I'm Back

It has been a busy few weeks here and I have been so neglecting the blog. Sorry dear readers. Little E has been keeping us pretty busy and the job is kicking my ass. In the past weeks when ever I am not playing with little E I am pretty much in a sleep deprived stupor not able to blog or carry on an adult conversation for that matter.

Little E is still sleeping like crap ok that may be a bit of an over dramatization but she is still getting up at least one time each night and often will not settle back down until we put her in bed with us. I know that we could probably get her back down in the pack n play but at 4 am I am willing to go anything just to get back to sleep. Truth be told I also enjoy getting to snuggle up with her for a few hours. I got gypped out of 2.5 months of snuggle time and am still trying to make up for it. Our doctor wanted us to wait until the end of RSV season before moving her out of our room and I am happy to report that we only have a little over 3 weeks left. I am thinking of asking at her 9 month appointment if we can move her during my April vacation that is coming up. I think it will be better to make the transition when I don't have to go to work the next morning. I have a feeling that we all will sleep better when she is in her crib.

Last week E had her Early Intervention evaluation. I was really nervous about how E would do. Since she had been having some really bad stranger anxiety we were a little worried about how she would do with the evaluators. E did fantastic though and was her charming cute self with the two women who did the eval. We have not gotten the written report yet but we did get her scores and there were no real surprises in how Little E did. For the most part she scored at 7 months which is a one month delay ( I can't remember all the categories and will post the details when we get the report). She scored at 6 months (2 month delay)in expressive language since she isn't making consonant sounds. Excitedly she scored at 9 months (one month ahead) in two categories one was receptive language (I can't remember the other one). The evaluators also needed to check on one of the tests for gross motor since she was not putting her arm out when they tried to push her over from a sitting position which may put her at 6 months for gross motor. Over all I am really pleased with E's progress. She is scoring between her actual and adjusted age which is pretty awesome for a 30 weeker at this point. She seems to be closing the the gap which makes me very happy.

What all this means is that she still qualifies for E.I. since you need a delay of 2 months in one category (for E it is expressive language and possibly gross motor). We need to decide whether or not to keep having services though since they don't do speech therapy on 9 month olds. Since we don't get any other therapies (pt or ot) we would just continue with our weekly visits with our E.I. case worker. Although we love her we just don't know if it is worth our time or hers. One question we need answered is if they will automatically re evaluate her in 6 months if we don't accept services at this time. I would really like to see her get another eval to make sure she is still progressing and catching up.

I am pretty amazed at how fast E has been able to hit some of her milestones. Our case worker about a month ago said that she really wanted to see E sitting by herself by the end of 8 months and as of last week she is really sitting all by herself. She is so steady now that I have no problem letting her sit and play with her toys for long periods of time without worrying about her tipping over. She is even getting smoother at getting from sitting to her belly. She still is doing a bit of a face plant but it is getting much better. She is also rocking so much on her hands and knees, she looks like she is getting ready to take off in a full crawl soon. She has been pulling herself around in an army crawl for a while now and if she really wants to get going she can move pretty fast.

This weekend was wonderful weather and since I had Friday off we had a busy three days. We went to the zoo on Friday, hung out in Davis Sq in Sommerville on Sat, and celebrated Easter with my family on Sunday. We are slowly trying to get E out of her isolation and back into the real world. I don't think our RSV hibernation did good things for E's social development. Since she will be going to daycare in September we need her socialized so we are all not traumatized by the experience. I will leave you with some pictures of Ella on her adventures.