kids. Therapists come into the classroom to work with the kids.

I was encouraged because both representatives, after hearing about Dominick, thought he would benefit from the program and recommended a referral for an evaluation. I had been concerned that because he's so smart and progressing so well, he might not be eligible, but that is not necessarily the case. SSD recognizes that those kids need services, too, in order to function well in a social or educational setting. Otherwise, they tend to isolate themselves, and we don't want that when Dom starts kindergarten in a few years.

If Dominick is accepted, he would transition immediately after his First Steps services end. He'll have to undergo more evaluations, probably starting in January. SSD will contact us in October to set up the evaluations. Angela and Marty also recommended that we visit the facility around the same time.

We took in a lot of information today, but I think that's the gist of it. We have some materials to read and forms to sign to get the process started, and I will see what we need to do about putting Dom on the list for Stay and Play. If he gets in, we'll be pretty busy this fall.

The joys of two

Things have gotten interesting lately. Dominick is making it quite clear that he is a two-year-old, thank you very much. If something doesn't go his way, he can go from sweet and happy to nightmarish in a split second. There's been lots of yelling, throwing, hitting and kicking. Graham crackers brought it on twice this week. If he's given a full sheet of graham crackers and the individual rectangles don't break exactly along the lines when he snaps them apart, he will kick and scream and refuse to touch the imperfect cracker bits. The second time it happened, I quickly swapped him one of my pristine rectangles for his broken one, and he calmed down. On Wednesday, Monica got to see a very different side of Dominick. He spent the first 20 minutes of the session throwing a tantrum after I took away a book he'd thrown twice and broken just before Monica arrived. There are just a couple of examples. It's been a lot of fun.

To help Dom adjust when he eventually goes into a preschool or parents' day out program, we're trying to encourage him to be more flexible about the way he does things. Right now, he's pretty particular. For example, he always does his train/truck/boat/airplane puzzles in that order, so one day Jacqui had him do them in a different order. He resisted but eventually worked something other than the train first. Dominick likes to chase us around the house in a big circle, and he always wants to go behind the chair in the living room, which has to be moved if he's on his tricycle. So I've started telling him we have to go another way because there isn't room. To really mix it up, we should go clockwise around the house. I wonder how he'd react to that!

By the way, I'm writing this from Naylor, MO, where we're visiting Mike's parents. I've been incredibly sick today with allergies. Does the ragweed season start earlier down here or something? Dominick has done alright, though he's had a couple of meltdowns today. Both happened because we are in a different place with different people. He did, however, behave while Mike and I went for our first meal out alone this year. We really need to find a regular babysitter, not only for us but to help Dominick get used to being around other people without us there.

Sorry!

It was brought to my attention last night that I hadn't posted in nine days (though really it was still eight at the time--ha!), so to avoid disappointing my avid readers any further, here is the latest on Dominick.

First, for those of you who knew he was sick yesterday, I am happy to report that he is much better now. The fever is gone, the cough is still here but not as frequent, and he seems to be acting normally.

Last Tuesday morning, Jacqui arrived with a Hunt's pudding cup in her hand. It turns out she wanted Dominick to paint with pudding. We set him up at the table and gave him a small paintbrush and several pieces of paper. Dom took to the painting pretty well, so then Jacqui took his finger and tried to dip it into the pudding. He resisted and went back to using the brush, but then he eventually allowed Jacqui to show him how to finger paint. Jacqui also painted his hand and made handprints on the paper (see photo). We worked up to bigger blobs of pudding, and Dom actually put his hand in it and squished it around. Throughout, he kept asking for more. I was fairly surprised, considering how he'd reacted the last time we tried something similar (mayonnaise). By the way, I did take a picture of Dominick pudding-painting, but it's currently imprisoned in my film camera, so I'll have to upload it after I've finished the roll and developed the pictures.

Dom keeps using new words all the time. The most interesting one lately was dust jacket. (For the record, he doesn't like them.) He also repeated "more wrath" when he and Mike were horsing around and Mike (playfully, of course) threatened him. For some reason, he calls the computer "bee-uh bee-uh." And when he's playing with a balloon, Dom always asks to "bop it."

I've also noticed that Dom's words are getting clearer. For example, instead of saying "a-bet" for airplane and open, he's saying "a-ben." Train, which used to be "choo-choo," is now sometimes "too-rain," and truck ("guck") is becoming "too-ruck." Stop sign has evolved from "saw-tuh sign" to "bop sign" to "sot sign." He's getting there.

Dominick can pretty much recite "Goodnight Moon" as I read it to him. We must have read it hundreds of times, so he should have it memorized by now. I'll leave out certain words, and he fills them in, but he can do the last lines ("Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere") by himself.

This boy is so smart it's scary. He has mastered a set of four jigsaw puzzles--train, truck, boat, and airplane, each having 12 pieces--which he always works in that order. He stacks and puts the pieces away in reverse order. This morning, we were putting the train together, but most of the pieces were upside down on the floor. If I pointed to a piece, he could name the puzzle just based on the shape. He was right every time. Then, when we needed another piece for the train, I asked him to find it from among a stack of several upside-down pieces, and he immediately pulled out the right one. It really was amazing.