We need to teach Lucy Spanish?

I mentioned recently that Lucy is going to be starting therapy to catch her up in some of the areas that she is behind. It sounds strange to say this of an eleven month old baby, but one of the areas she is lagging behind in is speech and communication. I won't get into the technicalities of how we know this, but we are needing to work with her on these skills. One of the ways that we are trying to help her is to use baby sign language to help her express what she wants or what we want from her. Years ago when Jack was a tiny baby, Drew and I took a class from the Family Resource center in Eau Claire that explained to us the benefits of baby signing as well as some very simple signs we could teach our baby. Oh yes, we were one of those very eager to learn new parents who thought that this sounded like one of those "baby Einstein" marketing gimmicks. We were teased by some of the more veteran moms in our neighborhood about applying such skills with our baby. Turns out that we have used baby signs successfully with all of our children! It really helps them to communicate their wants before they are able to verbalize them. The signs are simple gestures used to express one or two word commands, this technique was not ment for them to communicate in sentences or spell out words using signs. We have been trying to teach Lucy the sign for "more" since currently she just cries when she wants more of something. We are also we are trying to teach her the sign for "sit". Sit is an important sign to teach her since you all know what happened to her in January.


So last night when we were putting Sophie to bed Sophie declared very emphatically(like she usually does) that we need to teach Lucy how to sit in Spanish!


Drew and I were surprised and wondered why she was making such an out of the blue statement. We know better than to question Sophie's out of the blue statements at 9:00 PM as many of them are stall tactics. Being the tired parents that we are and hoping to get to bed as soon as her door was shut, we just agreed with Sophie that we need to teach Lucy how to sit in Spanish. Frankly, I just thought it was a word that she learned from watching Dora the Explorer and wanted to share her knowledge with her sister.


However, sometimes things are just so off the wall that you wonder where they are coming from. So I had to ask, "Why do we need to teach Lucy how to sit in Spanish?"


Sophie: "Because she needs to learn!"


Good enough, right?


Knowing that I was now delaying going to bed, I had to ask the obvious, "Sophie, how do you say sit in Spanish?" To which she replied like this, and showed us the sign language sign for sit.


Drew and I: "Oh, I think you meant we need to teach Lucy how to sit in sign language."


Sophie: "Sign language, Spanish what's the difference?"


I was not falling for that one! With that I said, "Good Night, Sophie! I'll explain in the morning."

Teeth, Sleep, and Stinky Diapers

We have several recurrent themes in our house: teeth, sleep, and stinky diapers. Who could have every imagined that ones life, other than a dentists, would revolve around teeth. Jack lost a tooth recently. Megan also lost a tooth recently. Lucy is getting a tooth. Sophie only wishes that she could lose a tooth so that she could reap the benefits of the tooth fairy(I know how she feels, that is kind of how I feel about the government's TARP money. I think that all of us should benefit from some type of interest rate reduction, don't you!). Lastly, I have a tooth that is bothering me. I guess a trip to the dentist is in order for the entire family. It's that time again.

Our tooth theme goes hand in hand with our sleep theme, or should I say lack of sleep. Oh my goodness, I sure hope that Lucy is not getting the front teeth of a saber tooth tiger. She is absolutely miserable! Every time I go into her room to get her from her crib she looks like she is trying the gnaw her way through the bars. Drew jokes and calls her our little snail because everywhere she crawls there is a trail of drool that follows. We are hoping that those babies pop through soon, by soon I really mean NOW! She is not sleeping well at all which we think is somewhat related to teething, but could also be related to her bodies ability or lack there of to digesting certain foods. We have slowly been adding solids back into her diet, mainly because she has the desire to eat and we do not want to miss this critical window and end up with a baby who has aversions to eating. Like all humans, it is complicated to differentiate what are her individual problems. So, we have chosen what we feel is in Lucy's best interests right now. We are choosing to feed her a variety of foods so that she is exposed to various flavors and textures, but are careful to feed her a minimal amount so that she can maintain the feeding regimen that we have so carefully established. As she is gaining weight and cognitive awareness we have had to make adjustments to her feeding schedule. I wish at times that there was a more precise formula for human growth, but there just isn't so we just keep monitoring her weight and making adjustments accordingly.

