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Maddie at 2 Years, 9 Months
Our little girl continues to amaze us! Madison has made some great strides over the last few months.
She is flourishing in her preschool program, and we are definitely seeing a very strong, personality develop in our little
girl.
Physical Milestones
Madison is officially pulling her self into standing, and this has been very exciting to watch. There were
some "sightings" of this occurrence starting about six months ago, but now she is doing it consistently. Once she is up, she
doesn’t quite know what to do with herself, and if she doesn’t have her braces on, her feet are very unstable.
However, with time, we know she will fine tune this skill, as she has been doing with all of her milestones.
She’s a climber! Madison has decided that she likes to climb on to everything she can find. We are
sometimes quite surprised at the things she can get on top of. This is wonderful exercise for her, and her motivation to practice
this new skill is very encouraging. This is actually how she figured out she could get herself into standing - while trying
to climb up on a few things, she ended up standing and didn’t even realize it.
Maddie continues to do physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and horse therapy every week.
One more therapy has been added to the mix - she is just starting sensory integration therapy which is one to two times a
week (more info. about that one below...) Unfortunately, she missed out on a lot of her therapeutic horse riding during
the rainy, wintery seasons. It is at an outdoor arena that floods very easily, so the moment it rains, the therapy gets
canceled. We just started up again, and she loves it more than ever! Unfortunately, her horse Bullseye has moved
on to that great green pasture in the sky and she has a new, much spunkier (and taller horse) name Zip!
Maddie has a love/hate relationship with her gait trainer (her purple walker). Because she has developed
a very efficient crawl and can get around so easily that way, I think the gait trainer is frustrating to her because
it definitely slows her down and is quite limiting. However, we do try to get her in it at least once a day. She’ll
bear with it, but it takes a lot of encouragement (and bribery!). It is hard to find good places to go in her gait trainer
- we need nice open, flat spaces, but we definitely have our spots now. If we have an extra hour, Madison will "walk" down
the hallway to pick up Savannah at school. On Fridays now, we like to go to the mall in the morning - she has lots of space
to roam, lots of things to explore, and lots of people to watch. We usually get there around 9:00 and it’s fun to watch
the mall "wake up". She’s always quite a hit, and we have met some great people while we mill about. Our last favorite
place to go walking is at Savannah’s gym. They have a great, huge waiting room, so while Savannah is at her gymnastics
class, Madison walks around and makes new friends. It’s been fun figuring all of this out, and I am finding myself doing
things I never would have expected.
To read a little something I wrote about our first trip to the mall, click here...
To see some new pictures of Madison at therapy, click here.
Speech Milestones:
Last November, we received some terrible news that Madison’s amazing speech therapist, Carol, was
in a bad accident. Even after she recovered, she knew she would have to retire from doing such active speech therapy, and
we had to start the hunt for a new therapist. After finding out the waiting list was more than three months long, we were
very fortunate to get hooked up with her new therapist in late January. We tried to get private therapy set up in the interim,
but the field is so impacted, we were unsuccessful. We did receive some therapy through our insurance, but it was very sporadic
and the therapist did not have a speciality in toddlers.
Though relieved to get a new therapist, I was very skeptical of anyone new, as Carol, our prior therapist
was so amazing. We were pleasantly surprised when we met Josette, and realized there was more than one great therapist in
the world. While Carol focused on having Maddie use AAC (communicating through pictures, buttons, electronically, etc.) as
that was her specialty, Josette has her own specialty. Because we have been trained so well in AAC, we don’t necessarily
need that help and support anymore. Josette said we should definitely continue everything we were doing with AAC, but she
had some other things she would like to focus on with Madison.
Her first observation with Madison was that she should be able to do more signs. She had about three signs
before her new therapy started, and we had basically just accepted the fact that her fine motor skills were just not good
enough to do any more than that. Josette looked at Maddie’s "volitional movement", and started teaching her signs that
we knew she already had the movement for. For instance, Madison knows how to throw a ball, so her body knows how to move her
arm in a throwing motion. Well, the sign for ball is to do a throwing motion. Wallah - she knew a new sign. Within two weeks,
Maddie could sign for ball, dog (her favorite), cat, phone, sun, flower. Her signs are definitely not perfect and just approximations
of the actual signs, but we know what she means, and we know that will get better with time. So between all of her picture
cards, her electronic buttons that talk, and her new signs, Maddie is not as frustrated as she could be at this time in her
life. Trust me, she is still EXTREMELY frustrated quite often, but I can not imagine what it would be like without all of
this.
Josette, and many of Madison’s other therapists and teachers have been very impressed with Madison’s
receptive language skills. That is, Madison is understanding most everything we are saying, and that is hugely important.
Maddie's list of current signs: more, eat, drink, sister, Nana, Grandma, daddy, mommy, hat, ball,
flower, dog, cat, sun, shoes, phone, please, thank you
Developmental Status:
Madison's current developmental "status", as of 1/2007 (30 months):
Social Skills: 24 months
Communication: 11 months (expressive), 20 months (receptive)
Self Help: 17 months
Gross Motor: 11 months
Fine Motor: 16 months
Cognitive: 17 months
Maddie's Out-of-Whack Senses
We had a sensory evaluation done on Madison, and she was officially diagnosed with "Sensory Integration
Dysfunction". This diagnosis is fairly typical in kids with Madison's condition. This explains many
of her rather bizarre behaviors - pulling out her hair and sucking on it, her need to always be rocked, her unwillingness
to touch certain things. It's a long story...
To learn more about Sensory Integration Dysfunction, click here.
Maddie is getting some new "wheels"!
As Madison approaches the 3 year mark, it has become noticable that she is outgrowing her stroller.
She is okay in it for now, but in talking to her physical therapist, the time has come to plan for the future. Even
if Maddie does happen to start walking in the next 6 months, she is still going to tire out fairly easily. She will
need some type of stroller for at least the next few years, no matter when she does actually walk. A typical stroller
is no longer appropriate, or comfortable, for her. (It's not good to have your feet dragging on the ground!) On
order, is a new, fancy "Convaid" stroller - in pink! It's a bit much; it's a bit wheelchair looking, but it is the next
step... If you'd like to check it out:
http://www.bright-start.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=649
A few thoughts:
Occassionally the realization hits us that we have a child who is almost three who is not WALKING or TALKING.
Wow, that’s crazy, and a bit surreal at times. However, if someone had told us a long time ago that we would have a
2 ½ year old who wasn’t walking or talking this is not what I would have imagined. I would have imagined a very sad
life, with a lump of a child not capable of doing much of anything. This is so far from our reality. Maddie has a very happy
life; she’s very active, moves around quite well, is very expressive and is extremely intelligent. It’s
like she can do everything else in life, EXCEPT for walk and talk... I guess I didn’t know that was possible!
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| I did it! Maddie was very proud of herself the first time she could climb on this chair! |
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| Um... That's the wrong crib, but good job climbing in! |
I'm standing all by myself! Madison has been doing a great job pulling herself into standing, and
it's so much fun to watch. When she doesn't have her braces on, though, she has a hard time finding the right footing.
In this picture, you can see how her little feet turn in when she stands naturally.
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