I was away over the weekend and have spent most of the week recuperating. Travel was exhausting but my actual reunion was amazing. I had an awesome time and life is good. I took loads of pictures hoping that in some way they could hold me until the next reunion. Of course they won't but they did take me through most of this week. I looked at the last batch this morning. Yep, two thousand photos took me five days to get through. If only there could be more . . .
But I'm sure you are much more interested in hearing about the tomatoes. Good thing because I actually logged on to talk about them. They are both doing really well. Tabitha now has two tiny bottom teeth to match Jackson's. Neither are really noticeable to the camera lens thus we have no photos of them yet. But don't you worry, once it's possible there will be loads of documentary photos.
Both are excellent sitters. Tabitha can get down from a sit onto her tummy without trouble although in the last two days she's started bumping her head on the way down. Not sure if it's the audience, her moving faster, weight change, growth, or something else completely but it's happened quite a few times. It doesn't seem to be her vision because she's just about CRAWLING!!! Hands and knees, moving one at a time and going forward in a straight line towards a goal. This morning her goal was me. I said to her, if you come over here I'll pick you up. It took her a good ten minutes but she brought herself right over, no distractions, and the party began! I am so proud of her! She'll learn my weakness early, if you come over to me, I'll pick you up. Of course, there's no guarantee how long I'll hold you, but the immediate response and reward will be there.
Jackson is doing an amazing job in the social realm. He too wants to crawl but focuses so much energy on interactions that he's easily distracted from his goal. He does get onto hands and knees but when he lifts one up it generally takes him backwards, pretty frustrating for him and any on lookers.
Napping is improving. We seem to be going in waves. Two great days on, one or one and a half mediocre or bad days, then another one or two good days. This week is a bit off as their grandmother, paternal, is visiting. She has only visited one other time since their birth over ten months ago. They were still in the NICU last time so getting to spend this much time with them is just what she hoped.
Finally the screaming. While we seemed to be making progress everything fell apart when I took Friday off. Roger decided he felt bad telling Tabitha not to scream and they called the pediatrician with tales of whoa. Told him she'd been screaming and we'd started telling her to stop. Said that it had been days since she'd made any sound at all. He responded that any sound is better than no sound and that we should stop telling her not to scream. We should go back to ignoring her or distracting her.
Okay, I was here everyday until Friday. There wasn't one part of any day that she remained silent. She's stopped screaming and begun making other sounds, bababa, dadada, etc. They called the pediatrician on Friday morning. Since I left here an hour before she went to bed on Thursday, there was no length of time for her to have been silent. Seriously.
You can't imagine how frustrating this is. Honestly. Completely and totally frustrating.
Now, the rest of this story . . .
Of course Norah asked her boss, who works with developmentally delayed kids, speech delayed kids, mr kids, autistic kids, you name it, they diagnose and evaluate kids, about all of this. And her boss was appalled. She said that the ONLY time you'd say that any sound is better than no sound is if the kid is mentally retarded. Neither Tabitha nor Jackson are anywhere near MR, so the pediatrician's suggestion is complete bs. Norah's boss went on to say that if Tabitha can understand that we don't want her to scream and she stops when we tell her that's a great sign and continuing to tell her no screaming is fine.
So, I took as much screaming as I could and then when I couldn't take anymore, I started telling her no screaming again. And you know what happened? The girl who had been silent, except for screaming, since I returned on Monday, started making sounds again - old sounds and new sounds. Using different parts of her mouth, different tones and pitch. But when her parents are around, know what she does? Yep, she screams. And now, because they can't ignore her, she gets rewarded for screaming. Every scream gets attention.
Roger and Sara spoke with EI about speech evaluation, after they'd taken her in for a hearing test, which she passed, because she's completely normal, and EI said what I said. If the screaming is working there's no reason for her to use any other sounds.
