August Recap (19 Months old)

August 5th, Aryssa and I took Rob to the airport for him to deploy. It was really weird. I handled it a lot better than I did back in 2003 when he deployed to Iraq but it was still sad to let him go. I don't think it quite sunk in yet. I am used to him being gone a lot on business trips so I guess it was so normal for me to drop him off, only this time it will be a long time before he comes home again. He is planning on coming home in January for her 2nd birthday.

Rob and I took Aryssa to her speech therapy evaluation on the morning of the 5th before we took him to the airport. She did well I guess. She tested in the 9 months category for expressive/receptive since she does not say any words or make any consonant sounds as well as she doesn't follow/understand instructions. They recommend her to have speech therapy 2 times a week on top of feeding therapy. So she has speech therapy and feeding therapy every Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesdays, until they have another opening, she has the 2 therapies at the same time with 2 therapist in the 30 min appt. Thursdays she sees the speech therapists for 30 mins and then goes into her feeding therapist for 30 mins afterwards, so we are there for an hour. So far she is not responding too well with speech therapy as they are trying to teach her sign language and she doesn't like that very much as she HATES it when people grab her hands. They are also trying to teach her appropriate play with toys and she doesn't like to be told what and how to do things. She is so stubborn. 

August 17th she had to be re-evaluated by the Tennessee Early Intervention since she was no longer diagnosed as failure to thrive since she had the feeding button surgery in October. She of course re-qualified with no problem since she is so far behind in so many areas. She is now a year behind in her skills as she is only testing at a 7-9 month level. Hopefully she can catch up this year with all these therapies she is getting. There has been no diagnosis yet of what could be causing all of this. I had at one point thought maybe she was Autistic but not really convinced of that now. She has really good eye contact, she generally can be a very funny, silly, giggly baby. She LOVES to laugh. She is just stubborn when it comes to learning so she for now just remains a big mystery case. In December she goes back to the neurologist who is keeping a eye on her since her head circumference is still way below the growth chart. He said he may order a repeat brain MRI when she is 2 or maybe 3 depending on where she is on her development at this coming appointment. She goes back to the cardiologist in January to see if her ASD (hole in heart) has closed up yet. 

Tooth # 13 thru 16th has popped through this month. They are coming in to fast I can't keep up anymore since she doesn't really let me look in her mouth much. I know her bottom 2 back molars have come through as well as her bottom eye teeth.