Ben’s Blog

In leiu of a “2008 summary” post (the short version: we put all of our stuff in a really big truck and moved 400 miles away) here’s the annual “Ben with Bear” photo.

2009

2008

2007

I got this bear when we were waiting for him to come home…well, actually I got two bears because I didn’t know they were going to be huge and I was planning on sending one to him in his foster home in Guatemala. When I saw how big the darn thing was, I thought I’d use it to take photos to show how much he’s grown every month. Yeah. Well. Turns out I’m only able to really make that happen about once a year, so it’s become our New Year’s Day tradition instead. Here’s this year’s photo, and the ones from years past. He was harder to photograph this year because he insisted on being the one to *take* the picture.

I just had to extract play doh from Ben’s nostril.

Ben’s had a bit of a speech explosion in the past month, starting during our week at the beach where the word “mine” became a pretty solid official word.

The week after we came home from vacation “yeah” and “nah” came into daily use, followed by: ow, ah hah, uh oh, num num. I spent a good portion of the past weeks dropping things on purpose just to get him to say “uh oh” because it’s so darn cute. This past week he has added a few more: hi, go (usually go go go), da da, and beep beep. Most of these were words that he was saying before October but not with any regularity. It’s wonderful to be able to have semi-spoken conversations with him now, and I can see that he’s thrilled with his progress too.

Ben went with us to vote yesterday (of course), waited patiently in line in the rain, and happily cast his vote for Santa Claus. Although Ben’s chosen candidate didn’t win, I am in awe of the thought that the first president Ben will know is going to be a black man. I am a little less worried about Ben’s future right now.

17:17scromp*> wow
17:17scromp*> ben’s stomach just gurgled
17:18scromp*> he gagged, got up, ran to the bathroom, and pretended to
throw up
17:18scromp*> the heck
17:18scromp*> where’d he learn that?
17:24 haha what
17:24 the cat?
17:24 heh
17:25 good instincts!
17:25scromp*> *sigh*
17:25scromp*> and now
17:25scromp*> what kind of tree is in our front yard
17:25scromp*> ?
17:25scromp*> maple?
17:25scromp*> oak?
17:25 in cary or in lexington?
17:25scromp*> think the leaves are poisonous?
17:25scromp*> here
17:25 i have no idea
17:27scromp*> ok, only to horses

I am also dropping things on purpose just so I can hear Ben’s new word “uh oh!”.

Ben had his early intervention screening yesterday. Four women came to the house with toys and spent about 3 hours “playing”. He was hesitant at first but he soon warmed up and was sad when his new friends had to go.

They did a broad early learning assessment, to measure his development in all areas. I was a little frustrated because he wouldn’t do some of the things I knew he could do (like kick a ball), but he also surprised me by correctly identifying 5 out of 8 colors.

Overall, he scored as I suspected/hoped he would… right on his age level for fine motor and nonverbal problem solving skills, a bit below level for gross motor (running/jumping/etc) because he wouldn’t do some of the things they asked him to… although he promptly did all of them as soon as the women left.

His language skills blew me away, though. He scored in the 36 month range for receptive language (and the therapist doing the eval said that’s around the highest score she can give for his age range) and in the 10 month range for expressive. So he understands a lot of language but isn’t able to produce much.

As suspected, he didn’t want to talk at all to the evaluation team (not even “mama” when I left the room), but I told them what he could say and the sounds he makes and they said even if they could have counted my observations, he still would have qualified for services. According to the evaluation criteria, the only real word he has right now is “mama”. Animal and car sounds don’t count.Words that come and go don’t count.

The working diagnosis right now is “childhood apraxia of speech”.  The gap between his receptive and expressive language means it’s not just a typical speech delay (where the two would progress at the same rate, but just slower than average). Apraxia is a motor speech disorder where the brain has trouble planning speech… basically there’s a disconnect and the brain can’t tell the mouth how to say what it wants to say. You can imagine how frustrating this would be.

