Therapy Thursday - Sadie Dey's Cafe

A few weeks ago Sally met Holly and I at Sadie Dey's Cafe for a therapy session in the afternoon. It was really great to see her in a different environment where she could play and run and climb.One of the things we tried was spinning her on this cool disk. She wasn't a big fan. We went really slowly so she would have a chance to organize her self and her sensory inputs.After wards she wanted to imitate us and she tried to spin her toy and later a doll, like we had spun her. She handled it pretty well.She took a break to work on some of the puzzles. It would be great for Katie to come here too and work on her fine motor skills with her. The puzzles seem to calm her, this latch one is her favorite.

Here is a Video of her playing with them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G-_tqjypt0

We found lots of opportunities for her to stretch and work out her muscles. Sally also enjoyed watching her interact with the other kids. When we arrived we had the place to ourselves for about 30 minutes.But it soon filled up. At 4:00 there is a special where you get free kids dinner with a paid parent dinner, so a lot of people arrived then. Holly had a chance to climb and navigate the different play structures before it got too crowded.One of the things we worked on was the slide. Helping her learn to pick up her feet and not dig in her heels when she went down. The other thing was going down the steps. She could navigate pretty well until she got to the last one where there weren't any handles.That one was hard for her to do. She fell a few times, but we taught her how to rotate when she sat down, so she could get off on her own. This is a picture of Holly's Friend Neve, we met her at the pool and baby brigade. Holly got to play with her once her session with Sally ended.

Sadie Dey Highlights: Wordless Wednesday

I Heart Faces - Reflections

I Heart Faces is a site where you can share photos and submit them into weekly contests, of faces, one for kids and one for adults.

So this is my entrance into Week 16 Theme: Reflection - Kids

Weekend Update

So I am a little blah today.... This week and weekend has been awsome-ish. So I know its been a few days since I have blogged. Last week we did quite a lot, On Thursday we went to an indoor play area called Super Franks in Pleasanton where we met one of my Mom's grouops, and then I headed to Walnut Creek to grab some craigslist items (The Chair and the House, for 12$ and 30$ regularly priced 41$ and 76$) and to JC Pennys to get some Spring potraits done on a dime.

Then on Friday we met another one of my Mom's groups at a place called Fairyland in Oakland, it is right on lake Merritt and I have wondered about it for such a long time. We got to get in free if we listened to a 15 minute talk about saving money for our kids college so it was very cool. Well Fairyland was pretty awsome. But I think it is really for kids a little older, at least 2 but even more fun for a 3 year old. We did ride the Trolley/Train so that was fun and Holly was late on her nap so she was content for a little while to ride around in her stroller and I got to chat and hang out with the other moms.

Then we went swimming and when Joel got home he started his contest. The theme was Moving Wall of Dome.. and he wrote a game where you play a glacier and you are trying to help rescue the Wolly mammoths from going extinct, but of course he did it in 3D and over complicated it, so it wasn;t quite done by 8:00 PM Sunday night, you could play it sorta, and it was pretty fun.

So in order to give him so focused time on Saturday we went to Habitot for there "Birthday" and it was free which was cool, and there was a jazz band and cake and Holly played in the water room and made quite a mess of herself, and she didn;t want to take a nap on Saturday either so she was awake from around 8:45 till 4:30 and then we both got home and slept until 8:00 which of course messed up her entire sleeping schedule, and she was up till 11:00.

On Sunday we went to see an afternoon movie at the Ceritto Family day. We saw I Love You Man which was a "Bromance" I thought it was pretty funny and Holly was so very well behaved. She played in my lap, ate some bananas, and pizza and drank some yogurt juice and only once when there was a quiet scene (but not too serious) did she try and babble to the characters which our neighbors just thought was cute and didn't mind.

So then today Joel called in Sick and we headed to UC Davis Mind Institute for another Appointment and Evaluation with Dr. Hagerman's Speech Therapist. It was really fun to have Joel with us and we learned a lot about how to interact with Holly to help further develop her speech and her signing and it was really fun to go on a "road trip" afterwards we stopped to get another craigslist item which was a kids digital art tablet, very cool, but obviously a little old for Holly but such a good price and savings.

Then we headed to tumble and tea for dinner and Joel got to see Holly playing on the slide and climbing and OMG she is walking so much like all the time transfering further and further and chasing items taking several steps sometimes, she just amazes me every time she does it. She will be running before i can count to ten. After they closed we went to the bookstore and then gave Holly a bath, apparently all that walking barefoot and crawling in a spring dress makes for a dirty baby, she had a blast and was tired out from her long day.

