Thursday, February 4, 2010

Lets Talk Development

Elias has finally captured the art of getting to the sitting position when laying down. Well, sort of. He has become increasingly more consistent and we have been “finding” him sitting when just moments before he was laying. You take your eye off him for a second or go get a medicine for him and when you return there he is proud as can be sitting up like a big boy! It seems as though he has developed a new way of getting there as well. It seems as though he might be using his arms, somewhat. We haven’t seen him do it that much yet, but it is definitely different than the original way. So I guess this gives him options! Regardless, it is nice to finally see this coming along. We can already see him scheming when he is sitting in his playpen. You can almost read his mind from the look in his eyes as he is looking up checking out the top of the sides. It is almost as if he is saying, “ok now how do I get up there?”
In other developmental news, there are finally molars coming in! They are giving him fits though and he is teething like mad on anything he can. Katharine was reading some info on teeth and we realized that Elias is almost a year behind. Typically by a child’s second birthday just about all the teeth are typically in and the molars that are breaking through currently, usually do so around the first birthday. Not that this matters or has any bearing on anything. It was more of an interesting fact. It did gives us something to ponder in relation to growth though. Could his size and lack of growth so far due to the FA contribute to these physical delays, if you will. Almost as if the body gauges itself to create and develop certain things using growth as it’s internal time clock? Without having researched any of that again it is more food for thought than anything. Maybe even a touch interesting? It’s not like he is able to use his teeth now anyway, but hopefully soon. Speaking of feedings we were given the go ahead by the airway team to move forward with a Fiber optic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES) which assesses swallowing, without X-rays. We have this test towards the end of the month.
I had a lengthy conversation with Elias’ speech therapist on the phone yesterday. We were discussing our goal for Elias in the next six months with the anticipation that he will be hearing aided what we hope to be in the near future. Our goal is for verbalization to begin with the use of 15 words focused to express what he wants or needs. The written goal is 9 words, because she will be on maternity leave for two months, but she feels that Elias can do 15 in six months. Her feelings are that cognitively Elias is excelling and with the pace in which he is learning other skills, she likes the chances he will transpose that towards talking. If he were lagging cognitively she would not have such a hopeful outcome. That is exciting to hear, but then again the whole process and potential for Elias to hear for the first time soon is amazing. As always we are being cautiously optimistic so we are not devastated should things not work out exactly as planned, but the prospects are promising. The verbalization goal is really the most profound of all the six month goals this period. The others are challenging, but nothing that stands out like this. We are pleased with the goals we have set overall for him and look forward to watching his progress and accomplishment of them.

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