Fragile X Friday - Updates

So both a lot and a little has been going on in terms of Holly's therapy, so I will post a few updates here. Since she turned two this month we had her Annual IFSP. It actually went surprisingly well. She has at least a 33% delay in all domains, so she qualifies for all current services. Her speech is more difficult to describe, according to the report her receptive language is in the 6th percentile, and her expressive is 2nd percentile. The age equivalents are 20 months and 15 months respectively.But both of these include the use of signing as language, since it is technically a language. So the third domain is speech, which is supposed to be specifically related to verbalization. The test doesn't score it formally so the therapist reported it as between 9-18 months (yes broad I know) since she has some scattered skills. So Speech is our area of largest concern. She isn't really verbal yet, though she is beginning to try to speak again. See at Thanksgiving she could say "Go Go Go," actually in September she could say that. But she doesn't say it now.She rarely even say's mama or dada or baba, she uses the signs, because they are very clear and specific, sometimes I guess with her words, we don't differentiate between babbling and an actual request. Also, we were out of town over Christmas and she went 5 weeks without therapy. When we returned she had a new therapist, who not only did she have to get used to, she also had a very different style and decided to focus on teaching Holly the pecs system.The theory being that it takes her Motor Planning "Energy" to make a sign, and it doesn't take the same effort to present a picture, so upon receiving the picture we can encourage the "Speech" and creating a sound, and she can use the motor planning "Energy" on her mouth.The thing is, Holly loves signs, she has maybe 40. But she is not very articulate. Drive, Star, Bike all look the same, Horse, and Daddy look the same. She doesn't have the fine motor skills to really learn advanced words, but she watches baby signing times and learns them on her own.So the next problem is she asks us or tells us something with a sign, but we don't know all the time what the sign is, either we don't know it at all, or can't tell what sign she is doing, so we are frustrated. So with all of this going on, we made a request at her IFSP to increase Holly's speech therapy by 1 hour a week. This would allow the therapist time to deal with her oral aversion and also focus more on speech.But there are other issues too. Since Holly has a 33% delay in her fine motor skills, we requested that she get an official OT eval and possibly add an OT to her list of therapists. Katie our Infant Development Specialist is an OT, so she gets the advantage of an OT, but Katie has a lot of other things to do with her time. In Particular Katie works with her on a lot of her Sensory issues, and helps us in navigating what they specifically are, also with self help, social, and an over view of other domains.So having a 4th person focus on OT skills would free up Katie's time to work on other items. The thing is, the Speech increase has to go to an exception committee, which I think happened today. The regional center is in the process of moving there offices, so it is a little hectic over there, I haven't heard from my case worker so I am not sure if the OT Eval needs to be approved by the committee as well. But I hope to have that happen soon.So then, to through another wrench into the system, we are looking into a new program called Small Voices. This was recommended to us by our Case Worker, and it is actually just like the pre-school scenario I was looking for a few months back. It is 3 days a week, Tue/Wed/Thurs from 9:30-11:30 each morning. It is a parent Participation program, at least at first, but eventually I might be able to drop Holly off, just like real preschool. She only qualifies until she is 3, so this might allow her the opportunity to prepare for really preschool at three.So here is the Catch, if we switch to small voices, then we loose our Infant Development Specialist, whom we love (Katie) and has been seeing Holly since she was three months old. But the program has an IDS, and OT, and a Speech therapist, each day two of the three specialists plus an aide are in the classroom with about 10 children. We would go basically from 2 hours a one on one therapy a week, to 6 hours of group therapy. But it is very scheduled and does a lot of coll things.We are going to visit for a day in two weeks, to see if we like it, but I talked to the coordinator for about 45 minutes and it sounds like everything I had wanted before I changed my mind about preschool, so now I don't know. It's free, its only 6 hours, and It would provide structure, routine, socialization in a group play setting, sensory and feeding activities, self help.But it will be a lot to juggle, (not to mention having to get up and arrive by 9:30) if we are doing this three mornings a week, and then we have swim and gym on Fridays and then potentially four additional one on one therapy sessions a week. It will make a big dent in our social schedule, because she will basically come home and nap, so we will only have afternoons free.I guess there will be more updates with details on our visit, and hopefully with news from the case workers, and perhaps even information about her OT eval. I think the last thing that I will mention is that we have our next appointment to the UC Davis mind Institute on April 22nd. At that time Holly will get an autism assessment since she is two. And participate int he Fragile X Baby Study.We have also increased her Sertraline from .15 to .25 on a trial basis about a week ago, so Dr. Hagerman will assess the increase and let us know if we should stay the same, increase more, or decrease back down. Holly still does experience quite a bit of anxiety, though I push her a lot more then the parent's of many typical kids push there children because we are so busy all the time. But there has not been that Language explosion we were hoping for yet, though I do think there is definitely a big decrease in the anxiety, even though it is still present.The other issue is Holly's ears. Her hearing tested fine, but she had an ear infection when we went to our two year pediatrician visit. We just got over two ear infections not 3-4 weeks earlier, so perhaps they never actually healed, or maybe it was a new infection. It is hard to stay. So the doctor has her on antibiotics again, though she just finished them, and we go back next Tuesday. If she isn't completely healed, and there is still fluid she wants to aggressively push tubes.She says that the infections and the fluid cause a speech delay, so when we are working really hard to improve her speech these are working against us, and sometimes Holly tries to talk, like say the word Bear, but is sounds like "baaa rrr" So it is possible that she hears Bear in that way. When I asked the speech therapist about it, she indicated that in the banana curve of audible sounds when there is fluid in your ears there is a loss of about 30%.So if she continues to have this issue when she is developing speech it will be harder an harder to teach her to speck, and in particular in a clear manner. So while I am really nervous about tubes and a procedure like this, it may be the best thing for her. More to come when some of these issues will hopefully have an outcome.