BTW the weather.com page says it was 93 degrees in berkeley today. We were in sacramento, but it felt about that hot and at 9:30 when we got home it was 84 degrees in our house. We are on major cool down mode with open windows and fans and such for our playdate.

Anyways... back to the point of why I am blah today.. I had 250 pictures of all of this stuff, well through sunday and it sims the sim card on my camera is somehow corrupted and while I can see the pictures on the camera view they aren't able to be transfered off the card in anyway.

So I know its not the end of the world, but I had been waiting to catch up on all these fun posts after downloading the pictures, which I can't do now. so you get this update without any visual aids... Joel said he would try and recover them, so you might see them eventually. In the mean time I borrowed a sim card from joel's ebook and I will be able to use it tomorrow to take pictures of the playdate.

Wordless Wednesday - Sadie Dey Cafe

Tumble and Tea

I was going through my pictures from last week and realized that I totally forgot that I went to Tumble and Tea on Wednesday. I never normally go out on a Wednesday afternoon, but at the time I was a little stir crazy, it was feeling like spring, Holly wanted to play and I was hungry. Tumble and Tea, has this promotion where if it is over 65 degrees, (warm enough to be out in the park) and you spend 10$ on food you get free admission, so off I went to have a late lunch and let Holly play.When we arrived there were several babies just about Holly's age between 9 and 16 months, so she had a lot of fun playing. She hung out at the puzzle table with Payton, crawled around with the other babies and hung out with there Mommies and had a blast.She learned a few things that she had never done before. There is a play structure there shaped like a car or jeep. It has bars for the older kids to climb and swing on and platforms for the littler ones to crawl up on. Holly hasn't ever done this before, but today she climbed up to the first platform, and then onto the second. Then just like she was taught she turned and reached her foot down and slipped back to the lower platform. At first I was so worried about her falling back, but she was careful and intentional and climbed around up and down and had so much fun. A few times she would sit really close to the edge and I would watch, but then she would be fine, reaching her legs down and supporting herself.The other thing she did was learn to slide, all on her own. Several times she climbed up the stairs into the little loft, hung out and then eventually came to the slide where she would sit with Momma's help and slide down. She also really liked climbing back up the slide and got almost half way up without any intervention. I could merely put my hand on her little tush for the extra support and she would climb to the top. Hang out a few minutes and then slide back down.Well it seems I am an enabler, and let Holly teach the other babies bad habits, and once they saw her do it several of them also tried to crawl back up the slide, but their moms didn't like that idea and stopped them. I guess I didn't see what was wrong with that, she liked climbing, and I remember when I ws a kid I liked climbing up the slide too.Holly also decided to walk around and explore the entire cafe. With the new layout of the cafe there is now an open area where there are tables and you can get to the front window but be blocked away from the front door. So she hung out by the window looking outside using the bottom of the table tops as support as she walked by.We had a fun afternoon Mommy had a great lunch, and just after 6:00 we left, Holly fell asleep for her afternoon nap, and then we picked up daddy.

We're Back!

Wow… it has been a while since I posted a daily update type post. We actually had a really good last few days now that Holly is back on the mend again.

Regional Center:

So I have been battling with them to get approval for speech therapy and respite. I was denied on both cases and went into appeal mode. Here is the thing, while I understand the policy on Respite and agree Holly probably does not present with extra ordinary care needs compared to other 11 month old children, it is the principle of the thing. Another mom in another Regional Center in this state received 22 hours of respite without even requesting it. My Regional Center said they typically do not ever give this to any children under the age of 2 unless they have a physical disability that requires special care, so I can accept this, but why is this done inconstantly from one regional center to another within the same state with the same funding issues?

I am of course very happy for this other mom, and I will try again but the way this center is I may never qualify. I think I have ranted about this before so I will move on to the goodish news. I received a call today from my case manager telling me that her and the supervisor are bringing my request to their Director to try and make a case and bend the rules and get Speech Therapy for Holly. This was another principle issue for me, because this same other mom will get Speech Therapy services starting at 12 months, and one mom even told me in her state it starts at 6 months. But originally my Regional Center said there is no benefit of Speech Therapy until 18 months old. This prompted me to email her asking what all the speech therapists were doing in other regions that was of no benefit to those kids who are younger than 18 months and if she could instead get me an evaluation and have the Speech Therapists report tell me that services would be of no benefit even though I already have a referral from a specialist and her Pediatrician.

I also wanted to know what the next step was to make an official appeal of the denial of services which would most likely include the need of a mediator, so perhaps my Case Manager thought if she could make an attempt to bend on the Speech therapy I would drop my complaint about the respite and we would all be happy.

