12.14.2010

Homefront update

On Saturday, we took Simon to see a speech therapist to have him assessed at a walk-in clinic. I had no clue that two year old's are supposed to have a vocabulary of 100-150 words. A few years ago, that was around 50. The speech therapist asked how many words Simon says and I said maybe 10. And that's pushing it.

His all-time most used word (besides mama and dada) is 'bowl'. You give him a grape, he asks for a bowl and will not eat the grape till it is in the bowl. Lately I'll give him food in a bowl and he'll say 'bowl' repeatedly because I guess I didn't put the food in the right bowl. I had this really small bowl that I had bought at Anthropology and that is Simon's favourite except it's ceramic and now has two large chips in it from Simon dropping it. He loves that damn bowl.

Simon is still in love with Dora and will often repeat words that Dora says like 'backpack', 'rainbow', 'map', 'go', 'boots', etc. I mentioned his love for Dora to the speech therapist and said that it is because of Dora that Simon has as many words as he does and she reminded us that kids should only watch no more than 1.5 hours of tv a day. Ya. Right.

We were told to try sign language with Simon which I've never done. Going to have to do research on that. We should repeat words alot with him which we do all the time. We should get very excited and congratulate him when he says words. CHECK. When he says anything, I kiss the crap out of him and cheer and scream and bake a cake...then I blog about it.

Another thing we were told to do is repeat sounds that Simon makes. He won't repeat words when we ask him to so we have to teach him to repeat. If he sees us repeating him, maybe by the grace of god, he'll start repeating us.

We have to fill out a form for him to get in to see a speech therapist for an actual appointment and this could take from 3-6 months. By then I hope he's got alot more than 10 words...

And now onto Pablo. We went to see his oncologist this morning. We drove 2 hours in a snowstorm, got to the appointment an hour late only to see the oncologist for about 3.5 minutes. He opened up Pablo's file, said that the latest scan looked great and that he'll want to do another scan in the spring. He asked Pablo if he's off the decadron and Pablo said thankfully yes. Then Pablo handed him his giant ziploc bag of pills so he could check out all the other crap he's taking. The oncologist did look quite shocked at the amount of pill bottles. Pablo told him how he is still really low on energy and the oncologist told him to get fresh air 3-4 times a week by going for walks. Hard to do when it's been snowing lots and temperatures down to -22 celsius but we'll try.

This afternoon Pablo and I had an appointment to try to get Pablo accepted into a disability program so he can collect some money while he isn't working. It's been really tough because Pablo has been out of work since March. He was able to collect unemployment for 4 months (ending in July) but that's it. Turns out that we qualify for $18/month. Very sad. They might be able to add around $100/month if Pablo needs a special diet. (Pablo eats a lot of hot dogs so YES PLEASE TO A SPECIAL DIET). Depressing.  

As for me, I am not done Christmas shopping and I need to get my hair coloured ASAP. Having red hair really makes my brownish roots stand out.

7 comments:

  1. Disgraceful that you guys are only entitled to $18 a month! what the hell do they think you could buy with that? And with regards to your little boy's speech, by all means bring him to a ST, but just remember that all kids speak at different rates and just because the "experts" say how many words a child "should" have by a certain age, it doesn't mean all kids do. Just be relieved he's speaking and he will expand from there. My middle son who is 4 has special needs and still not speaking at all, I pray for the day when he is :-)

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  2. Don't worry too much my nephew wasn't saying much until he hit 3, even 4 but now he has picked it up. I think it looks worse when there is a little girl around who is speaking like an adult by age two ( my daughter in my nephews case too).
    I hope you are able to sort out your payments, so hard at Christmas time.

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  3. TT - Diapers are definitely more than $18, $18 is probably what it costs us a month for milk. I'm not too worried about Simon just yet TT, he is slowly improving and Isabella was probably one of the few 2 year old's I know who could say 100-150 words. I hope your son starts talking real soon! Do you do sign language with him?

    Iona - Simon is the exact opposite of Isabella in almost everything so his talking is going to come when he's ready. And it would be really nice to win the lottery right about now! LOL!

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  4. Hi Julia, been a long time reader, love your blog. Don't worry about your boy, I have a little boy who will be 4 in January and it was only in August of this year that he started talking. He is talking like a 2 year old and no one can say why it took so long (although he has had some problems stemming from seizures at birth), he has been labelled (for education assistance funding at his preschool - he goes to a regular one) as mild global developmental delay and all his milestones have been delayed (and yes he does OT and ST which we do privately as waiting lists in govt run centres were a bit lengthy), but everyone acknowleges that he is just one of those kids who just does things at his own pace. If you think of it in that term, the stress you feel is alleviated, well it has been for us. I hope all goes well for your family, you really need a break, especially from those roots. Merry Xmas.
    Engracia

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  5. Thanks for sharing about your son Engracia! Simon definitely follows his own pace and we've come to accept that. We're going to do what we can to help speed things along but it'll be up to him to decide when the time is right. Thank you for the well wishes and a very merry xmas to you too!

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  6. I think I mentioned that Gabe was a really late talker too and now, man, non-stop and in paragraphs. Whole stories. We did do speech with him but his first speech person was pretty sucky. The 2nd one, that we had for 5 months before he aged out of the program, was great. But I notice big differences in just a few weeks now. It's like he's making up for lost time.

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  7. Awwww. That's so fantastic that Gabe was able to catch up. I'm hoping for that with Simon, the little bugger. That reminds me that I gotta do some sign language research this weekend...

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