Doctors and More

So on Wednesday after our session with Sally we decided to get Holly’s X-rays done. I wanted to have them to bring to Dr. Hagerman’s office, but I hadn’t been able to go earlier because there was an issue with the Insurance Authorization. When I arrived it was a nightmare, we spend over 30 minutes in the parking lot looking for a spot, at one point I left the lot and came back in, because the first 20 minutes are free and I wanted to reset my time. I was worried we wouldn’t make it because Radiology closed at 4:00 to walk in patients. At first we had to go to registration which was different then when we had the ultrasound done. We spend a lot of time in the waiting room there. And when we finally went to registration there was an issue with the insurance because they had two Holly’s listed in our plan, one male, one female, and with the birthday of 01/02/2002. I was able to get it all worked out and they sent us up to Diagnostic Imaging.

When I got there we hit Hurdle number two. Hey didn’t have the referral from Holly’s pediatrician on file. How something like this happens I am not sure, since it was faxed twice, the first time over 6 weeks ago, and then the second time the previous Friday. Thankfully they were able to call her and she faxed it yet a third time. This of course meant more time in the waiting room, but since we were in the queue it was ok that 4:00 PM came and went. Holly was very active and didn’t want to stay in her stroller. Since she would have to stay still for the X-Ray I decided to let her run around the waiting room. Since it was a children’s hospital, it was pretty kid friendly. There was a book case with children’s stories that she preceded to remove one by one, and a large fish tank. She cruised back and forth along several rows of chairs, and when other kids came in to wait she crawled over to say hi.

After a while she got bored with the waiting room and headed out to the hall and tried to escape. The staff thought she was adorable and quite amusing, so I let her wander off down the hall for a while, until she got into something precarious, like trying to sit in front of a door or something and then I would bring her back to the waiting room and reset. There was this one little boy who was a few months younger then Holly but he was like 4 inches taller, huge in comparison, and he was very friendly, in fact he followed her around, he wanted to touch her face and pet her hair, and now I am remembering this is actually where she got her hair pulled. His mom was horrified, but I told her it was ok, and that Holly is normally the one scratching faces and pulling hair, so I know how she feels, and she is tough, and can take it. I picked her up and comforted her and then she was ready to play again, with the little boy even.

Finally they called us back, and I changed Holly’s Diaper so she would be more comfortable and the technician got everything ready. Originally I was told that I would wear a vest and could stand next to her but he would not let me. So I had to stand about 10 feet away behind a screen where the other technician was. It was in the same room, and very close by. So the X-Ray consisted of 4-5 shots. She simply had to lie down on the table and all was well. It was a little cold and since the films were under her she couldn’t lie on a blanket and had to have her top off. She was fine for the first two shots, but then she got a little wiggly and tried to pull her legs up, he pulled them back down, but then she tried to hold her ears, and he had to hold her arms down, so then she tried to do crunches and sit up, and he had to hold her forehead down. All this restraint made her very mad. The forth one had to be on her side and she couldn’t curl up so by that time she was crying. But this all took less than 2-5 minutes and I was quickly able to go to her and pick her up and as soon as she was able to sit up she stopped crying and was fine.

