Nora is a child of very few words. Quiet, she is not. But words? Well, she really doesn’t have them.
I think I’ve mentioned this concern on my blog before, perhaps in posts about her chronic ear infections and the surgery to place her ear tubes. Or maybe in passing in other posts as well. But I’ve never dedicated an entire post to it because, well… we’ve always just hoped that–like with a lot of other things–Nora is a “late bloomer” when it comes to speech.
And maybe she is.
Nevertheless, at Nora’s 18-month well-baby visit, her pediatrician said that she wanted an update on her speech development at 21 months. She said that if she hadn’t made marked improvement, she would refer her to an early intervention program. She noted that it would mostly be precautionary–she doesn’t really worry until they are past two years old–but that it was worth at least being evaluated by early intervention at 21 months because the process is easier when working with the county (as opposed to the school district, which is apparently who we would work with if she was 2+).
A little more than a week ago, I called the doctor’s office to talk to her about behavioral issues–tantrums. She loves the behavioral stuff, so we have an open invitation to call her with questions whenever, which is really nice. Anyway, during the conversation I mentioned Nora’s speech, and when our doctor heard that Nora had really only added one new word in the past three months (which is “no,” by the way), she told me to go ahead and call early intervention.
It’s a process just to be evaluated, so I don’t know when we’ll actually find out anything noteworthy. But we have an appointment with the service coordinator this week, who will go over our “options” and then I guess we’ll get on the schedule for the actual evaluation.
The funny thing? I don’t even think she’s going to qualify for services. I really don’t.
In talking to a few friends who have been through the process, the therapists evaluate the children using a number of different factors–and then come up with an overall score. If the score is too high, the child doesn’t qualify for therapy. Apparently, half of that score is based on receptive language–and Nora understands. Nora understands a lot.
Even more amusing is the fact that in the last week since I made the appointment, I swear we’ve noticed a handful of new words. Like when she’s in the bath tub and she lines up her little sea animals on the edge–we always count them. And a few times, I’ve said, “Count your animals, Nora.” And she’ll take her little finger, point to them, and say “wuhh. tooo. tee.” (one. two. three.)
Or last night, when Michael kissed her goodnight, said “I love you,” and started to leave the room when we both heard what very well could have been a version of “I love you” escape Nora’s lips.
Also new this past week has been a couple of animal sounds. We ask her “What does a tiger say?” and we get a “Raaaahh.” and “What does a cow say?” and we get “Mmmmm!”
Thankfully, she has also picked up “Yeah,” which is a nice complement to “No” (although not used nearly as often, I’m sorry to say).
I don’t know what the evaluation will bring. Maybe she would benefit from some time with a speech therapist. But I can’t help but feel like perhaps the “language explosion” is just around the corner.
One way or another, we should be making some progress very soon.
Of all words in our language, of all of the things that I can’t wait for her to say, there is just one magical word that I look forward to most.
I hope that I will finally–someday very, very soon–get to hear her little voice say “Mama.”
Someone in these parts is just about two months shy of turning the big 3-0. And since one of us already did that, and the other one is not even close–well, you can come to your own conclusions.
To celebrate, we’re talking about taking a mini-vacation–a long weekend–to Boston. I traveled there in April for work, but I was literally so busy that I didn’t see anything beyond the few square blocks around my hotel. I’ve visited for vacation before, but I was 15 years old and *ahem* that was kind of a long time ago, and it was only a day trip.
Vacations are so much more challenging to plan now that we have Nora. We haven’t traveled since our trip to Mexico last July, when Nora was still only crawling, and was still a happy-go-lucky infant (not a mobile, crazy, moody toddler). But I think we can handle a few days in the city with our little one.
So who wants to tell me about Boston? Where should we go (especially knowing that we have Nora in tow)? What do we need to see? Any recommendations for places we should eat?
We contemplated driving, but flights are decently priced so it’ll hopefully be easier on us to fly. Plus, we’ll take advantage of one last trip with Nora as a “lap child”–and thankfully, a very short flight–before we have to start buying her a ticket. :( So that means we’ll need to utilize public transportation throughout the whole trip. I’m no stranger to subways, but if there is anything special we should know about the T, do tell.
