Road Trip

The weather here has been really nasty. We've had very cloudy days.. rainy days.. chilly days. I had hit my wall.
So I got online and I searched for a place that we could go. Zap suggested Wenatchee, WA and I booked us a room at a hotel with a pool and we headed out with my mom the next day.
Wenatchee is in Eastern Washington, across the Snoqualmie Pass and on the map it says it is a three and a half hour drive, but with the little ones in tow it took us about five.

The drive actually went better than I thought. We had to stop a couple times and we stopped in Cle Elum and had lunch. We got to our hotel and immediately hit the pool. It was Dash's first time in the water and Delaney hadn't been in a pool in about a year. She took to it again like a fish. My mom loved being in the water with her.

Dash had a blast but the sun and the water exhausted him. After we were done in the pool, we went to a nearby town, Leavenworth. Its a small town that they have completely redesigned into a Bavarian village. It was absolutely adorable. We went shopping and walking around. We ate at the brat house. We went into a hat store and Delaney left with a parasol that we're planning on hanging in her room. We ate ice cream on the grass and just had a really nice time.


The hardest part of the trip was getting both babies to sleep at night. You'd get one asleep and one would wake the other one up.
The next day we went to a petting zoo in a little town called Peshastin. We came home and got right in the pool, this time with some pool toys. Again, Dash was done in by the water and the heat. Delaney had a blast. She learned to crawl along the wall and even stuck her face in the water a time or two.
The pool wore the kids out. They slept good and hard that night.
We headed home around 9 am the next day and made it back safely and soundly. Mama was exhausted!

I just turned around..and evaluation followup

and it is five weeks until Dash's First Birthday.
I'm amazed every day this week by how different he is than even a month ago, but especially two to three months ago.

We had Dash's evaluation on the 14th and the eligibility meeting on the 18th. He received evaluation in the following areas:

cognition (how well he learns, thinks, etc)

adaptive behavior (how he takes care of himself)

gross (crawling, etc) and fine (grasping with hands, etc) motor

educational (learning) skills

speech and language

His scores in EVERY area - except for PT- were within the range of average. Our Family Resource Counselor, who met Dash about six weeks ago, couldn't believe he was the same baby.

His language skills were great, his social skills were good, his cognitive skills were great. All looked good.

But his PT showed about a two to three month delay. He actually qualified for services; even though he'd been crawling about a week. He qualified for services in locomotion, how he gets around, and the OT wanted to work on his cruising, pulling up, etc.

We decided that because he'd made so much progress in the last six weeks that we would do at home stuff for the physical therapy and have her revisit at our home in the fall to see where she thought he was.

We also saw an allergist that day and we got to talking about his hernia surgery and recovery. The allergist said that the surgery is actually fairly involved and that they have to make a new abdominal floor with his fascia and muscles and that that takes a long time to heal, about 8 weeks. The day we had the evaluations and the allergist appointment, was 8 weeks to the day of his surgery.

I do have some very minor concerns but I think he's made such great progress that I expect to see them disappear. My only concern at this point is that he doesn't respond to his name 100% of the time. But he is getting better and better every day.

Here's what I've learned through this all: be an advocate for your child. I was really tired of going to doctors and telling them that something was wrong and having them think I was nuts. But something was wrong. He was likely in pain for a good nine months of his life. I'm proud that I pushed so far, but I'm also really thrilled that his skills are so smack on average.

the best things Delaney has said.. this week

Yesterday, my mom sat Delaney while Zap and I spent the day at appointments with Dash.
We came home and Delaney asked for chocolate milk. My mom agreed and I told her that we only do chocolate milk on the weekends.
I poured regular milk into Delaney's sippy and she asked for chocolate milk. I told her that we were out of chocolate milk and she tried the open the refrigerator. I told her that there was no chocolate milk in the fridge and Delaney RAN to the pantry. She opened it up and said:
"There IT IS!! I FOUND IT!!!" and wildly pointed to the Hershey's syrup bottle. We were all laughing so darn hard that we couldn't breathe. I went to the pantry and grabbed the syrup. I didn't want to be seen as someone who would lie to my child..
I pull the syrup out of the pantry and Delaney says "Mommy, put it in!!" as she hands me her cup.

The other night Zap and I switched off who was putting Delaney to bed. She and I got all snuggled and she said "Sap do?" and it took me a second to figure out it was "Where did Zap go?". I told her that Papa had gone downstairs and we continued to snuggle.

