Early Intervention

Almost a week has passed since Early Intervention came for their assessment of Paige. The entire appointment was very overwhelming for me so I can only imagine how Paige must have felt. Three women arrived (a nurse, a PT and someone else) with clip boards, bags of toys, etc and started doing all sorts of things with her. Although they came to evaluate her gross motor skills, they actually tested her in all areas. While they told me not to listen to what they were saying to each other about how she was doing, it was hard not to start feeling paranoid when they were constantly commenting on the various things she wasn't doing. They did assure me that they were testing both above and below her level so they expected her to be unable to perform some of the tasks. After about an hour of poking and prodding her, they were finally finished with the testing and I was able to put her down for her nap, a well earned one since she seemed exhausted and fussy after this rigorous hour of tests.

They concluded that she did qualify for services in the areas of both gross motor skills and expressive language. Although she makes the various consonant sounds, she doesn't repeat them if you do that at her so that was why she was behind there. They said that it's very common for someone who is behind in gross motor to also be behind in language since they're concentrating so much on the motor skills so they fall behind in language. In order to qualify she needed to be two months behind which they said that's about exactly where she was. However, they considered her a 9 month old even though she was only 3 days away from being 10 months which means she is closer to three months behind in these areas. So I'm a little disappointed that she is so far behind but I also know that it is not indicative of any long term problems and it will be nice to give her that extra boost she needs so she can catch up. We are supposed to hear from them in the next week or two and then we'll start appointments, probably every other week.

Other than that, she is doing really well. She is down on the Cape with Jake for the week so I'm flying solo up here in Franklin. She hasn't been sleeping really well down there for her naps so she's been a little bit fussy but overall she's doing fine. He took her to the beach but she wouldn't keep her hat on her head so apparently it was a very short visit. They were there the other day and she didn't know what to think of the sand. She put her thumb in her mouth after touching it and didn't seem to like that result! Otherwise, we're just plugging along, getting close to her one year birthday already...wow!