after a long semester, and a long two weeks apart, mike and i were blessed to be able to take our family away to the lakes region of new hampshire for a one week stay.
it was gorgeous.
this was the view from the balcony.
gorgeous.
and it was a wonderful place.
we had a fireplace, and we had a little kitchen, and we had a room for maggie and a room for tennyson.
the place was so nice, we didn't even mind being snowed in one day.
we just worked on a puzzle all day, while the kids played. occasionally tennyson "helped".
and it was so nice, that we decided to do a little christmas while we were there, instead of doing it at the best western we were going to be at on christmas day.
we were even lucky enough to only be a short drive away from mike's parents, so they were able to babysit a couple times for us and we got to see a movie, and go shopping without two kids in tow. things like that need to happen more often.
but really, not much has changed since last month. she is still just working hard trying to figure things out.
like she's been trying to figure out crawling. and now she can get up on all fours and rock.
and she's been trying to figure out how to eat puffs without gagging on them, or how to eat purees without getting them all over the place.
she's been trying to figure out how to give kisses.
and trying to figure out how to talk. her babbling is the cutest.
she is still trying to figure out how to sleep through the night, and i am trying to figure out how to teach her that she doesn't need a million bottles during that time.
one thing she has totally figured out is sitting independently. it was about time.
we are still waiting for her to figure out how to keep that tongue in her mouth.
and we know it won't be long until she figures out how to torture her brother.
until she figures all these things out, i'm just going to enjoy having a little baby.
because one thing her brother taught me, and she is reteaching me, is that this time goes by too fast. they figure things out too fast. and then your little baby disappears and is replaced by a kid. and i want to keep my baby just a little bit longer.
isn't that the cutest turkey you've ever laid eyes on?
i sure think so.
we spent thanksgiving this year down in chicago.
and it was really relaxed, and really wonderful.
on the day of thanksgiving we got all dressed up.
well, everyone but tennyson. we did put in the effort to find him a thanksgiving shirt, but failed. apparently not many people love thanksgiving quite as much as i do, or something.
and we feasted.
tennyson ate a lot of rolls.
but he let us keep the potatoes and turkey on his plate, and that was a big deal.
and maggie at a lot of roll, too.
and after the meal, mike and i headed out for black friday shopping.
Sometimes I forget how interested people are in how we are doing. I forget until I'm asked the same questions over and over and find myself explaining the same things over and over, and that is usually when I realize that I should put it all out there on the blog so that everyone can read it at once.
Because here's the thing...
I don't think I've given a true update on Tennyson since before Maggie was born and we were in the middle of all the audiologist appointments to make sure that he was hearing the way he was supposed to. Which he does.
And then Maggie was born, and his speech took the back burner for a little while, and I stopped posting his progress on our blog because, well, I was busy.
So here is what has been going on.
In June, we saw a vocabulary boom. Tennyson went from 15 words to more than we could count in about a month. It was amazing. We figured out that he learned words the best by using flash cards, and once we figured that out, he really started building a big vocabulary.
As he was doing this, the gap between his receptive and expressive speech became obvious to us. When it comes to speech delays, there are two categories to look at. Receptive is how much they understand, and expressive is how much they say. Tennyson was always behind in both categories, but all the sudden his expressive was surpassing his receptive, and so we scaled things back and focused less on the vocabulary and more on trying to get him to follow directions and answer simple questions.
Six more months have now gone by, and Tennyson is still making a lot of progress. He can now answer most "yes/no" questions. He can follow a lot of one step directions. He is just barely starting to put two words together to describe his toys. He has started to use phrases like "where are you?" and "here you go" and "there it is". He is really starting to use his words to request things more, which is wonderful, and really reduced the amounts of tantrums we hear every day. Right now, we are really working on trying to get him to answer "or" questions and to follow more complex directions. We are also encouraging him to continue putting more words together.
So that's pretty much where we are at with his speech.
But, we've recently added more therapy to our plate. Those who know Tennyson well know that he is an extreme clean freak. Like he cries when he gets one drop of water on his hands. He's also a very picky eater. For a long time, we've accepted this as a quirk, but the older he got, the more pronounced his issues became, and the more it was hindering his development. For example, his obsession with not getting messy means that he still cannot feed himself with a spoon or drink from a cup because one spill sends him running for the hills. His speech therapist, who we love, had started to notice that his issues were setting him back as well and recommended we get him evaluated by an occupational therapist. So we did.
What we've learned is that Tennyson has what is referred to as "sensory processing disorder". In a nutshell, his sensory system (sight, smell, touch, taste, vision) isn't quite working right, and it gets overloaded very easily. His sense of touch and taste are hypersensitive, which is why the goopy textures and foods overwhelm him, and so he became a "sensory avoider" which means that in order to not get so overwhelmed, he just avoids the situation altogether. It's why he only eats a limited number of things and why finger painting is pretty much the last thing he ever would want to do. His senses can't quite process the information they are receiving. This is also why he screams bloody murder during baths, or when we try to brush his hair or teeth. It's why he doesn't like waffle knit shirts and doesn't leave his socks on for long.
So now on top of the speech therapy, and his teacher (did I mention that when he turned two, he was far enough behind that he qualified as special ed and now he has a special teacher assigned to him?), we are going to start seeing an occupational therapist. She is going to help us introduce new foods and get him to be okay with a little bit of a mess so that eventually we can teach him how to self feed. We are aware that we have an extremely long road ahead of us with this one. For right now, we are working on just letting him have the food he hates on his plate. Eventually the goal is to get him to smell it, then touch it, then lick it, then taste it. And it's the same with other messes. Right now, we are just spending ten minutes a day being in the same area as something messy and not running away.
I feel like in the past year, I've learned more than Tennyson has. I had a good laugh with our speech therapist the other day because I started college wanting to be a speech therapist, and after deciding against it, it's pretty much what I spend most my time doing now anyway. I should have just stuck with it, I guess. Most of all, though, I think that this whole process has taught me patience. I can't force Tennyson to do anything on my timeline, as much as I may want to. And Mike said something the other day that I've thought a lot about since. He said that in some ways, we are lucky that Tennyson has delays because we are able to better appreciate and celebrate the small accomplishments. You know what? He is totally right. I know every mom loves when they get to hear their kid call them "mama" for the first time, but I don't know if it comes anywhere near my joy of hearing it after waiting for 27 months. And the other day, I was playing cars with Tennyson and I almost teared up as he took them out of the bin and said "red car, yellow car, blue car..." because we have been working so hard for so long that hearing him put two words together repeatedly like that was wonderful. A week ago, Tennyson took three bites of a hot dog, and Mike and I were flying high for days. "Remember when Tennyson ate some hot dog?" we'd say over and over again. It's a special kind of pride and joy when you have to work so hard to have those moments. Because we are working hard.