We only get a working diagnosis now, because a speech therapist will have to spend several hours (over the course of several days) working with him before an official diagnosis can be given. But the gap between receptive and expressive language is a pretty good indication of apraxia. There are a couple of other clues, too… he chews with his mouth closed (which we just thought was good manners) and can’t blow bubbles or stick out his tongue on demand. He also has words that come and go (he has, at different points, said: cooper, taggie, and turtle a few times then never again). All of these are clues that his brain is having trouble telling his mouth what to do.

Of course, one of the things I had to ask the speech therapist on the evaluation team was whether or not doing babysigns caused this. Of course I knew the answer, but I’m so tired of hearing “he doesn’t talk because he doesn’t have to” and “if you’d just ignore his signs he’d have to talk to get what he wants” I wanted to hear an official opinion on the matter.  She said if we weren’t already doing signs that would be the first thing she’d tell us to start.

She was impressed with the signs he knows (over 100 now, we’ve stopped counting) and the way he combines signs and makes up signs when he needs one he doesn’t already have. Signing helps reduce frustration in kids with apraxia and is probably the reason his receptive language is so high, since he’s been able to learn new words without having to say them.

And here is a great summary of CAS, what it is, and how it is handled. We’re lucky, in that we caught it early and he doesn’t really have any other disorders or problems that we know of right now. With intensive therapy (they’re talking about starting him at 30 min twice a week) I’m hoping his brain will figure it out and things will click. Also, this is a pretty common diagnosis (one article said it was pretty readily overdiagnosed) so hopefully there are programs already in place that can help him learn to speak. In the mean time, we’ll keep signing.

Almost missed this one.. oops. Bento and his daddy (and I) are in DC this weekend. I’m attending a wedding and Ben and Brian are doing touristy stuff.

Going way back for this daddy and me fff. Here’s the happy duo in our hotel in Guatemala City, the day after we first met Ben.

Do you know, that after the scream/puke-fest that happened while we were boarding our flight from Atlanta home (in Oct 2006) Ben finally fell asleep in Brian’s arms, and Brian didn’t move for the entire flight because he didn’t want to wake Ben? Daddy and me, indeed.

Ben and I had our first meeting with the CDSA (Child Developmental Services Agency) today. Our services coordinator came out to do a bunch of paperwork and ask me all sorts of questions about how wonderful Ben is.

I’m not sure if I’ve posted about this already or not, but we’ve been concerned about his speech for a while now. Everything else seems developmentally on target but he’s just not talking at all within what is the normal range for his age. So once we got moved and settled I called Wake County’s early intervention program.

So far I’ve been very impressed. They called me back immediately, set up the evaluation for next week, sent out paperwork and our coordinator came today. The time frame for this sort of stuff happening is not what I’d expect from an agency that is funded through the school system. Welcome to Wake County! Woohoo!

The evaluation is free (your tax dollars at work) and if he qualifies we’ll pay for services on a sliding scale. Our insurance will probably cover most of it, but it’s so nice to know this program is free for families who need it even if they can’t afford it.

Ben took to our services coordinator within seconds… not his typical response to a new person. Next week she’ll return with two other people who will play with him and do his evaluation. They will go ahead and assess all areas of his development, even though we’re just worried about speech.

So, the moral of this post is, if you live in Wake County (which you don’t.. I know) and you’re at all concerned about your child’s development.. give these people a call. It’s painless, it’s free, and it’s awesome.

Parental guilt absolved. The new dentist (Dr. Dave), who impressed me so much more than the schmucks we saw previously, said the spot was a defect in Ben’s tooth. Likely happened when the tooth was formed and due to poor prenatal nutrition (shock). He drilled it out, applied some special dentist tooth-filling goop, and Ben was good to go. No sedation, no numbing, no big deal. There was a small amount of crying (but I recovered nicely, thanks).  Dr. Dave also lifted the ban on juice and sweets, in moderation of course, combined with regular brushing and yadda yadda yadda. So very very worth the 30 minute drive to his office.

Ben has a cavity. He went for his first trip to the dentist today and they told me that the white spot on one of his top teeth is, indeed, a cavity and he needs to have it filled. Oy. I was wallowing in the mom-guilt-angst pretty harshly until I was reminded that… yeah… we knew this was likely to happen. Baby teeth are formed in the womb and poor prenatal nutrition (which, sadly, is common in Guatemala) means a high likelihood of cavities.

