Developmental milestones 3

I should really be working now, as always, but I never get around to doing the blog anymore.
So Fi is nearly 21 months.

Fi has been on the list of early intervention as a precaution. She had a few PT sessions, I think she is ready to discharge her.
She had her speech assessed at 9 months and the therapists would call me every few months to ensure that she was on track. She was called in for a formal assessment last week. She did really well, she actually did everything they asked her.

- Choose the block from 5 toys and put it in a box.
- Choose the ball and drop it on the floor.
- Feed the teddy.
- Give mummy the key.
- Then they did the 4 sets of picture she had to show all: the biscuit, car, baby, etc.
- Then loads of body parts.
- I was asked if she was starting to combine 2 words, which she is, she is saying things like: daddy up/dow(stairs), mummy(s)bag, come Tara, daddy sleep, daddy car
- She knows at least 50 words, but I stopped counting. I am doing the syllable clap thing to make sure that she says the right number of syllables. But she actually has a few 3 syllable words now.

So there are no concerns about her speech right now. I will be called for another assessment in about 6 months.

She has started to sit on a strap on chair for meals at our table and is loving it. She can eat really well with a fork and enjoys her independence.

She can bring her little step along and is starting to use it to climb onto taller things like our couch. I am really encouraging this climbing and am hoping she will be stable enough that by her second birthday we can get a few of these IKEA two-step stools to give her a bit more reach.

Arts and crafts

All the girls are crazy into painting these days... Just ignore all the Hungarian discussion in the background and look at this budding artist... Watch the way she holds the brush and paints those incredible concentric circles...

Walking

I am literally going through the blog labels and writing the posts I have been planning to write but never did over the last few months...

So, Fi started walking at 16 months. She has been cruising for a very long time, perhaps since 10 months or so. I love Dr Sears and what he says about late walkers is 100% the reason why she walked late, I am certain, it was defo HCH, she has been ready, but was so obviously holding back...: "Late walkers are more likely to be content to entertain themselves with seeing and fingering fun than with motor accomplishments. A late walker goes through the crawl-cruise-stand-walk sequence slowly and cautiously, calculating each step and progressing at his own comfortable rate. When he does finally walk, he walks well."

Now at nearly 19 months, she walks around as if she had always walked, she hasn't had a single bad fall yet which I cannot believe, she is very careful, and I must admit I don't mind.

"Fi slee"

"Fi sleep" or the emergence of self-concept and 2 word sentences. Fascinating... I don't think there are many things more interesting than language acquisition...

Bragging mama

I have got to brag about Fi. She is doing so well with all her milestones. She is just a bit over 13 months. If you are not ready to read a lengthy post, skip this one as I will go into major detail:-)

Speech:
I am fairly sure none of our other kids could say and understand so much at this stage. When we speak about things that she can say, she actually recognizes the word in the adult conversation and says it, I don't think kids normally do that until much later.
We always know what she wants, she points and expresses really well. Moves head to say yes and uses a sign for no (which we never taught her and it's actually the proper makaton sign).
She LOVES books and points and tries to pick things up all the time.
She waves bye-bye, plays peek-a boo, claps.
She points to about 5 body parts.
She has lots of little proto words e.g. of course she is not pronouncing most of them properly for:
- daddy
- Lia
- dog
-cow
-sheep
- crow
- pasta
- biscuit
- milk
- banana
- peach
- bye-bye
- sleep
-hello
-baby
-ball
-window
- legs


Gross motor:
She has started proper crawling just this week, following the gorilla crawl and the half leg proper crawl other leg drag along... She never seems to stop.
She still loves cruising and getting up and sitting back down, she is on the go for hours at the time.
She just started climbing over things, say over a pillow.
She cannot yet pick up a toy while holding onto one hand and stand back up, she sits down to do it and gets back up.

Fine motors
She can pick things up really well, she loves eating grated cheese, that requires quite some skill...
She can and loves to scribble with a crayon and throw a ball and roll a ball.
She doesn't yet put blocks on top of each other, she loves ruining her siblings' towers...

Problem solving
She can put blocks into a container but she really prefers emptying containers and cupboards.
She copies things like wiping a table clean, etc...


OK, this list has become so long, even I am bored with it... Will continue another time. I guess the bottom line is her speech seems really good for now.

