Blobby the wonder child

As you may recall, we've been waiting to hear whether the First Steps early intervention program would accept Liza. We've spoken with her services coordinator, who came to the house and filled in a 10-page questionnaire about what Liza can and cannot do. This included questions like, "Can she turn pages in a book?" (yes) and "Can she roll over?" (yes, but she hasn't bothered in months). Some of the questions were a little unfair, because they were things that I hadn't even thought of trying to teach her to do, like sharing. When I told Jason about that, he got a little huffy, and sat down the next weekend and taught Liza to share ... in about five minutes. I managed to convince him it wasn't necessary to call the service coordinator to correct our answer, especially since if we wanted the services, Liza had to be sufficiently delayed, not sufficiently advanced. Since then, Liza has been sharing like a maniac ... she shares when you ask her to, she shares spontaneously, she tries to share with other kids she sees in restaurants, she tries to share toys with the cats, and if you don't notice she's trying to share, she's liable to whack you with the toy, then hand it to you again. It's pretty cute, if a little painful sometimes.

Anyway, the services coordinator was sufficiently impressed with Liza's delay to have another assessor come to the house to run some tests on her. This included things like seeing how she picked up her Cheerios (pincer grip, except when she wants more than one, which is when she attempts to grab 20 of them and shove them in her mouth at the same time) and whether she would walk when I held her hands (yes, but with very little knee action, so it's still pretty zombie-esque). The assessor filled in another 10-page form, then graded it later that evening.

What this whole thing boils down to is that Liza is not sufficiently delayed to qualify for First Steps. She shows moderate delay in her motor development, but is at or above the recommended development levels in all four other areas. The assessor says that if the questionnaire was scored differently - with gross motor skills rated separately from fine motor skills - Liza probably would have qualified. Apparently her fine motor skills are really good, and it skewed the overall motor development score. Like I've been saying, she could knit you a sweater, just don't ask her to crawl across the room to reach the yarn.

Based on the delay in her gross motor skills, the assessor is writing the report to recommend that we pursue an official physical therapy assessment through our pediatrician. She thinks that a little bit of PT would go a long way toward getting Liza up off her cute chubby little butt and start running me ragged around the house. She also showed me some stuff I could do in the meantime to encourage Liza in the right direction with sitting up, etc.

I mentioned to the assessor that I thought part of the problem was my aversion to hearing Liza screaming, what with the soul-sucking it causes and all. She said I'd probably have to get over that if we were going to do the PT, because that's all about encouraging the baby to do things she doesn't really want to do. "So what you're saying is that when I go to get the PT referral from Liza's pediatrician, I'd better get a prescription from my doctor for a higher dosage of Zoloft?" "Yeah, that probably wouldn't hurt. Some earplugs might be helpful, too."

I haven't written much about this because A) it's so complicated, and B) how I feel about it is so complicated. In some ways, I was disappointed that Liza didn't qualify for First Steps. I know, it's a little sick that I'm upset my kid isn't bad enough for federal help, but at least in the First Steps program there is a set timeline for doing things, and the reassurance that I'm working with a system that's helped thousands of other parents get help for their kids. Now I'm back to being a paranoid mother, allbeit one with a recommendation from a professional that my kid get further assessment. I feel like I should feel more excited that Liza didn't qualify, but really all I feel is resigned to chasing down the appropriate help on my own. Luckily, I have some friends who have backgrounds in PT and OT, some of whom are getting help for their own children with a local PT/OT. So hopefully I'll be able to convince the doctor to write the referral, there will be space with the PT/OT lady I've had recommended to me, and she'll agree that Liza needs a little bit of a push in the right direction.

Or, even better, maybe Liza will figure this whole thing out before her 1-year doctor's appointment the first week of March. There are some signs that the idea of moving under her own power is finally starting to penetrate her brain. Before we left on vacation she was starting to reach for toys that were almost out of her reach, straining to get them and not giving up if she missed the first time. I've been encouraging her in this, telling her how close she was and trying to convince her to give it another shot. Over vacation she realized that when we change her diaper on a bed (rather than her changing table at home) there are usually lots of fascinating things she could attempt to kill herself with lying just out of reach, and she began a complicated series of Pilates/Yoga/martial arts moves to fling her prone body in the right general direction. Bad mother that I am, I purposely put the plastic grocery bags we were using for dirty diaper disposal just barely out of reach, so she would try to fling herself over that way to get them. There's nothing like plastic suffocation hazards with warnings printed on them in huge letters to motivate that kid, I'll tell you that. As cute as this was when she was on a queen-size bed, it's less cute now that we're home and she's back on her narrow changing table. This morning while Jason was changing her she apparently managed to flip all the way over onto her stomach ... luckily she was flipping toward the wall, rather than toward the 4-foot drop onto hardwood floor. But we decided it's time to move her to a more spacious (and shorter) location if she's going to keep doing her daily contortion routine, so we're changing her on the bed in her room now. I have a feeling that once she's actually mobile, I'm going to have to tackle her and change her on the floor while keeping one knee on her chest to keep her from running naked throughout the house ... she's shaping up into a streaker, this baby is.

In addition to the diaper exercises, she's shown a lot more interest in rolling over to get toys when she's on the floor. The First Steps assessor pointed out that Liza will probably never learn to sit up if we always put her in a sitting position when she's playing, so we're back to laying her down and letting her try to figure it out herself. Just today she's started actually putting her arm in the right place to try to push herself up when we roll her on her side ... she hasn't spontaneously tried to sit up yet, but at least she's making the effort to help when we tell her we're going to sit her up. She's also been a lot more tolerant of kneeling, which she would never willingly do until a few weeks ago. I've been working with her near her Adirondack chair, showing her how she can support herself with it when she's kneeling, and how she can stand up and crawl into the chair. Again, she's not doing it herself, but I can definitely see the wheels turning in that little brain, and she seems to understand that it's a good thing.

Her walking is improving - when she holds onto my fingers she'll now walk away from me, rather than walking toward me while I back up. She also sometimes lets go of my fingers and grabs onto furniture that comes near our course - the container we use to store recyclables is a favorite that's probably going to have to go live in the closet sometime soon. I swear, the kitchen and family room are filled with safe, stable objects she could grab, but she has to hone in on the unstable one filled with glass and sharp metal can edges ... it's like she's got a gift for sniffing out potential danger and then flinging herself into it headfirst. She doesn't try to walk once she's holding onto the furniture, but again, we're making progress. Yesterday she managed a pretty decent walk from the middle of the kitchen to one end of the family room, where she grabbed a side table and attempted to bite the corner off of it.

One of the questions that came up during her assessments was whether Liza follows directions (like "put the ball down") or points to things on pages in books. Again, it had never occurred to me to start teaching her how to do those things, so we've been working with them a little this week. I am particularly proud that I have now taken three different books on three different days, gone through them with her once pointing things out, and then had her (mostly) successfully point to things when I went back through it with her, even a day or two later. One book (Belly Button Book, by Sandra Boynton) has a baby hippo on every set of pages, and Liza manages to slap the "tiny hippo" almost every time, even when it's dressed up in a snowsuit. We haven't gotten to the point where she uses one finger to point - she just smacks the heck out of it with her open palm - but I'm not going to complain.

So that's the update on Liza, at least what I can think of right now. I'm going to take a break for a while - I've lost all feeling in my fingers thanks to my hideous posture in front of the computer - but there's plenty more to talk about in other areas of our life. See you soon!