It was funny, I am sure the technician has done this 1000 times but between each shot he had to change the films and was not holding her and the table is rather narrow, so my worst fear was that she would flip over and fall right off. More than a few times I jumped forward to run to her aid as she began to wiggle when he wasn’t holding on to her, but then he would put his hand on her and she would settle and not actually turn and was fine. So once we were done there was a third waiting room we had to sit in while we waited to make sure the pictures came out good. They did not, and he had to do the last shot again. This time they decided to do it differently, in a way where Holly was to lay her head in a foam brace type thing and sit raised on a board. As soon as we went back into the room she got upset, realizing that I would be putting her down again. But it went quick. I held her while they set it up, and laid her down into the foam and though she didn’t like it, it only took about 60 seconds and we were done.


They noticed and made me take off Holly's Earrings during the second set of XRays. I have never done thins before, and actually needed to have the guy help me. I held Holly's head and had him take them off, I didn't have a strong enough grip or pull to get them to open. I stuck them in my pocket and when we got home cleaned her ears and the earring with the piercing solution and put them back in while she was taking her nap.

I was able to get a copy of the X-rays on a CD which is cool. It comes with this special X-ray viewer, and the pictures are not in a normal format. So when we got home I was able to look at them, not that I knew what I was looking for. One really cool thing was that we could see holly’s Molars, and boy it sure looks like they are ready t o start coming in. We really couldn’t tell what else we were looking at, but on Thursday our Pediatrician met us at UC Davis so she could meet Dr. Hagerman, and she said she spoke with the Radiologist, or X-ray Person, and they told her it all looked great, and Holly had no issues in her Neck, shoulder’s or spine. SO anything going on is definitely a tone issue and not related to any possible skeletal problems. I am looking forward to sharing the X-rays with Sally, I am sure she will find them interesting, and maybe even helpful.

UC Davis was a long day. We got up around 8:00 so we could leave around 9:00 to be there by 11:00. Thankfully Holly slept most of the way up there in the car, but that meant she was awake by 11:00 and would be ready for her afternoon nap sooner than usual. Dr. Hagerman was running late so it was almost 11:30 before we got in to see her. I didn’t mind much though because there were a lot of fun toys in the waiting room for Holly to play with and it was Dr. Jones first time really getting an opportunity to engage with her in a playful setting, and watch her go. She was amazed with her cruising and crawling and fine motor skills, and said that if we didn’t have a Diagnosis at birth she would have missed it, and not known Holly had a genetic condition, or noticed any significant delays that were cause for Alarm. But we talked about how it is so hard to know what Holly might have been like in that situation, because I truly believe she is doing as well as she is because of the early intervention services she is receiving, and I credit her therapist for her amazing progress. Well also her problem solving attitude, and determination.

Once we did get in to see Dr. Hagerman we met a Colleague of hers from the Fragile X Center in Chicago Affiliated with Rush University, and a Colleague from Korea. There was a 4th person Observing but I forget exactly where he was from, we met him last time we were there so he is doing an extended visit, unlike the Woman from Rush, who was just there for the Day. We talked about Holly’s Development and there were a few things I had questions about. I think I am being a paranoid, hypochondriac, over protective mother, but I somehow got it in my head that she might have a Mitral Heart Valve problem, which is somewhat common in Fragile X. I came to this fear because the Internet has too much information, and I was looking up sweating while sleeping in babies, trying to see if Holly’s profuse sweating was related to anything, or maybe had something to do with Self Regulation, and her fighting sleep. I found that sweating in your sleep could be a sign of a heart problem. I knew there were issues with Fragile X and the Mitral Valve so I looked it up, intending to rule it out. Then I read that it can cause breathing issue and rapid heart rates. Well just recently Holly has been gasping for air, catching her breath, when she is active. It is a little off putting, and while it is some days rare for her to do it at all other days she will gasp several times making her circuit across the room. I had chocked it up to having a stuffy nose and mouth breathing, and was keeping an eye on it. But once I read about breathing related to the Mitral Valve I worried.

Well, Dr. Hagerman, and Jones were very sympathetic and patient with me and both carefully listened to Holly’s heart and said that if there were any issues they would be able to hear it, and then follow up with an EKG, but this typically didn’t develop until someone was much older, and that her heart has always sounded amazingly strong. They reassured me her heart rate was normal, and I listened, and it seemed fast to me, but they said that is normal for a baby. Then later she did the gasping thing, and I jumped, “See, did you hear that?” and they had. They checked her out, but said that it was a common language development thing. She is playing with her breaths, learning how it works, and it isn’t very different then doing something like Raspberries. Her lung and breathing sounded fine otherwise and that I had nothing to worry about. I now know I was completely over reacting, but they said no, it is good to bring up concerns like that, because you never know when it could be something serious, and they were happy I was so observant and attentive, but that in this case she was actually fine.