As usual, we’ll be attempting to score a good deal on a hotel through Priceline, so tips on areas to stay would be appreciated as well. What “zone” in the city should we plan to stay in for easy access to attractions, restaurants, and the T?
Lay it on me!
Oh, the battles you have to fight with toddlers. They are over the dumbest things.
Nora was the type of baby that would take any bottle. Any pacifier. As long as it was a means to nourishment and/or comfort, she was game. She had a laidback personality, it seemed.
But then she became a toddler. I’ve told you before my stance on toddler mood swings. They ain’t pretty.
Anyway.
We went through a time around Nora’s first birthday when she suddenly gave up the bottle. She wouldn’t drink from one anymore, but she also wouldn’t drink from a sippy cup. She would nurse for a few minutes in the morning and a few minutes at night, but that was it. I still don’t know why she did that–self-weaning, teething pain–who knows. But when we finally did get her on a sippy cup, there was only one kind that she liked. These ones:
They were only the second sippy cups we tried, they worked well, they were easy for her to use by herself–so they were winners. DONE. We went out and bought several more. No complaints from us.
Eight months later, though, and Nora has a lot of teeth. The spout on these cups is not what I would have considered “soft” compared to others (in other words, it’s nothing like a bottle nipple), but come to find out… it can definitely be chewed up. And Nora was starting to purposely chew them. Once I realized that they were, in fact, sort of soft-spouted, I knew that we would have to make a transition to a hard-spout cup. I wanted to make a good choice for the next sippy cup because ideally, we would transition her just this one more time before she’ll eventually drink from a normal cup. It needed to be something that could grow with her a little more.
I had seen a number of people recommend these Nalgene Grip ‘n’ Gulp cups, so I started to look into them.
Then, one of our friends happened to mention that her nearly 4-year-old son uses the Nalgene cups and that they love them, so I was sold. We ended up finding them in the water bottle/outdoors section at Target for cheaper than they are online, by the way. Still a pricey sippy cup at $7.99, but they are virtually indestructible. We had Nora “pick one out,” and we came home to give it a try.
BIG. FAT. FAILURE.
Nora wanted nothing to do with it. In fact, every time we’d bring it near her, she’d push it away, and if we tried to set it on her high chair tray, she’d throw it off. Unfortunately for her, we’re not ones to give up easily, so we made the decision to go cold turkey. She wasn’t going to get her old sippy cups back, no matter how difficult she tried to be about it. Because the thing about her stubbornness?
She gets it from me. I can play at this game.
I remembered back to August/September when she was refusing the bottle and sippy cup, and I recalled our pediatrician telling me that Nora would absolutely NOT dehydrate herself in order to prove a point. At that time, the doctor maintained that Nora was getting enough liquids to keep at least partially hydrated through her foods.
Over the course of the next week, we had limited success with the new sippy cup. Sometimes she would take it (briefly), other times she wouldn’t. Sometimes, I practically had to force it on her for her to see that it was actually water (or milk) in there, and then once she realized, she would drink. But then at the next meal, we’d be struggling all over again.
During our weekend in the Poconos, she was especially difficult about it, and I have to admit–even I was growing tired of it. Michael and I talked at length about it. We wanted to put an end to the wars, but we weren’t willing to go back to the old sippy cups in order to do so. We figured that we just hadn’t found the right sippy cup for Nora.
Then, on Memorial Day, we were at a restaurant and Nora showed special interest in my straw. When I was done with my cup, I filled it with water and presented it to Nora. Wouldn’t you know it–she gulped down the entire cup through the straw. That was it: A STRAW! I thought we had finally cracked the code, so we stopped on the way home to pick up a straw sippy cup.
As soon we got this thing home and out of the package, I discovered that it was not what I had expected. The “straw” on the top of the cup is SUPER SOFT–much like a bottle nipple, in fact. You can suck the liquid out as if it’s a straw (because there’s a straw that goes down inside), but the “feeling” of it is nothing like a straw. I don’t know what possessed me to try this with Nora, for we could’ve just taken it back to get our money back, but alas, we tried it. And it was an even bigger failure than the Nalgene cup.