The good news is his healthy diet and good dental care now will lead to healthier permanent teeth. But until then, we do have some work to do, poor kid. He’s not going to be able to get away with things that typical American children can do to their teeth. We have to cut out the juice, milk only at meals (and only in a “big boy” cup), chocolate no more than once a week (new definition of “one”). And we have to brush and floss his teeth daily. The brushing we’ve been doing, ever since there were teeth to brush. The flossing… not so much… anyone here ever tried to floss a 2 year old? I’d rather try to floss the cat’s teeth. But floss we must. Ok.

I didn’t get a good vibe from the dentist we went to today, so I made an appointment with a dentist that is much further away but very highly recommended. I figure, if we’re going to be doing this often it had better be someone we like. Ben’s still not going to be happy about it.

This tops our week of toddler care. He went to the pediatrician on Tuesday, where things went very well. He’s now a whopping 23 lbs! The new ped. is very patient and awesome. And we have a call in with the local early intervention folks to have his speech screened. I’m pretty sure he’ll meet their criteria for speech services, because no way in h*ll he’s going to “talk” to these strangers who come in our house and try to play with him.

One other major event happened during our trip home last week. Taggie went missing!

I was very careful to make sure he had him getting off the airplanes, even checked frequently when he was on my back, but after we got to baggage claim and Ben went to daddy, I kind of forgot to keep tabs on the Taggie blanket.

We got home, relaxed, had dinner, got ready for bed… and “where is Taggie?”. Oh man. I was tired, Ben was tired, there were no Taggies. Backup taggies were unacceptable (not stinky enough, I think). We turned the house upside down looking for a foot square piece of dirty purple fleece. Nothing.

I decided to go to bed without it, but it wasn’t happening. We had to go to the airport. 10:30 at night, after a day of traveling, I’m back at the airport looking under cars in the parking lot and chairs in baggage claim. No taggie. No help from airport employees either, except the decidedly unhelpful “Wow. That stinks. I lost my blankie when I was 3. Never got over it.” Thanks for that.

Ben fell asleep in the car on the way to the airport, so I was able to transfer him to bed fairly easily. He was still restless, but he’d also had a big day. Meanwhile, I was a wreck. I took this poor kid away from home for a week, made him go to dirty hospitals (where  I was pretty sure he “caught” dad’s staph at one point), took him away from dad and doggies, and now I’ve lost the most precious thing he has!? Great. Major mom points for me.

A frantic email to the wonderful woman who made Taggie was promptly returned, with the promise that several taggie blankets would be in the mail to Ben ASAP. She rocks. I should have asked her a long time ago.

Naptime the next day was kind of rough, but he finally went to sleep. I decided to make one last ditch effort to check every single place in the entire house. I was so sure we’d brought him at least to the airport parking lot (because I made a comment there to Brian about how Ben had dropped Taggie in the airport bathroom earlier… I’m thinking I wouldn’t have said that if I hadn’t seen Taggie in Ben’s hand) but after a night of worrying about it, I could “remember” seeing Taggie in just about any place.

And then. There he was. In the play kitchen. We’d checked the real fridge, but not the toy one. Ben doesn’t even really play with his toy kitchen now that it’s stuck over in a corner of the dining room in this new house. But, for whatever reason, he’d stowed Taggie there the night before.

It was probably the stress of the previous week, but I cried over this damn piece of fabric. Now I’m wondering if I can RFID it. I think it’s probably a parental right-of-passage, the loss of the lovey… I know my parents have a similar story, including midnight drives around a parking lot, about when my rag doll “Susie” was lost (I’d put her to sleep in a kitchen drawer). Brian has quite a few stories like this too. I’m just hoping this is our only venture into lost lovey land. It’s not a fun place to visit.

I put Taggie into Ben’s bed while he was sleeping, and he didn’t seem surprised to find it when he woke up… but he also hasn’t really let it out of his sight since.