We also discussed the Folic Acid therapy and I explained how I had not started it because of the way the pharmacy gave me vials for an IV with Syringes. She said that was crazy and that her Pharmacy made up a solution, and they could give me a 3 month supply and it was only like 20$ without even using insurance. So she wrote me a new prescription. She said if there was a compounding pharmacy locally, they could call her pharmacy for the formula when I needed the refill, but I should give it to Holly for at least 3 months. The solution is actually only good for 100 days, and needs to be kept away from light, so we plan on starting it today.


While we were there we let Holly crawl and cruise around the room, it is hard t contain her in one place especially in top of a table and while she was pulling up on the table leg, once up she let go and sat her self down. Joel said she stood for a few seconds. He pat me in the arm and asked if I had seen it, or if anyone had. I missed it, but the Specialist from Rush nodded her head, she had been impressed and saw it too.

We also discussed Holly’s Speech Therapy issues, and the value of having early speech therapy. She says her therapists start working with babies at 6 months old, and that in her report she will recommend that Holly receive Speech therapy two times a week. I am hoping her report goes a long way to get the regional center to approve services immediately. That said, she thought we were doing an amazing job working with her, and although she isn’t make as many sounds as she could be she was very vocal and seems to want to communicate which is half the battle. She looked in her ears and said they look fine but recommended we see an audiologist to test her hearings and do a more thorough exam to make sure there is no fluid, because ears problems are so prevalent with Fragile X kids, we want to be proactive about it. I had wanted to do this anyways, so Dr. Jones said she would do the referral in two weeks when we come in for our 1 year visit. Also she recommended doing an eye exam before she is 2. She is not currently on our vision insurance, so I need to find out if the regular insurance covers the exam, and just not the cost of glasses, which I am sure she won’t need, at least not now.

This was basically the Visit with Dr. Hagerman. It ran long, and our next appointment was at 1:00, so we only had 15 minutes for lunch, but Vivien the coordinator found us and told us we could take until 1:30, so we were happy to get the break. I was a little worried about Holly because she had been up since 10:45 and was starting to seem a little bit sleepy. We went down stairs after lunch and started the eye tracking experiments. We got through 3 videos before Holly was fussy and didn’t want to sit still anymore. We had actually brought our sandwiches downstairs so Holly could play a little before I was going to make her sit still, but she was ready to wiggle some more. So we changed her and let her play for a while and made her a bottle.

She basically whined through the next three videos but did make it through them. We took a break after number 4, because though she watched and paid attention she wined the whole time. So we took another break and worked on the Mullins. Before I describe that, I have something interesting to note. I thought Holly would do really good during the video’s because we watch a lot of Baby Einstein, but what I realized is that she likes to crawl all over me, and often watches over my shoulder, wiggling in my lap, sideways, ect. And for the testing she had to sit still in my lap and not flip, flop and wiggle. She didn’t much like that. But I never realized how much she did move around during out “quiet” time in comparison to being in a situation where she had to stay stilish (at least keep her eyes in the same place so they could be tracked.

When we did the Mullins test they had Holly sit on my lap so she would be at the table, and be able to do tasks at table height. We did stuff like showing holly a toy and covering it to see if she would look for it. She then had two covers and put the toy under on and not the other to see if she knew where it was. We tried a simple puzzle. She knew she was supposed to somehow put the piece “in” the puzzle and tried several times in several ways banging it on the puzzle to get it in, but didn’t. We also tried some nesting blocks, but in the way it was presented she didn’t do it. It is interesting because the Mullins is very specific, and you have to show three nesting items take them apart, put them in, take them apart and then Say, Holly you do? Or something to that affect. Then you can’t really help, point, or prompt her. What we do at home, is I point to the container and say, can you put it in, and then she will. But presented in a different way, and simply watching her do it and then be expected to do it herself, she wasn’t that interested and would rather chew the cup. In a similar way we did a matching test where there was a key and a triangle and then holly had the key, and she would say something like, show me which one is the same, Holly same? But she isn’t really that advanced yet either. I think we did some stacking which she isn’t doing, and then putting in and out. I think she passed that one. She had to take every item out of the container and then put every item back in. But about half way through putting them back in, she wanted to start taking them out again, so I don’t know how you score that. Then there were some gross motor skills which she is doing, except the independent walking, and they asked us about a few other things based on our observations.

All in all it went rather quickly, but she had a lot of fun sitting table height and doing the activities, so we are going to try that with her using the hanging on table chair, and try and teach her a few tricks.

