random updates and a talking video

First update: Lydia's thumb. It's on the mend now. She's on the last few doses of her third antibiotic, and her thumb is finally looking like a thumb again. To keep her from sucking her thumb, I sewed a big sock into one of her short sleeve shirts, and she wears that at naptime and bedtime now. I can tell that sucking her thumb is just a habit w/ her and she doesn't "need" to suck it, b/c she doesn't try to suck it through the sock or act upset at all. If anything, she goes to sleep EASIER w/o her thumb. Weird little girl.

Second update: Tim's job. He's still at the car dealership, and we were blessed with 5 car deals last week, two of them just in time for tomorrow's payday, so we may be able to pay May rent after all. He is starting to feel like he likes the job again, like he did back when he first started, and not just b/c of the sales either. He's still keeping his eye out for something else, but for now it is suiting our needs again.

Lydia update: She starts her ECI therapy tomorrow morning, and we'll have it weekly. I'm looking forward to it. I've been trying to work with her, using the tips they gave me after the evaluation, but I don't know what to look for to tell if she's "getting it" or not. I did get her a small magnetic drawing thing, and she took the pen and just tapped on the pad with it. It made marks, but I don't think she was trying to make marks b/c of the way she was tapping it. She was just tapping to make noise. lol.

She's getting a lot faster at walking now, and hard to catch if she tries to get away. She's still not running, though, so she's easy to catch that way. She says diaper and daddy, but I can't really recognize anything else. I think she tries to say yogurt and Cheerios, but it could still be just noise at this point. Here's a video of her saying diaper, though.

eci evaluation today

The OT and the ST just left. During the evaluation, they kept going on and on about how cute Lydia is. I was originally concerned about speech, and she measured 13 months receptive and 14 months expressive on that... and those were her HIGHEST scores out of all the areas. I can't remember her score for the other areas, but it ranged from 7 to 12 months for cognition, social/emotional, physical and adaptive behavior. Lydia doesn't scribble w/ a writing instrument, and that's one of the things that held her back. Another is that she doesn't refuse certain foods (she eats everything, even things that _I_ don't like, lol). She was also held back b/c she doesn't prefer me over other people (i.e. no separation or stranger anxiety). One more is that if one of her toys is turned off (i.e. it won't make noise but usually does), she doesn't care and will just play with it as usual instead of bringing it to me to turn it on.) So because of the way the tool is designed, she may have been able to do some of the tasks further down the line, but b/c of too many zero scores in a row, they have to stop right there. But the OT said that even though Lydia qualifies for services, she can tell that L is smart. And she and the ST heard a ton of words that L was imitating, that I had no idea.

They said that Lydia is the type of child who people would fight each other to be able to come out and do therapy with. :giggle: Lydia kept making them laugh and then laughing herself and she was just her usual charming self. But she did qualify for services and so I went ahead and enrolled her. We're going to do once/week w/ the ST.

give mama kisses

more job woes and thumb woes and some happy pictures

This last weekend, a bunch of DH's family were in town, then all this week at church we've had services nightly, and it's been great and uplifting, but tiring keeping poor Lydia out past her bedtime nearly every night. :p Tonight's the last night though. I'm a little sad b/c the guest is such a great speaker and really makes his applications clear, but it'll be nice to get back to a normal routine.

Hubby is now looking for a new job. He's sold one car so far this month, and after insurance is taken out, his next check will be about $0 if he doesn't sell another car between now and the 15th. In addition, if he doesn't sell 10 cars for the whole month (or if anyone doesn't sell 10 cars for that matter), they told everyone that it would be grounds for termination. A few people from church have given him some leads, but nothing is a guaranteed job for him or anything. My store's just limping along and not helping us eat, either. Blasted media saying we're in a recession when we're not.

Lydia news... I think she can say diaper sometimes. lol. It comes out "bah-pwaw" more often than not, but it's a start. Her ECI eval is in just a few more days (Tuesday morning). The latest news with her is her thumb. On Sunday, I think she had been sucking it on the way to church, and we go over a few RR tracks, and one of them must have bumped hard enough to make her bite her thumb and break the skin a little. But I never saw any blood or anything. When we got her out of the car at the church building, her thumb looked like it had a hickey on it. Well by Sunday night, it had swollen up considerably. I took her in on Monday morning and her dr gave me a perscription for some antibiotics and just had me watch the thumb at first and not rush out and fill it. The next day, it wasn't any better, so I went and filled it. It was a 5-day course. Thursday morning, halfway through the course, her thumb was looking even worse, so I called her dr. They called in a stronger antibiotic and want to see her on Monday if it's not showing improvement. It's still hard to tell at this point if it's improving at all yet.

Here's a few recent pictures of her:

Happily walking and pointing, with big purple puffs in her hair:


Sleeping w/ her bootie in the air:


Poor sweetie... look how she got her leg stuck THIS time!


Is this wide enough, mama?


And this is how she smiles most of the time now:

15 month, ok 16 month stats

We had Lydia's 15-month WBV today, even though she'll be 16 months on Saturday. It went well. She was a hit with all of the staff. They'd talk about how cute she is, and she'd just grin and giggle. She has been walking (FINALLY!!!) for about 2 weeks now, and already walks about 95% of the time, so she got to walk in the exam room for the doctor.

Anyway as for her stats. Weight = 16 lbs 15 oz, length = 28.5 inches, head circ = 17.75 inches. Still itty bitty, but between last visit and this visit, she actually was parallel to the curve instead of growing further away from it. :D