My gorgeous baby

I know it seems that I am very focused on all the medical stuff, which I am probably, but I do enjoy Fi as a baby tremendously. She is a typical third child, very laid back with all the extreme noise around, although her hearing is super good now.
She is nearly 10 months now and enjoys a party with her sisters. Every time they dance, she moves to the music. She hates being on her own, in the mornings the kids take turns in entertaining her, I think it's her favorite time of the day...
She is a real show off, the rare minutes that she gets to spend just with me and my husband, she goes into major action, showing all her skills... this evening it was all about clapping and squealing, very-very cute.
Her favorite thing to do now is standing next to her cot, holding onto the rail with one hand and chewing on something with the other. She does try to sit down when we tell her and/or if she feels like it, but it's more like a big jump just yet. She has managed to take a few steps, but she is not properly cruising yet.
Question: Has anyone's baby seem to struggle a bit with clapping, Fi does bang 2 objects really well together (like every time she grabs 2 objects at once) and can kind of clap when lying on her back, I think it's too difficult for her to control sitting up and clapping at the same time yet, but when she does clap on her back she never kind of flexes her hands up... When she is sitting up and I try clapping with her, her little arms seem very stiff and don't seem long enough to do the job fuly...My other 2 really enjoyed clapping, but Fi's arms are very short, I put a 0-3 cardigan on her the other day, and it was short on her waist, but the sleeves had to be rolled up just like when she was that age, so I reckon her arms haven't grown at all since she was born... Anyway, this was a really long-winded way of asking if anyone's kids had difficulty to clap properly because of elbow restriction and rhizomelic shortening issues?

Crawling

Well kind of... Fi started crawling in a circle, army crawling... she can do 360 degrees... She is nearly 9 months, none of my other kids crawled so I am very excited...

She can also wave bye-bye and dance when prompted... Beyond cute...

Developmental milestone charts

I have an over eager health visitor, I have tried to tell her to back off and it didn't work, multiple times... And I am not a terribly nice person, most people would back the hell off even if I told them thinking that I was being very subtle.
She sends me these giant questionnaires every month to complete for Fi's development. While I do think that they are a bit over the top, I have actually found them quite helpful. I just don't like the whole reporting on a monthly basis appropriate... Especially as she could have some delays, she is not even willing to look at the achon charts...

My gut feeling is that kids with HCH must be somewhere between the AH and the achon charts just like for height. It is clear to see why they would have a delay with gross motor skills, they have major "mechanical challenges": shorter limbs, larger head. Because they may spend longer time mastering the gross motor skills they could have somewhat delayed fine motor skills, the shorter arms also mean that they reach for things differently and the little hands don't help either. It is also often said that their speech may be delayed simply because they take longer to learn the motor skills. In addition to that there are the hearing problems and then the cognitive side of HCH which I will not go into now.

Anyhow, as pushy as the health visitor is, the questionnaires by themselves are not bad at all and I have found them on- line. They go all the way up to 5: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B23x_OlN3FTNYmE2NTY5NTctODY0OS00NzY5LWI4ZWQtZWM4ZDE3ZDBkNDFh&hl=en_GB

Fi is actually pretty much on target with all her skills now at 8 months, the only thing she doesn't do is rolling over from back to tummy... I am however not worried at all, my other 2 children could walk before they rolled onto their tummy, yea, my kids are not big on tummy time...

I also have and review time to time these 2 achondroplasia specific charts :

http://data.memberclicks.com/site/lpamrs/Achon%20development%20chart.Todorov%2081.pdf

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B23x_OlN3FTNNTVlYjEzYjgtYmIxZC00OTUyLWI5YmMtYTNhYzAyNmMzYTlk&hl=en_US

Enjoy, happy reading...

Developmental milestones 0-2 months

I thought I would document these, they are fun for us to remember and could be helpful for others whose kids have hypo.

There is no dev milestone chart for kids with hypo, I am guessing that their development is somewhere between that of average height kids and of children with achondroplasia.

There is a special chart for achondroplasia which might be helpful.

OK, so what can Fi do at nearly 11 weeks:
- she can smile - she started at about 5 weeks
- she can chuckle softly (not a real loud laugh yet, more like a giggle) - started at about 8 weeks
- she can turn her head from side to side - started at 8 weeks
- she "plays" with her playgym toys -if she is in the mood, she started trying to hit them at about 6 weeks
- she can track a toy with her eyes when interested, but she won't turn her head towards it, only slightly, she tracks really well up and down
- she can recognize her favorite song - I kid you not, there is one tune that never fails to make her smile
- she can say "awwwa" and gurgle
- she can roll over from her tummy - she did this tons of times, but I guess the size of her head may help a little bit, but it is deffo intentional and she does need to rock herself over - since about 8 weeks
- she can push herself up on her tummy and hold her head for like a minute
- she recognizes the different family members and responds appropriately, she loves me and Tara most, Tara's voice seems to sooth her a lot. She also recognizes Lia and is scared to death each time - Lia loves Fi and as any 2 year old would, she expresses it with lots of unwanted hugs and kisses, she is also very loud so that doesn't help either. She loves her daddy a lot, her favorite pastime is chilling out on G's chest.
- She knows when I am about to feed her, she looks at my breast as if I was a grilled chicken or something...

What she seems slower at:
- she has quite good head control, but I am almost certain that the other 2 would have had nearly full head control by this age,
- turning her head side to side when lying down - she can do it, but is not turning as much as I would expect at this age, I am putting it down to the size of her head as opposed to her length
- she likes to turn her head to the left side, so she isn't that interested in looking at the playgym toys above her

What we are doing loads with her:
- Singing while holding her, rocking her to the rhythm of the songs
- Talking to her at the horrible high-pitched voice that she loves
- Giving her tummy time a lot more than the other 2, I would say up to 5-6 times a day
- holding her up, so she centres her head and showing her toys that way