I did everything I could to get her to drink from this thing, but she wanted nothing to do with the top of it. If I removed the top and separated the hard straw from the top and let her simply sip the water through the hard straw, she was completely happy. But since this clearly had to be done with my assistance each time… no. It wasn’t going to work.
We weren’t ready to give up on the straw, so back to Target we went to get what I had been picturing all along. We came home with these guys:
We had high hopes for these ones, but unfortunately, we were met with limited success. We gave these ones a few days, too, sending Nora to daycare with them. Apparently she drank out of them a bit there, but I don’t think I ever saw her take sips from them.
To top it all off, these are THE BIGGEST PIECE OF CRAP CUPS EVER. They leak all over the place, and for no reason. As I mentioned, Nora doesn’t drink out of these. She won’t. So all we’ve ever done is to put liquid in these and then let them sit there in case she’ll actually take it. While they’re sitting there, liquid inexplicably gets drawn up into the straw, which continues to happen until eventually the liquid is spilling out of the straw uncontrollably.
PIECES OF CRAP, I tell you. $7.50 for a two-pack of crap. Playtex has a “leak-proof, satisfaction guarantee” so I’m currently trying to get our money back, but since we didn’t save our Target receipt OR the packaging (since I had to shred it just to get the cups out) I don’t know if that’ll happen.
So you might wonder where this left us.
Well, here’s the thing: Once we had other “options” for sippy cups in the house, we started to try to give Nora choices with them. We’d fill up a piece-of-crap straw cup, and we’d fill up her Nalgene cup, and then we’d let her choose. At first, it didn’t go so well–she pushed them BOTH away–but then, one morning, she just started (mostly) tolerating the Nalgene cup.
Now, we’re in a (pretty) good place with it. The Nalgene cup, that is. For the past few days, she’s taken it without (much) issue, and has drunk plenty from it throughout each day. I think we’re actually getting places. We’re contemplating buying a couple more of them so we have a few in rotation but I’m still a little afraid of jinxing it. :)
One comment that I have about the Nalgene cup is that with the leak-proof “stopper” inside, it is IMPOSSIBLE to drink from. I could barely extract liquid from it (and yes, I did open up the bottom of the stopper), so how the heck do they expect toddlers to do that? The only way Nora has been drinking out of it is with the stopper removed, so if she tips it, it leaks all over the place, of course. But that doesn’t really bother us that much since she only drinks water when she’s away from the table, and thankfully, she doesn’t tip it over much anyways. It works for us, but it sure as hell wouldn’t for some other people.
And in case you’re wondering… we spent $10 on alternate sippy cups that our kid refused to take, only to end up right back where we started with the Nalgene cup. Who’s laughing now?
It’s been an interesting few weeks.
Has anyone else engaged in “sippy cup wars” with their kids? Who “won”? How did it play out? How much money were you forced to spend on cups before it all came to a close? I don’t know how you felt at the end of it, but GOSH I’m tired.
We woke up on Monday morning, had some breakfast, packed up the car, and hit the road by 9:30 a.m. We were ready to get home and have a few hours remaining of our holiday (Memorial Day) to get settled and unwind before jumping back into work and our normal routine on Tuesday.
But before we left, of course we had to take our annual group photo:
After a really-not-so-bad drive, we arrived home around 1:30 p.m., unpacked everything, and decided to have an early dinner. Of course, we didn’t have anything in the house and didn’t feel like going grocery shopping, so we treated ourselves to burgers at a local chain restaurant.
We were all hungry! I couldn’t say I’ve ever had dinner out at a restaurant with General Hospital on in the background before… but now I can. :)
It was a nice day out–but HOT at 93 degrees–so once we were home, we spent some time letting Nora expend some energy in the backyard.
This is Nora, in the middle of telling me “NO!” (I don’t even remember what it was about. Toddlerhood: ‘Tis fun.)
Good thing she’s so gosh darn sweet the rest of the time! :)
A lovely Memorial Day and long weekend, indeed.