After we went back and got through the last two videos, but Holly was very tired, since she had been up since 10:45 she was going on 5 hours, and she was doing very tiring tasks. We had to do a blood draw, because she still needs a final third test done, but they poked her twice and didn’t get a vein, so we said enough, let’s try it next time, and no blood was taken, but she sure wasn’t happy about it. They Had Baby Mozart, and put that on for her, and the prick hurt, I think if at that point they had found a vein and let the blood flow she would have just been whimpering, but they were looking for the vein, poking the needle around and pressing down trying to find it, so she was crying most of the time, but the whole thing was less than 10 minutes including breaks.

Afterwards we drove home. Holly slept in the car on the way back and that is pretty much our trip. They want us to come back in 6 months, and I will be scheduling that with Vivien.

Butterfly

Today we had a very rearranged schedule. All week Holly has had trouble falling asleep, I fear she is taking after her Mommy and is too much of a night owl. It has been midnight almost every night. So this morning she woke up at 10:30.

This late start caused a delayed breakfast and no nap. Sally was running late so then around 12:45 Holly fell asleep. Sally decided that she would get some lunch and run an errand and let Holly nap. Sadly she only slept for about 45 minutes and was woken up with a big poopie diaper, but then she had a bottle and was much more cheerful.

So Sally came back and we had a good session. We played with some new cool snowflake blocks that interlocked. There were also these really cool eggs that you could open and the little chicks inside had different faces and squeaked. Holly was more interested in the little container it came from. In the afternoon we played some more but she was tired and cranky because her nap was interrupted. We had some yogurt and carrots and then crawled into my lap and fell asleep.

I transferred her into the crib and got a call from UC Berkeley Infant Study program. We were participating in a study about parenting philosophy and babies first year. We talked about feeding, sleep, and parenting issues. This was a follow up to a 1 week journal and questionnaire we filled out in December. Joel will be doing his interview next week. Holly woke up and we listened to some music and then Joel came home and played with her while I caught up on some organizing and chores that I had been meaning to do. We had some friends over tonight to watch Lost; Holly didn’t go to sleep until 11:30 again. I am not really sure how to get her on a better bedtime schedule. Waking her up earlier in the morning won’t do it, and the day she had only one nap, she still stayed up super late.

Yesterday was a much better day. We had a blast going to Studio Grow, the Wordless Wednesday pictures really say it all, but I will include some little stories here.

I am amazed at how social holly is. She loves other kids so much and is so curious and observant. While playing in the ball pit there was a little girl who was playing caterpillar she was wriggling inside a crawly tube and standing and looking out the front. She walked over to holly and said hi and then she wriggled out of the end of it and turned into a butterfly with her arms waving in the air and dancing around. As you can see this tube is opaque and very narrow, I am not sure if it is supposed to be so extra twisty and narrow or if that is from bent rims and overplay.. Needless to say I let Holly out of the ball pit a few minutes later, sat her in the large room to go and explore and she went right over the the tube. She crawled through it with no prompting and then when she got to the other side she sat looked at me and put her arms up. I was shocked.

Next we played with the climbing structure in the Wordless Wednesday pictures. What was most exciting was that she climbed up into the blue tube which was easily 12 inches off the ground and then on the other side, felt for the floor, with one hand, found the ground and climed down. This was some very advanced crawling. She played all around going in and out and over the little ledges.

Then she crawled into the next play room, as the kids were not by us and she went to look for them. There was a little girl in there who was playing with the blocks and building a maze. Holly wanted to “help” at first the little girl kept straitening the blocks as holly messed them up. She would push them strait and then when she turned to get another, Holly would push it out of place. So I told her that she should finish building the maze and then when she was done we would go around and straiten all the section. She has two younger siblings so she was accomadating. Holly had fun banging the little block on the big one and watching the girl make the maze.

The another little girl came in to play and jumped onto the “stage” to do a dance for her grandmother. Holly was so intrigued with her energy she crawled over and pulled herself up to say hello. Then she started to pat down on the stage edge as if dancing too. The little girl loved the extra audience and would come over to Holly and dance by her and holly would start to laugh and cheer when she came near. I think it is the first time I saw her laugh so much at someone else other then me and dad. It was amazing.

There was another little boy who was almost exactly 24 hours older then Holly born at the same hospital. His mom and I joked that we may have run across each other in the halls. It was great to see that they seemed to be right on course with each other developmentally with the crawling and pulling up. He liked to follow holly around and joined her near the stage.

Later when the kids stopped dancing they went to play in a tent. There was an older girl, who wasn’t as friendly and bossing the other kids around. Holly wanted to see where everyone went so she crawled over to the tent to say hi and play, but the girl told her no babies aloud. It was kind of cute. So I told Holly no babies and we went back to the ball pit for a while.

They have these roller coaster tracks that you ride a little car down a wavy track, she had a lot of fun on that, but wanted to crawl back into the other room. She found her way to the tent after the other kids moved on and was quite please with herself. Later she was playing the Asheem the other 10 month old and she crawled over to the block shelves and proceeded with sliding each block to the floor one by one.

