Mid-year Review, barfing baby

Ok, it's been busy the last 2 days. Yesterday morning, Miss Sofia had her half-year review. David and I met our Speech Pathologist, Occupational Therapist, and Developmental Specialist, and they put Sofia through about 45 minutes of games and challenges.

She did really well, but of course it's always difficult to get your kid tested. Actually, the testing itself wasn't so bad (except when David and I had to clamp down on each other to keep from "helping" her or cueing her).

But scoring is hard. Instead of the lossy-goosy "she's doing so amazingly well", you get a number. That number represents how old the "typical" child would be doing those skills.

So here it is, Miss Sofia's score, at 32 months of age (scores in parenthesis are how she did back in March at 25 months):

• Fine Motor 26 (23)
• Gross Motor 22 (11)
• Cognitive 27 (19)
• Social/Emotional 30 (26)
• Self-Care 29
• Feeding 35 (27)
• Toileting 19 (15)
• Dressing 33 (27)
• Receptive Language
• Verbal 18 (16)
• Sign 18 (16)
• Expressing Language
  
• Verbal 16 (15)
• Sign 24 (?)

Only Verbal Language counts on the scoring, but K does a sign score just so we know what's going on. However, I very clearly remember last March, that Sofia scored ABOVE her age for expressive sign, so I was quite concerned this time. K looked at the scores again, from this time and last time, and thinks she just madea scoring mistake last time. Which makes sense, but bugs me because all this time I've been so excited about how well she did!

But you can see that she made a huge leap ahead in Gross Motor, and is doing great in Self-Care and Social/Emotional. She's doing great in everything, really, I just thought she was doing even better in Fine Motor and in Language.

Oh well. It's just a benchmark, it doesn't change anything on her IFSP, we're not making any changes to her services. And the public school will come do their own evals in January before placing her in the preschool anyway.

Sofia went off to her playgroup while the ladies scored the results and David and I signed paperwork. Then I had exactly one hour - just enough time to get my nails done! When I came back to pick up Sofia, I was delighted to learn that several new kids had joined her group, including another boy with Down syndrome. I met his mom over a year ago, and we've been in touch only on email since then, so it was nice to see her. But we had an interesting chat as we put the kids in their carseats: she really feels that she's had to fight to get her son appropriate services from EI, which was a real shock to me, because I have considered EI to be a great experience for us. So I got all paranoid, thinking maybe I'd missed something and had not gotten Sofia everything she needed.

I talked about it this morning with the Developmental Specialist. I guess some people are more concerned with the Titles of the people giving their kids treatment, and less with the skills and strengths those people have. For instance, our Dev.Spec. is officially a Psychological Specialist (or something like that). However, she has been so incredibly important to Sofia's language and fine motor growth, I can't imagine what we would have done without her! Our original OT (who dared move out of state - I know you're lurking, J! We still miss you!) was great at integrating speech and motor skills for my little baby.

As Parent Liason for our EI center, I will suggest that they create write-ups, both of the general job descriptions and of each individual service provider's skills, to give to the parents when people are assigned. It might help clarify expectations and avoid conflict.

So we had a busy time yesterday, and Sofia didn't nap until we picked up the boys (although I fell asleep on the living room floor for a while). But then she stayed awake until midnight! We just could not get her to sleep again. She sat on our bed, watching late-night TV, while I dozed with my arm around her.

Well, turns out she's sick. I left her and David home while I drove the boys to school (he'd stayed up late, too). When I got home, Sofia was really crabby. She wouldn't cooperate with the specialist, and kept wanting to hang on me instead.

So after her session, I tried for an hour to get her to nap. She screamed bloody murder if I put her in the crib. So I ended up rocking her in the chair, and once she was asleep I put us both on the bed and I napped too.

I woke her up for lunch, which she just cried through, and then she started explosive wet farts. Eventually we ended up back in the rocking chair, and at 2 she barfed all over me. We were both drenched, but obviously she had to get something out. So we took a bath together, and then picked up the boys. She climbed a little at the playground, but then settled into cuddling again. Back home, she's been crabby all evening. I had my mother's helper eat with the boys and get them to bed while I rocked Sofia again. She was dozing on my bed for about two hours, but now she's crying. Gotta go!