Of course, the reason for the day off did not go unrecognized by me. Thank you to all of the men and women who have given their lives for this country. And thanks to all of their family members, who made the ultimate sacrifice and continue to live without the ones they love.
And to all of the men and women currently serving–including my very own brother–please, come home safely. <3
Spending Memorial Day weekend in the Poconos proved to be a fantastic decision on our parts because… we had an extra day! We’ve always arrived on Thursday night and left on Sunday late morning/early afternoon, but this time around, we planned it so that we could stay until Monday. It made a big difference since we didn’t feel like we had to turn around and go back home as soon as we got there.
So instead of waking up and getting ready to go home on Sunday morning, we all got up and got ready to head out to breakfast together. By the time we got everybody loaded into the cars, it was after 8:30 a.m. and Nora was NOT a happy camper.
Girlfriend was HUNGRY. She cried nearly the whole ride into town. The restaurant we normally go to was very crowded and had a 25-minute wait. Not normally a big deal, but when you have little kids waiting with you–HUNGRY little kids–nuh uh. We ended up driving down a little further to try out another place, where we were seated pretty much right away. In the meantime, though, I gave Hunter and Nora each a banana. Nora gobbled hers right down, but Hunter only ate about 1/4 of his before he handed it to me saying, “Here.” So Nora ended up eating the rest of his banana, too. Thankfully, it was enough to curb her hunger while we got into the restaurant and waited to be served.
It should be noted that Nora went on to eat approximately two pancakes, as well as 1/2 piece of my mom’s toast. That’s all in addition to the 1 & 3/4 bananas she had. Sometimes, I swear she has a hollow leg.
With full bellies, we went back to the house to enjoy what was another beautiful day.
The kid on the right is Kenny, he stopped by for a little while to visit with his dad. He was obsessed with Angry Birds, which was hilarious because he ended up overtaking the iPad to play it. Nora and Hunter watched him play intently. Also, you guys would be shocked at how well Nora can use an iPhone and/or iPad. It’s almost scary. Let’s just say that the “lock screen” has nothing on her.
Once the kids were down for a nap, it was time to do some relaxing in the sun on the patio.
Just another quiet day in the country…
Once everyone was awake again, we set out do something we haven’t done in the Poconos in a very, very long time. That morning, Vinny came out of the house and asked if anyone was interested in going to the lake to go out on his brother’s boat. All of us had jumped at the opportunity, so we got going as soon as possible.
I have very fond memories of Lake Wallenpaupack from when I was growing up. We’d take day trips to Vinny’s brother’s house to go out in the boat. The moms would pack a picnic lunch for all of us kids and we’d ride the boat over to a small island in the middle of the lake to spend an hour or two eating and playing.
When we got to Vinny’s brother’s house, Nora headed straight for the water–which means that I did, too!
She was having a ball wading into it, even when semi-rough waves came crashing around her waist. What a little weirdo. :)
Once the boat was ready, we strapped Nora into a life jacket, not knowing what to expect of her. First, I was shocked that she let me put the life jacket on her without a fight. Secondly, I didn’t know if she would be freaked out on the boat, or actually enjoy it. But all we could do was try!
It was Hunter’s first boat ride, too!
I’m happy to report that Nora absolutely loved it. She had the wind in her face, and the water was a bit choppy, but she just sat there, content in my lap, with little hints of smiles crossing her face every once in a while. Not a single complaint from her, not even when we were briefly waiting in line for gas at the marina.
We went back to Vinny’s brother’s house and after a short break, planned to go back out again. So we all piled back into the boat. Nora was going to ride with her daddy this time.
But then the boat wouldn’t start. Booooo!
So we piled back out of the boat and let Nora and Hunter romp around in the water some more instead.
Hunter had a ball “jumping” off of the dock.
Before we knew it, it was after 5:00 p.m. and it was time to head back to the house for dinner.
We made homemade pizzas–another first for us in the Poconos. :)
Nora loves coloring now, ever since Hunter’s birthday party. It’s so cute!
As we sat down for dinner, a huge thunderstorm came rolling in and it poured and poured and poured. We all curled up in the living room for the night and watched a movie. Another full and fun day!
About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
