Infant and Toddler's Program

Tomorrow will be two weeks since our assessment with Fairfax County for the Infants and Toddlers Program (most of you probably know this as Early Intervention). Things went well at our assessment and there were no big surprises.

While Paige began doing most things first (lifting her head, grasping onto things, rolling), we had noticed recently that Andrew was quickly surpassing her.  This held true during the assessment.  They were quite impressed with Andrew's strength and skills and thought he was right on track with their adjusted age (4 months).  The only concern with him was that he has a slight head tilt which will be addressed with OT (occupational therapy).  Paige did great, as well, but was measuring out to be a little closer to the three month mark.  She is hypotonic (has lower muscle tone), which makes motor skills a bit more difficult for her.  The best way to describe it is to say she's a little more floppy.  How do we overcome this?  By doing lots of strengthening.  As many of you may have also noticed in her pictures, Paige also has a fixation with her tongue.  It is constantly hanging out of her mouth (thus producing massive amounts of dripping saliva!) and was delaying her ability to make sounds and coo.  She has already found a way to work around this and now finds her ability to let out a high pitched scream hysterical:) but her tongue still doesn't know quite what to do with itself. This will also be addressed by OT with sessions in our home every other week.

Considering their gestational ages, birth sizes, and hospital course, they were all very impressed with Paige and Andrew.  These are all simple problems to hopefully correct early so that they can get caught up as soon as possible.  Otherwise, we will just be working with them to meet developmental milestones quickly. The hope is that by 18 months their development will catch up to their age (no more correcting) and we will have another assessment at that point to ensure it has happened.  If it hasn't, it just means that we qualify for more services.

The last part of our VERY long assessment meeting was the write very specific goals for them over the next year and to decide on services.  An occupational therapist will be assigned to Paige and Andrew and should be contacting us any day now.  The county has 30 days from our assessment date to get services in our home.  We are down to 16 more days and you bet I'm counting:)

Below are some pictures from the weekend (they have nothing to do with this post...but I get yelled at when I post with no pictures!)

Stylish and ready for the beautiful day Saturday!

Batman!

Everything goes in the mouth!

Look at that face!

Andrew patiently waiting his turn to play with the toy...

For ten seconds!

6.5 months - they are getting so BIG!