So the drama is that my new insurance basically sucks. I have been trying for months now to get in to see Aimee Bord the Speech therapist who works with Randi Hagerman. My Insurance changed before I could get in to see her and then the person who does the scheduling was on jury duty for 3 months so she never got our new insurance and Aimee was booked. So finally she has room to see Holly for an evaluation and they were trying to get authorization but were being delayed. So when I called the insurance company they said that my Primary Care physician has to submit the request for Authorization first.

I realized this would affect three upcoming appointments, Holly’s X-ray, Her Speech Evaluation, and our visit to see Dr. Hagerman. So I called my pediatrician on her cell, she is so great, and she is trying to take care of it all. But the insurance won’t cover Aimee, so she instead gave me a referral and approval to get a Speech Therapy Evaluation Locally. She took care of the issue with the X-ray and did a request for Dr. Hagerman but is almost positive it will be denied and won’t go through by next week’s visit, so I have contacted Dr. Hagerman’s office to see if we can make the visit a research visit instead of a clinical one. They just assumed and made it clinical this time because the last three times we were there I was on different insurance and it was covered.

But the issue here is that when my Regional Center Case manager called me what she said is that she needs a report from Katie our OT recommending Speech Therapy, and from Dr. Hagerman. Also if I have a Speech Therapy Evaluation already she has a stronger case to get approval for the actual services. So hopefully I will be able to get all of this straightened out in the next week or so.

Well onto the more fun stuff. On Thursday we went to Tumble and Tea. She had a lot of fun but only enough steam to last about 2 hours and then got cranky and sleepy. When we left she fell asleep in the car within 5 minutes. I let her nap and chatted with my mom while we waited for Joel to get off of work.



We met two other little boys who were also 11 months old. Vincent was very adorable with bright blue eyes and lots of blond curly hair. He was very mellow and quiet but quite a climber. Holly had a lot of fun playing with him. He wasn’t used to other babies and this was one of his first outings so he was a little intimidated by Holly but she was friendly as ever. The other little boy Aiden had just moved here 6 months ago from Korea and wasn’t cruising yet. He had one of those toys where you push the button on the top and it spins. He wasn’t quite sure how to use it and Holly saw him playing with it so she crawled over pulled it out of his hands set it down pressed the button to spin it and then crawled off to climb on the jungle gym. It was so cute. She was showing him how it worked.

We also played in some new areas, the symbolic play room has a little kitchen set up and Holly had a lot of fun cruising around the kitchen opening the refrigerator and the stove and turning the dials and getting to play with all the appliances she never gets to play with at home. She also was quite happy to be in the middle of the big kids watching them play, but I doubt they enjoyed her getting in the way and traveling under foot. In fact she got hurt, it of course lasted about 5 seconds, but she was sitting near the stove and trying to push it in and a little boy was trying to pull it open. He won and she wasn’t happy.

She is also really starting to begin tantrum behavior. Here are two examples. She was trying to push one of the little cars and there was another little girl, older who wanted to rid it. Holly was pushing and she was holding it in place refusing to let it move. First Holly grunted at her and then growled she kept trying to push the car and was getting more and more angry then all of the sudden her face turned went to a frown and she wailed. The little girl’s mom said, Honey maybe you should let the baby play with that toy, and she did. But once Holly got her way she pushed the car for about 5 seconds and 8 inches and then continued climbing and cruising on her way.

Later she was playing with a doll in a cradle she was trying to take the doll out and its arm was stuck in a way that you would have to twist the doll to remove it. Well she tried to bruit force it out, pulled, banged, tugged, tore and dumped and had no luck getting it out at all. Then she looked at me and made the face again and before I got to her there was the wail again. I got to her and said, “Holly, are you frustrated?” Would you like some help with that?” I then removed the doll and handed it to her. She grabbed it out of my hand and immediately began to maul it chewing its arm and head with a vengeance, then tossed it aside and went on to the next toy. I tell ya, I don’t know what I am going to do with this girl when she can actually throw a tantrum if she is like this already. It is still cute though, but I am sure when she is 3 it won’t be.

The other thing we played with at Tumble and Tea was the table of latches and levers and slides. She loved this and had a lot of fun opening and closing twenty little doors and chewing on lots of little metal pieces and pushing and sliding wooden pieces around.

So even though we were there only about 2 hours we had a lot of fun.


That night Joel took me out to eat. I haven’t been out to a real restaurant for a long time. We went to Barneys which was my choice and I was craving the garlic skinny fries and chocolate Oreo shake. Holly ended up waking up as we walked into the restaurant, so our meal was quick but we put her into a high chair I gave her a bottle and then we asked for a slice of cheddar cheese and I Cut it into little bits and put a few in her reach at a time and she snacked on them through the entire meal and stayed content and happy. She is such a good baby!