Stinky diapers are the result of feeding Lucy solids. Oh my, I will spare you all of the details but sympathise with me please as I feel like I am up to elbows in poop most nights and days. As I mentioned in a previous post, Sophie is not yet fully potty trained. By "fully" I mean that I am still changing her stinky diapers too. Believe me when I say that we are looking forward to the day when we only have one in diapers!

Just thought I'd share some of our issues with you all. Laugh, cry, sympathize... and know we may be tired but are loving this life none the less. As promised, the above picture is Megan's newest smile.

What a mom won't do...

I am happy to post that we did not have to shell out any co-pays this week as we had NO doctors appointments for the first time in six months! Oh what are we going to do with all that extra spending money? I was afraid to post about our non-medical week last week because recently my words have come back to bite me in the a** (Look back in our archive at posts from early January and February). Lucy was evaluated for various therapies on Wednesday by our counties Early Intervention Program. Technically this was an appointment, but they came to our house and I did not have to pay a co-pay so this I could handle. We have been tracking Lucy's development with our pediatrician for quite some time, and although she is making great strides in her development, she is understandably behind in some areas. Our hope is that she will catch up sooner rather than later with the assistance of some therapy.

My mom was here this week playing and helping with the kids. Her coming is a great help for me but even more for Drew. While she was here he was able to "catch up" on work related issues and put in some twelve hour days without worrying that I am at home doing it all alone. Since the middle of November, Drew began a new position at his company as well as maintaining his old one. This happened to occur the same week on in November that Lucy was admitted at DuPont, timing is everything-ha! So this means that he has been working two jobs since that time, but this will be coming to an end soon or so he has been saying now for several weeks. He is hoping to transition fully from his old commitment to his new one. We knew that this would be the case for a while when he accepted the new position, but I have to tell you that I miss seeing that man awake.

We tried our best to take advantage of having "free babysitting" while my mom was here, only we had one issue and that was a tiny little red head who goes by the name of Lucy. Like all of our kids, she has what we call severe "mommyitis". She is very attached to me and can barely stand it when I am not in the same room as her, physically touching her, and breathing the same air as her. I know that Lucy' feelings are only temporary because Jack, Megan and Sophie had many of the same feelings as Lucy does and now they are just fine with me coming and going. I love all my kids; however, all mommies need a break every now and then and this mommy really wanted to get out without a child attached to any hip, back, leg, arm, hand... you get the picture. In reality the best way to do this is to go out when Lucy is sleeping. As you can imagine, being anywhere at a certain time is next to impossible when your entire schedule revolves around waiting for the baby to fall a sleep before you can leave. There were several failed attempts at getting out the door at a certain time, but at first you don't succeed try try again! That we did! Unfortunately, we had a bad week of sleep. Fortunately for me but not so much for Lucy or my mom, a baby never died from crying. I planned most of my "get aways" around Lucy's sleep schedule, but much to my and my mom's dismay she never stayed sleeping for very long. However, I did manage to volunteer in Jack's classroom, run to the post office without kids(those of you with kids know what a pain that outing can be with little ones), deliver a meal to a family at the hospital without having to expose any of our kids to hospital germs, go shopping with my husband on a Tuesday afternoon with no kids, and last but certainly not least go out for dinner and a movie on Friday night just the two of us and only the two of us! Of course, while out I worried about the kids especially Lucy, but as my mom always tells me she raised three kids once before! While out last night, Lucy woke up an hour after we left. I fielded one call from my mom at the start of the movie about how to cap off Lucy's NG tube so that it wouldn't leak all over her. After addressing that issue my mom said that she and Lucy would be fine. They bonded over a giant box of Cheerios and Fox News. We came home at 11:30pm and found both Lucy and my mom sleeping in the leather chair with the television on. Who needs lullabies when you have Fox News!

I am on my way to bed, honest I am!

Just a quick post to let you all know that we are doing better this week. My mom is here and telling me to go to bed, so I am going to make this very short. Lucy's illness from last week is so much better. She no longer has a fever and that makes all of us so happy! Megan lost her second tooth last week in the middle of Lucy's fever week and I have not yet snapped a picture of that toothless wonder to share with you all. I'll have to get one in the morning when she is awake and happy. Sophie is happy that my mom is hear to give her that extra attention she so craves. I'm not sure that I can tell you anything new about Jack this week. He is, as Jack would say if you asked him, GREAT! Drew and I were able to go out for a Valentines dinner with Lucy of course on Friday night. Our friends watched the other kids for us so that we could get out even if it was with Lucy.
That's all for tonight, good night.