Asheem came over and wanted to knock the blocks down too, but it seemed kind of dangerous, so his mom moved him over to the next shelf and while we chatted the two of them had a great time dropping the blocks. It was amazing how they were so much alike. And us mom joked about this being the good thing about being here; we won’t have to put them all back. I felt like the staff must feel futile trying to pick up with little kids following around them messing things up as soon as it has been cleaned.

The only bad thing that happened was Holly had a little bit of Sensory overload while we were in the lunch room. We went in and Holly finished a whole container of Squash. She was still hungry so we opened some bananas and then two little girls came in, so she started to get distracted. The little girls were Chinese I think and they were two in a playgroup of about nine, so after a few minutes the rest of them and their moms came in. So it was like 18 people having 6 different conversations in Chinese and at first I thought wow this is wonderful she can be exposed to the different sounds and language but she just sorta “wigged out” and started to cry and couldn’t handle all the stimulation.

So I picked her up and pulled her into the quiet room and then made her a bottle. After a few minutes she was calm and rearing to go. I let her crawl around the baby room for a bit and she was over by the gate ready to go. She actually was able to push it open and started looking for some more fun. After lunch we had all the fun I already described above.

We left at 6:00 and she fell asleep in the car, so I ran some errands to make an exchange at Bed Bath and Beyond, and then at Babies-R-Us. We picked up Daddy at 7:00 and then decided to go out to eat. We went to public market and Holly ate the rest of the Bananas and then we browsed around the bookstore. It was a fun day.

All In A Days Work

I haven’t done an update post for a few days.. It has been a pretty busy week. On Wednesday we had a session with Sally. It went well. Holly has been grumpy and cranky all week because she is teething, so everything we do has been colored by that. We cut down her eating back to once a day because she has been resistant; I think because her gums are so swollen she doesn’t want to let anyone near her mouth unless it is her knowing on something. So in Sally’s session she was trying to stand and climb as usual. We played on the large ball a bit which she seemed to like.

She was a bit clingy and wanted to stay near her mommy. One notable thing was that Sally warned that it was OK if Holly is trying to pull herself up and walk, but we should not overly encourage it, like for example walk around the house holding her hands. The reason is because she is a little young for it still and not yet bouncing on her legs. If she learns to walk before she is ready she will walk stiff legged and then Sally will have to spend the next year of therapy re-teaching her how to walk correctly, but if we let he ease into it slowly and try to get her to bounce on her legs then she will be a better stronger walker when she learns how.

Wednesday afternoon we went to pick up the veggie box and then I went to Tumble and tea for like 2 hours and then picked up Joel from work at 7:00 ISH.. I was sick of being in the house and wanted to get out.

On Thursday I tried to get up early for my Mother’s group. I thought it was at 9:30 and it was almost 10:00 when I arrived, as we are pretty slow moving in the morning, but then I realized that it actually starts at 9:00 and I was simply not paying attention. So it was ok, but I hate coming in during the middle when everyone is already in a conversation. Holly didn’t mind and had a ton of fun, I plopped her in the middle of the circle and she played with all of the new toys and had a blast. Most of the other toddlers were actually pretty subdued, so they didn’t really interact with her much, but she looked at and watched them.

Then at 11:00 when the little baby momma’s started coming in Jack who is 11 months and his mom came, so I decided to stay and overlap the session. The theme was talking about your birth stories. I found out that two of the other mom’s had done IVF, and one of them actually did it twice, first with her 3 year old and then with the 8 week old twins she just had. Both moms said that it took them three tries for the eggs to stick. In one case the mom tried twice with a “fresh cycle” Which I think means new eggs that were just extracted, and it didn’t take, so the third time she used frozen eggs and it took.

Whereas the other mom said she used frozen eggs twice (she had left over’s from her first daughter) but they didn’t take so she used a fresh cycle. But since she was 44 the egg quality was low and they actually implanted 5 eggs, over at UCSF and I guess two stuck and so now she has the twin girls. They talked a little bit about the procedures, and one thing that I didn’t know which I am not pleased about is that after the eggs are implanted you have to take progesterone shots.

I thought you had to do the hormone therapy prior to egg retrieval, that is a shot you have to give yourself in the stomach, daily, but it is like an insulin shot, and then one the eggs were implanted you were done it’s like a normal pregnancy, but apparently that is not the case, and the shots you do after implantation have to go into deep muscle tissue, so you do the upper thigh with a super long needle, for the first 3 months.

