The Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) social worker came over on Tuesday to conduct Poodle’s initial evaluation. She brought along a speech therapist. They played and observed, asked us questions about every part of S’ life and development. I must admit, it was sort of fun talking about myself and my funny baby for almost two hours. I was especially proud to discuss how well she sleeps. Two naps a day, on a schedule, sleeps through the night, puts herself to sleep. I literally had a mental breakdown over this issue when she was 10 weeks old (I might write about this at some point) (Lexapro is a wonderful drug) (getting me some of that Big Pharma sponsor money) (I wish), so it’s nice to be validated.

A couple of my very good friends have already been through this process with their kiddos, so I thought I knew what to expect. Speech would be a given, but I thought that was pretty much going to be it, and that speech would be at most a couple times a month. She was finally crawling and seemed perfectly content to zoom around the house like that. Well, not so much.

First, speech. You don’t really think of a 10 month old, even one with a typical palate, having speech. They make identifiable syllables, sure, but at best, they say mamamamama, and they may or may not be associating that sound with you. As I’ve discussed before, S doesn’t seem to make many consonant sounds, forget harder consonants. According to the speech therapist, she is basically making no consonant sounds at all. Her vowels seem good and varied, but no consonants of any kind. She is also concerned with the fact that S is not interested in mimicking, even with sounds she does make. She says “aaaaaaaaa” a lot. But if you go “aaaaaaaa” back to her, she just looks at you and giggles and moves on with the giraffe toy or whatever. So, she will meet with a speech therapist once a week.

Next, gross motor. She didn’t crawl until she was almost 10 months old. She pulls up to her knees, but not to her feet. She will put weight on her feet if you hold her up in a standing position, but she never attempts to stand herself. She doesn’t care. That is a concern. They don’t want her falling any further behind. So, physical therapy twice a month.

Finally, vision. She is completely blind in her little left eye. We never even remember this fact because she herself doesn’t seem to notice. But, the social worker and speech therapist agreed that her delayed gross motor and speech could be affected by her one-eyed-ness. In Texas, apparently the school district handles vision services. So, a TBD number of AISD vision appointments.

As an aside, in more evidence that this ostensibly human child thinks herself to actually be a dog: before the ECI people got there, she crawled to a sun hat that was on the ground, picked it up with her mouth, and then kept on crawling. Then, they asked us if she recognizes who people are by name. So I asked her, “S, where’s Papa?” and she basically shrugged and was like, eh. But, we know for a fact that when we mention Eleanor, the beagle, she immediately swivels around to wherever Eleanor is.

In addition to all that business, we’ll see the social worker once a month to keep track of everything. So, right now, we’re at seven appointments a month, plus vision, plus her normal assortment of regular appointments with five doctors. Before, we were junior-members of the special kid club. I think we've been promoted now :)