I haven’t posted in a very long time, so I guess I’m due to give some updates.

Presley’s birthday is August 11th & she will then age out of early intervention services. She’ll start early childhood special education September 8th & will be going to school Monday through Friday for three hours a day.
In school she’ll be receiving speech therapy twice a week. No OT. So we’ll continue doing that privately, until she’s at least eating solid food, herself. Again, she’s still not touching food and eating mostly pureed with the exception of organic snack bars (we call them cookies) made by earths best. They’re still soft, but do involve chewing a bit.

Start school has me a bit stressed out. I’m sure she’ll enjoy it. She loves other kids & had a really good time singing with the teacher during the evaluation.

Speaking of singing, her speech is awesome. She’s doing really great and will repeate almost anything we ask her to say. She’s still putting two word phrases together. The other day she pointed a big tree and said ‘momma tree’ then pointed to a small tree and said ‘baby tree.’ It was adorable, of course. She’s counting to thirteen and knows some Spanish. She knows all of her colors and letters & is improving greatly. She remembers things that I’ve forgot about. She’ll point something out from trip and it boggles my mind that she remembers.

In other news she’s eligible for ‘respite’ care. Basically, respite care is to give the fulltime caregiver a break. So my friend Anna is willing to be the ‘respite’ caregiver & she gets paid for it, so that’s also pretty sweet.
She’s also on a waiting list that is something like 30 years long. In case, as an adult she isn’t capable of taking care of herself. I cant remember the name, all I remember is that she’ll have to be considered ‘mentally retarded’ (that’s the words they used) by age 6 to qualify for it. With the way she’s improving I think that by age six most of this will be a distant memory. Hopefully.

So that’s about all that’s going on. I’ll be doing school shopping for my three year old little girl. Buying a backpack, clothes and all the goodies that is involved in school shopping. I get to take a ‘first day of school’ picture soon enough and have to worry about her while she’s gone during the day. Its all so crazy to me. A THREE year old in school! She could even ride the BUS! Though, I’ll be driving her, still crazy.

When i first started noticing things.

I'm a stay at home mom, so naturally i spend most of my time with Presley and get to observer her more than anyone else. I think what caught my attention and i knew something wasn't right, was when she wasn't able to sit up. All my friends children where sitting up way before she was, some even 6 months younger! She was also about 9 months old and not holding her own bottle, hardly doing any of the normal baby babble but i think the shinning example was what i call her "crab walk". When she was finally able to sit up, she preferred to lay on the floor and shake toys back and forth, or stare at fans or moving objects. She had NO eye contact at that time (this is around 16 months or so) and NEVER wanted myself or my husbands attention/affection.

At her 16 month check-up her pediatrician suggested we should think about early intervention, but in the mean time we should have an MRI done. Presley's head was out growing her body. Her body, at the time, was in the 20% while her head had shot up (in 2 weeks) all the way to the 90%. There was concern that she may have fluid on the brain or a tethered spinal cord. I was terrified. Of course, now we know it's just a developmental delay and there's no real reason for her head growth, though shes "grown into it." Weight, height and head size are all within normal average ranges.

So i started doing lots of Internet research and had read that some children have developmental delays due to food/allergies. Her pediatrician agreed and we had a allergy scratch test done. Nothing. No allergies what-so-ever.

Finally we started therapy. In OT we did spinning, Listening therapy and brushing. All with no results, all consistently for 6 months.

We've been doing speech for the last year. We've made great improvement and have got presley to use some sign language and slightly mimic sounds.

This week we've actually started Educational therapy, which hopefully we'll be working with eating/speech, which are my two man concerns right now.

What we have coming up is the initial evaluation for the Feeding Program at the children's hospital of Richmond November 20th.

Then we have her Autism "testing" with the Autism clinic at VTCC, March 5th 2009.

I think I've pretty much caught up everything. I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting, but whatever.

I've started this blog with the intent of keeping track of my daughters progress through therapy, as well as keeping her doctors, family and friends informed about whats going on.

Presley, who has a development delay has been informally diagnosed with Sensory integration disorder. We're in the process of having her tested for Autism or any other related disorder.

As I'm writing this she is 26 months old, we've had her in early intervention therapy for the past year. She is labeled as having a delay scattered between 12 to 18 months. Around 18 months she was seen by a local developmental pediatrician who thought she could have Autism but it could really go "either way." I was not satisfied with his session (an hour long, no bedside manor, no real interaction with Presley) and have made an appointment (March 5th to have her reevaluated by another team.

Here is a bit of what she has going on:
*Little eye contact, hardly turning to name
*Still eating purred baby foods, she gags on lumpy food, she has just started to properly "chew" but mostly swallows food whole.
*She spins in cirlces
*Sometimes hand flaps, hits her ears when she gets mad
*Not very social with peers her age, more connected with adults
*Has a big speech delay, shes at about a 12 month level for speech development. Her words consist of "hi" "hey" and rarley "All done"
*Shes very into being overstiumulated, lights, busy places and a lot going on she thrives in.
*She still wakes up around 1-3 times a night and has a hard time going to bed (she'd rather stand in bed and spin and play)
*Recently she has become very attached to myself and my husband (which is great!) before she could have really cared less if we were even around
*constant teeth grinding

So basically we're going to post videos of therpay sessions, photos of Presley being adorable and other random information.

-Alexandra
(Presleys momma!)