We had just pulled into the garage and we asked her who should put her to bed "Mama or Papa?" and Delaney said "neither"

Just a few of the many times we've laughed this week.

busy busy mama (and family)

I didn't realize it had been so long since I last posted. It really seemed like the baptisms were a week or so ago, but now its been three weeks.
I had such a blast with my best friend, Brenna, here. It was wonderful to see her and to watch her spend time with her godchildren :) Since she left, I feel like my left arm is missing. She's talking about coming back in the fall, so we have that to look so forward to.
My dad also came for a visit, and it was such a great visit. He hasn't been out since Dash was born, so I was thrilled he got to spend some time with them. Having him here is so easy its not like having company. We took it easy, did our schedule, and hung out. Dad helped out by getting in on the living room painting and it was helpful because he knew lots of helpful tricks. He also made this fabulous BBQ dinner. It was like being at home again for me. Coleslaw, beans, corn on the cob, thick BBQ ribs, and pulled pork sandwiches. SO stinking tasty. Now I'm craving it again after having written about it.

Dash is now ten months (and a week now, but we'll pretend like I was on time for this update) and he's made a lot of progress in the last few weeks.

Dash still wears size 3 diapers, but I think we've ordered our last box. I think size 4 starts at 22 pounds, but the 3s seem to be getting a little snug on him. He had a weight check last week and he crossed into 20 pounds! I was a little stupefied. About a week and a half before that he only weighed 18.5 pounds so he put it on :)

Dash is a full formula baby, and that's a big change since 9 months. I went away for a girls weekend and had such a great time, but I didn't pump enough and Dash didn't really care about nursing once I got back. He takes a bottle every three to four hours. He's been on a bottle strike lately, but he's not trying to nurse. My thoughts are that it has to do with other developmental stuff he's doing.
Last month, I posted that Dash had no teeth. Holy moly, he got all four since then! We were shocked! He has his front middle right tooth in and while it was coming up, the top two front teeth started in and now he's just waiting on the bottom middle left tooth to come in (its in just not all the way). It was a rough week for us. He ran a fever and we just couldn't make him happy in any way. He was really miserable.
Dash has started to eat more finger foods: toast, waffles, bananas, peas, crackers, bits of cheese, bits of noodles, bits of apples, pretty much anything he can get in those little hands. It feels good to see him eat and enjoy food.

Dash has been sleeping well now that all the teeth have broken through. That week he wasn't sleeping at all, so neither was Zap, who does the night shift :)
Still for day naps, I rock him and put him to bed sleepy or asleep, depending on how tired he is.

We've finally been on a really consistent day schedule for us, so I'm sure that will change again soon. That seems to be how it goes.

Dash seems to have more "good" days than "bad" days. I wish I had more words to express what I mean by "good" and "bad". Some days he's clingy, fussy, and not interested in anything. But, knock on wood, he's been doing really well.

Dash no longer avoids tummy time, because HE'S CRAWLING!!!! I'm so excited that he's finally become a full crawler. It's adorable and I love that he's more of a handful. I love seeing him interested in his environment, in what he can get into and all of that fun, crawler stuff.

He can stand supported and he can pull up to his knees. He's working on pulling up to his feet, but he's not quite there yet. I have moved his crib down to the next to lowest rail now so that when he wakes up he can stand up in his crib. He can get himself to sitting from a tummy position.

Dash still has beautiful eyes, but some days they are more hazel. He had his first haircut while Brenna was here, but they didn't take much, just a trim. His hair isn't as curly, but it is wavy.

Dash does hi, bye, and yay signs independently but he doesn't do more or all done yet unless we tell/ask him to.

Dash and I go with just each other to babygym twice a week while Delaney goes to Murphy's house for lunch and I think we're both loving the mommy/son time.

Delaney is doing so great. She's a total chatterbox. We're getting really close to being potty trained, but I think that it's going to be a lot of careful monitoring over the next year. I'm thinking we will see some backslides and difficulties depending on her development. Lately sh'es talking all the time and she's pretty funny. She's learning to tell knock knock jokes (knock knock, who's there?, octopus - that's as far as she gets) and she likes to say "Laney funny".
Yesterday she came to me and said "Laney needs sub ba too?". I had no idea. After I couldn't get it, she said it again and then she did a zubber kiss on my knee, so I knew she wanted to zubber kiss my cheek.