An Update

Just a quick post as I am heading to bed ASAP. It's Thursday and Lucy is still having low grade fevers, but is not as miserable acting as she was earlier in the week. She has an amazing tolerance for not feeling well. She has been through a lot in her young life and that has given her so much strength. She has an awful cough that sounds "junky" along with a very runny nose. Her appetite is a little better, she is eating Cheerios again. She is still not sleeping very well, mainly because she is coughing and has runny nose. On top of those two things we are dealing with lots of diarrhea diapers again since going to 24 hour continuous feeds. Today we have gone back to her normal feeding schedule to see if we can prevent her from having so many diapers. We are going backwards on the scale which is exactly what we don't want! Maybe this is more than you needed to know, but hey I am just reporting the news here.

Thursday is our crazy busy day and because Lucy was acting better despite her fever we went on with our normal Thursday activities. She really loves to get out of our house and see the world. Getting out of our house today helped us to keep her mind off of not feeling so well. It was also very mild here in spite of the wind which made it easier to take her out. Hopefully tomorrow she'll feel even better.

PS Just a waring for those of you with flat screen monitors that have great resolution, I wouldn't enlarge this photo as she has a very runny nose!

Things can change in an instant

Sunday morning Lucy woke with a fever and has had one ever since. She is not acting like her "normal" self and it has Drew and I worried. We know that kids get sick with stuff all of the time but with Lucy things are different. She does not respond to illness like most children do so we need to take extra precautions. We have switched her to 24 hour continuous feeds until she feels better and starts eating well again. Although she just lays on us, her tone is good which is good sign that her body is handling this. Of course we are monitoring her very closely as we are hoping to avoid the hospital! I brought her in to see our pediatrician yesterday morning to make sure that we are not dealing with something bacterial. As of yesterday it appears that this is viral, possibly a strain of the flu. We are testing her urine for any sign of infection as a precaution. She is not sleeping well which in Lucy's world is the domino that starts the not eating well pattern. We'll keep you posted!

S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y!

This is going to be a rather boring post compared to some of our more recent posts. Trust me when I say that I have never been so happy to write about nothing. We spent our day at home sweet home! Even better, nobody got hurt or sick today! It has been a good day! The kids hung out in their pajamas all day catching up on some much needed playtime with one another. Sophie and Lucy both took naps that managed to overlap one another for about an hour. Drew and I spent our day filing our taxes (I know not so fun but oh so rewarding to have done) and synchronizing our schedules. That is what we did, but what we got out of that was time spent together talking and laughing about the little things, you know those things that don't really matter individually but when you add them up are a big deal.

Overall, we had a pretty non eventful week, which was just fine with us! I managed to get to the Y several times this week to sweat off some stress. Drew spent his week trying to "catch up", but ended up getting further behind as his computer has been giving him grief. We had snow in middle of the week which gave us a two hour delay on Wednesday morning. The kids took advantage and played in the snow several days this week. Megan had her staples removed from her head on Thursday. She was very brave and did better than I think I would have. Jack kept making a big deal out of the fact that he watched her get her staples out and didn't get woozy and faint. Sophie has not made any more attempts at using the potty. Nonetheless, she is eager to go to Target to redeem her prize. Jack lost another top front tooth last night. Thank goodness, that tooth was just dangling and every time he spoke it was driving me crazy. I was afraid that he might swallow it. As for Lucy, she is perfecting her hobby of tube pulling. Tonight we will have to place another tube, I think that this makes the fourth one this week. She is moving faster and faster everyday, now that she is no longer dragging around a heavy cast. She has been having fun exploring the wonders of our basement today after the kids and I spent most of Friday afternoon cleaning it up. If you are reading this Scott and Amy, I had flashbacks to our childhood yesterday when I was threatening to clean it all up "my way".
That's really all I have to report. Just thought all of you would want to know, everyone is happy and healthy!

P.S. I made Sophie put on a shirt before going out in the snow, and also had her change her boots around as they were on the wrong feet as usual.