They were telling stories about how they were black and blue from the shots, ect. It did not sound pleasant. They also say all of the typical pregnancy 1 trimester symptoms are like 10 fold on the hormones, so you are nauseous and vomiting the whole time. Perhaps since I am doing IVF for reasons other than infertility I won’t have to go through this same regimen, but I think that is just wishful thinking. It sorta sounds like a nightmare and I suppose I can live through anything, and that is only a few months of endurance required, but I am not sure if I know what I am getting myself into thinking about going down the IVF road. It will require much more research on my part in the months to come.

We snuck out of the 2nd mother’s group about ½ way through at noon, Holly was super sleepy and ready for a nap. She promptly fell asleep once I put her in the carseat. So I headed over to Wendy’s for some drive-through lunch and hung out. I ate in the car and took a breather to flip through some of the parent’s magazines that have been stacking up. This was nice. I had called Joel and asked him to look for a place for me to go for a flu shot. See… I used to be on awesome insurance with only a 5 dollar co-pay, I was going to get the flu shot at my Dr. office, but they apparently only give them at 8:30 in the morning, otherwise you might wait over an hour, I figured for a free flu shot, I could wait and hang out, but then they said, oh no, you have to pay a co-pay we run it through your insurance like a regular visit. Well my new co-pay was 20$ and I was like, I don’t want to pay 20$ for a flu shot I hear they are giving them away for free. So I call Walgreen’s and other such places and they say, oh we already did our flu shot clinic.

So Joel finds a place online and sends me to a Safeway in Oakland near the Wendy’s where I was eating, so all is good. So Holly wakes from her nap and we go inside to get my shot. We then she decides she is hungry and I am at the pharmacy filling out all this paperwork and she is crying, so then I finally finish the first round and make her a bottle and just give it to her, she can hold it herself right… Well she is eager and she does, see a little independence never hurt anyone. So then the woman tells me it will be 30$ and I am like what?? It was supposed to be free, the Dr. Said the shot only costs then 25$ and I didn’t go there because I didn’t want to pay the 20$ copay. At this point Holly is crying and still hungry and seems to have guzzled down her bottle in like 2 minutes. So the lady was really nice and gave me this family discount and the shot cost me 16.88$ I was happy for that, thought at this point I would have paid the 30$ to not have to go somewhere else, wait another day, or get up at 8:00 AM.

So we go and sit to wait for the pharmacist to give me the shot and I notice Holly’s shirt is soaking wet. I take the bottle from her and it is dripping, and it seems she had somehow loosened the top (or her neglectful mother didn’t tighten it all the way) and something like half the bottle dripped and spilled out all over her, I mean she was wearing a long sleeved onezie, and a sleeveless summer shirt on top to be fashionable and they are both sopping wet. So I get her out of the carseat and get her wet clothes off of her and dig through the diaper bag and find a cute pink dress and attempt to dress her in that. Of course now the pharmacist is waiting for me and she is fussing and I am trying to dry her off and dress her and also cover the carseat with her blanket because it has a damp spot on it. So I finally get her dressed and down and she starts to cry because she is still hungry. I run over and give him my shoulder, he pricks me… OUCH.. and then I go and make her a new bottle, which I hold this time and she guzzles it all down.

So now we both need to pee… Well Holly has peed and needs to be changed, the bathroom is of course on the opposite side of the store, so I finally get there and the door doesn’t stay shut so I use the stroller as a lock and go, but then see there is no changing table anywhere in sight, and the bathroom is not very clean. So I decide to wait and change her until we get to Tumble and Tea.

Luckily for me I waited, though I again feel neglectful, as it was a poopie diaper and it was very messy, so I was so grateful for the wonderful changing table with little plastic bags to dispose of your mess in neatly and we got her all cleaned up and ready to play. So she is playing and I decide to snap a picture of her and send it to my mom.

So this is what she says when she gets it.. Her pants don’t match the dress she is wearing…

--Sigh—No they don’t, they matched the cute brown top with the green butterfly summer shirt she had on before, but no, in fact the pink flowered dress very much clashes with the brown flowered pants she is wearing. I have pink pants, which I eventually put on her, about an hour later, when I am changing another diaper, but at that point I just wanted to sit down and drink my lemonade.

There were some cute little babies for her to play with, her age and size. Well actually Solgura was 11 months, but she was about the size of Holly and Audrey was 9 months. I snapped a lovely picture of the three of them lined up all looking in my direction. Today I noticed some horrid red marks on Holly’s hand, at first I thought she was gnawing on it, but now I am wondering if she got them from playing with the girls. The three of them were a little rough, but us mom’s didn’t mind and decided to let them work it out, except when Solgura was trying to put Holly or Audrey’s Pacifier in her mouth, then her mom would step in and tell her no. Holly is super social, she immediately tries to engage any other baby she sees, she goes up to them and tries to play with whatever toy they have, she is almost a bully that way, as she gets older I might need to school her, right now it isn’t a problem, and it is good for her to be so social, she might take a toy, but then she gives it back, and when the other babies take her toys she doesn’t mind it.

