Catch Up Stuff, but Mostly Speech

Whoa, I am seriously behind on the blogs - sorry about that.... I love reading everyones' blogs and I love blogging myself, but lately I've been in kind of a funk I guess you'd call it... Maybe it's the January let down from the holidays or maybe it's due to some other stresses that have been going on, but I've just not been very posty. There has been a lot going on though, so I'll make this a catch up post. (Warning, this may be long and, as I often do, I will probably be using this post as a form of therapy.)

Happy New Year!!
I can't believe it's already the 9th of January 2008. It just feels so strange. I can't believe we are 8 years out from 2000 - where has the time been going? I swear it's been speeding up! We spent new years eve with lovely friends playing Rock Band - which I am horrible at, and eating yummy yummy treats. It was very very fun!!
Sophie's Recital
Also Sophie had her piano recital on Dec. 30th and it was great. She played "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and did a really good job. Yay Sophie!!

Speech
Here's the part of the catch up that's been most stressful for me. SPEECH. Nina's speech. Back at her 12 month check up the doctor was really worried that she didn't babble very much and at that point I was just like "whatever, she's fine". I didn't want to worry about speech at only 1 year old. Then at her 15 month check up the doctor was even more worried that she only had one word (Daddy or "Da - eeee" - congratulations Adrian:)) and was still not babbling a whole lot, so after much urging from her pediatrician, who even wrote the county Infants and Toddler's number on a prescription slip and all but made me promise I would call, I called the Infants and Toddlers program to have her evaluated. This was a hard step for me. As you all probably know I've had ups and downs with Ben and speech issues. He's been evaluated 3 times, but never was delayed enough to qualify for services and sometimes the evaluators were not "gentle" in there evaluations. And so that all made me not want to start again with Nina... She's so little and it's hard for me to even believe she's old enough to be talking at all... I'm sure that's partly due to my denial that my baby is actually a toddler! Crazy!

Anywho, back to the speech story - Infants and Toddlers came out and did the initial evaluation and then because they saw that there were some issues they scheduled a formal eval. The biggest "issue" that the evaluator saw was that Nina should respond to her name much more than she did during the initial evaluation and I've been worried about this too. Nina hardly ever turns toward you when you say her name. I used to think she was ignoring me and she didn't want to stop doing whatever she was doing. The evaluator tried to get her to respond to her name several times and she never did until the woman touched her shoulder and then she looked at her. I do worry about that and she is scheduled for a hearing test this week. So after that initial eval a formal evaluation was scheduled and that was last Friday.

The formal evaluation went as well as I could hope. Nina was in a really good mood and played with the speech therapist as long as I was very close to her. The hardest part for me was dealing with all the questions (that they have to ask as part of the evaluation) like - do you read to Nina? do you interact with her in a happy and excited voice? do you sing to her? I do these things. It's just the questions themselves, it's like if I just did these things more or better she would be talking. Like they are asking how big of a role I, as her mother, have played in her speech delay and that just makes me weary. Guilt. Lots of it. But the therapists were really nice and at the end when they looked over all the forms and charts it came out that Nina is delayed by more than 25% and has qualified for services. One of the speech therapists wanted to wait another 2 months to evaluate her again, but the other one said, "No, she's delayed. Let's start services now." They proceeded to have a discussion amongst themselves (kind of a quiet argument which was a little uncomfortable) and then both said to me that they wanted to start speech therapy as soon as possible. So there it is.. I figure speech therapy can't hurt anything, it can only help and if she has a "language explosion" in the next couple of months which can happen to kids her age with speech delays, then great... They'll stop services and it'll all be good. But for now she'll have speech therapy in our home and I'm happy about it.

So here's the good and the bad of the whole speech thing right now. The bad - having to embark on another journey through SPEECH stuff. Dang. But you do what you gotta do. Then the other bad thing about the whole "speech thing" is the reaction I get from others when I tell them Nina has a delay or is going to have speech therapy. Some people, especially friends have been wonderful and supportive (thank you, thank you, kind friends!), but then you also get 2 other reactions:

Hard to deal with reaction #1 - You must be crazy, why on earth are you worried about your 17 month old's speech, let her be a baby, you are over-reacting, don't worry she'll catch up on her own.

Hard to deal with reaction #2 - (I've already touched on this and I will say this is more from her pediatricians and the speech therapists) She only has 1 word?! Do you talk to her? play games with her? read to her? Maybe you should try teaching her signs and reading to her more... etc. etc.

Both of these reactions are very very hard. On the one hand I want to say, hey I'm not crazy, I don't want to have to worry about my 17 month old's development. Believe me it's a lot of work to try to get her to sign or make a sound before I give her a sippy cup of milk or a graham cracker. I wish I didn't have to do it. Sometimes she cries and throws tantrums when I try to get her to make a sound before giving her whatever she wants. And I want her to be happy and just give her the dang cookie or cup of milk, but it's important for me to encourage her to speak. And sometimes you don't feel in the mood to narrate the whole day...

"Nina, now we're putting on your socks! Socks, socks, socks. Look at your white socks! Do you like your white socks? One sock. On it goes. There you go. One sock is on one foot. Cute little footie! Let's put your other sock on. One sock, two socks, on it goes. Now you have 2 white socks on! Are your feet all warm now?! Nice sockies. You have such cute little feet Nina! Now Mommy's going to put on your shoes...."

Let me tell you it's really fun to narrate like that for like a couple days and then you just want to put the shoes on quickly and not have to worry about talking about everything in a happy exaggerated voice. But that's what I need to do so I do it and try to have fun with it. Sometimes she giggles when I talk to her and that's fun and encouraging. Okay and this leads to why "hard to deal with reaction #2" is so hard - because sometimes I don't feel like justifying all the things I do all day to encourage speech. It's wearisome to say, "No, I really do read to her and talk to her and play with her," in a way in which they will believe and validate all the work that I'm doing at home... Yes, as you can see lots of baggage and I'm just letting it all spew forth - sorry. I really don't mean to whine and that is why I'm going to cut right to the good part, the wonderful thing about this whole speech issue with Nina in the next paragraph.

Through this particular trial and stress that I am in the midst of right now I have felt peace. My friend Corinne taught a wonderful lesson in Relief Society on Sunday about feeling peace and I must say going through this has made me realize how important it is to have perspective and faith. I truly have felt peace and I know that it is a blessing from my Heavenly Father. I feel an incredible love for Nina. I know without a doubt that my little Nina was meant to come to our family and I love her absolutely the way she is. What ever trials we encounter in this life I believe are part of our plan and we should do our best to weather every storm large or small. This may be just one small little drizzle as far as a storm, because in all other ways Nina is a healthy and sweet little girl and I really feel peace that we can handle her speech issue. It may take some tantrums to try to get her to talk or months of speech therapy, who knows, but whatever it is I know I love her and I wouldn't wish for her to be anything or anyone other than Nina. Peace is a wonderful thing and I am thankful for a loving God and Savior who have helped me to feel it.

(This is a recent favorite pic of Nina. She loves apples as you can see. That little smile melts me!)