She really wants to stand, and spent a good deal of the time we were there playing trying to stand. Also something new, she crawled up the little slide to sit on the edge of the border, wonderful, something else I have to watch her from falling off of, but I was very impressed with her new crawling skills, and it seems like I am not going to be able to get away with her getting in free as a “pre-crawler” for much longer. Since she stays contained in the walled confines of the baby area it has been ok, but I bet by the time we get back from Florida, she won’t be doing that any more.

So On Thursday, I was tired and didn’t want to battle with Holly to eat, so I let Joel feed her. She was eating some carrots, she had Carrots and Oatmeal the night before, and tonight I added some rice cereal, they were sorta runny and needed to be a little thicker. It was quite cute getting to sit back and let Joel give it a try, she is a clever girl, and in observation, he hadn’t realized just how clever she is at not eating. He got through maybe a third of her food and I had a rest and was amused so I finished up. He was impressed with my feeding skills, and how I sneak in those bites when she least expects it.

We started a new Study through UC Berkeley on Infant Development. We are required to fill out a parenting philosophy questionnaire, some baby developmental demographics, and keep a journal for 7 days. They ask questions about feeding, sleep, crawling/walking mostly. It was difficult to fill out because a lot of it didn’t seem to apply, like questions about whether or not she sooths herself if she is upset for more than 2 minutes… Well that has never happened, if she is crying for that long and hasn’t soothed herself after like 1 minute, we go to her and calm her down. Or how long it takes for her to go to sleep after we put her down, well it takes her no time, because we don’t put her down until she is already asleep. So we will see. But after the 7 day journal, which is basically a series of questions as well, for each day they do a 1 hour phone interview. So it should be fun and interesting to see what they find out. So we started that on Thursday.

Friday we had to get up early. As we were doing a make-up session with Katie, since we will miss a week when we are in Florida. She arrived at 9:30, and Holly had only been up like 20 minutes. She stayed until about 11:15 ish and it was an OK session. Holly rocked on the bolster, did some stretches and climbing, and Katie wanted to see how she was with a teething biscuit, which I happen to have, so I gave her a barely one. She sucked it up, but didn’t really chew on it which is what I think Katie was looking for. She seemed to like it and it certainly kept her occupied for a good 15 minutes before she made a mess and got bored with it. Mommy was very tired and Holly was fussy and yawning so I decided to lay down with her. She wasn’t quite ready for a nap and decided to crawl around and stand up against my headboard and play for about 30 minutes but then fell asleep and we both napped for about 2 hours. Just in time to wake up and get ready for swim class.

It has been about 5 weeks since we have been to the pool, Holly was excited when we first arrived and she did splash a little bit in the water and was very curious about it, but then I think she started to miss her pacifier as she had nothing to chew on, which is her current favorite pastime, so she got very into rubbing her tongue against her gums which causes her to keep her lips closed tight and her cheeks puffed out. She looks like she is pouting when she makes this face. She doesn’t look unhappy, but she isn’t her smiling self either. So this is how she spent most of swim class, she looked around and had a fine time, but it wasn’t her normal cheerful, definitely having fun self.

And I guess she tired herself out, because after we rinsed off (mommy forgot her towel in the car – so this was not fun) and got dressed I fed her a bottle and she fell asleep. I drove to babies-r-us as I needed to pick up some more travel formula packets put hung out in the car chatting on the phone while she napped. She when woke up we went into the store and shopped for a few minutes, getting the formula, resisting all the cute Christmas outfits and babies first Christmas ornaments, I figure my mom can get these for us while we are visiting, she will like that, and then headed home.

Tonight for dinner we had Banana, Peach, and Granola which she loved. She ate like 2/3 of the container and even sorta opened her mouth for it. I had gotten her a few new spoons at the store, so I have extra to keep in the diaper bag and we tried those out. I don’t like them as much as our regular ones but they work ok. She decided that tonight she wanted to play the climb the mommy and reach the bookcase behind her game, which she did for about 30 minutes, as she kept “tumbling” down. It was very cute how determined she is. Also we got a package from Threadless, I ordered way too many t-shirts at their 5$ sale and we went through all those. When we were done I let her play in the box they came in and she really seemed to like that, she likes flapping things open and shut so she did so with the box top.

She was asleep by 9:45, and I should be off to bed soon myself as we have a playdate at 10 tomorrow morning.