Monday, August 11, 2008

updates and milestones and where has the time gone.

Trying to pull myself back into the blogging.  I can’t say I’ve been too busy to blog this past week, just haven’t gotten to it. 

We're good here. 

I'm settling in to the new job well. (I mentioned that I quit my old job, right?)  I’m working for my old company as an independent contractor.  Not the exact same job, different group and different project, but very similar work.  An easy adjustment.  Stupid company – they are now paying me a lot more money to work fewer hours – because they didn’t want to let me work as a part time employee, so I’m working as a part time consultant and charging them a lot of money.  Stupid.  But it’s working out great for me.  I mostly work from home, and I just go in for meetings a couple days a week. Working at home is great.  I have a nice quiet little office in our basement, and after I work for a few hours I can take a break and go upstairs and see my babies.  I love it.  Actually right now I am sitting out on my patio reading email and enjoying the nice weather.  I don’t know how we survived before wireless networks.  And they made a little mistake on the money - she opened the PO for a slightly higher amount than we agreed to.  I pointed it out to her, and she said that since it was already open for that amount, then that's what she'll pay me.  Nice!  So all’s well that ends well on the job front.

Baby update:

We think that Danny may be attempting to use his first sign language (we’ve been trying to teach them basic baby signs).  Thursday he was putting his hands to his mouth like maybe he was making the sign for eating.  So we quickly gave him a snack and that seemed to make him happy.

 

Callie is mimicking all kinds of sounds – she’s started trying to mimic Danny’s very high pitched scream (not so pleasant to have two doing that), and she’ll growl and talk in a soft voice back at us.  And Friday she was mimicking me coughing. She is very interested in books the last few days. Friday she crawled over to me with a book.  I put her in my lap and read it, and she was cracking up laughing.  It was so cute.  Not sure what she thought was so funny.  We have a basket full of their little books, and she will stand at the basket and pull every book out.  Callie also now claps when you tell her she's a good girl.  She'll crawl up to something she's not supposed to touch, you say no, so she turns around and sits down.  Then you say good girl, and she claps.  so cute.   She crawls and cruises everywhere, and pulls up on everything.  She will be walking soon.  We joke that she is like having a puppy – she has very smartly figured out that she can carry a toy in her mouth when she crawls.  Add that to the growling, and the fact that she will pick up food off the floor under her high chair if you put her down after dinner, and it sometimes seems like we have a cute little puppy.  Oh, and she licked my toes the other day. 

 

She has decided to return to swaddling sometimes.  There are times when she is just so wound up in her crib that she won’t go to sleep.  And if we wrap her arms up, then she seems very content and comforted and she goes right to sleep.  Last night she was standing up jumping in her crib, and I went in to calm her down.  I laid the swaddling blanket down on the crib.  She sat down, crawled over to it, and laid down on it.  She wanted me to swaddle her.  I’ve never heard of this before. 

Two little updates on Daniel that I hadn't mentioned yet. 

First, I may have mentioned that he's always had digestive issues - bad gas, constipation, etc.  He just seemed to have such a sensitive system.  We started doing some research and I found out about a treatment called Cranial Sacral Therapy.  Basically the idea is that nerves and things coming out of the back of the head sometimes don't get lined up right, it's more common with c-section babies, and this can sometimes affect the digestion.  I don't totally get how.  They do some kind of light pressure/massage on the back of the head and neck that's supposed to get things flowing right and help his digestion be more normal.  It's kind of alternative medicine, but it's totally non-invasive and lighter touch than even massage.  I figure it can't hurt, and maybe it will help.  I don't want to keep giving the poor guy medicine for his gas, or always have to fill him up on prune juice just so he can poop.  So we're taking him to a doctor this afternoon who does this.  I'll let you know how it goes.

The second thing is about his strength and movement and sitting skills.  I started getting concerned that maybe he was getting a little behind.  He sits up, but still sometimes falls over, and he makes no effort to roll over or crawl.  I talked to the pediatrician about it.  She said that he really should have totally mastered sitting by this age, but she wasn't too concerned about the other things.  But she said that since we have good insurance that pays for it, it wouldn't hurt to get him a little physical therapy evaluation - see what a PT thinks of his progress, maybe get some pointers on some exercises we can do with him at home.  So monday he goes for a PT eval.

Of course you know it figures that as soon as you make the appointments, the problem seems to go away.  His tummy has been better this week than probably his whole life, and he hasn't fallen over while sitting all week, and he's starting to push up on his hands, and even has tried his knees once or twice.  Oh well, we'll keep the appointments and see what they say.

Update – as I wrote this on Friday but didn’t get it posted:

 

We've had an interesting couple of days with Daniel.  His appointment friday was interesting, that doctor thinks she can help him a lot with his digestion issues.  She did some massaging on his head for a while, and talked to us a lot about how all these systems in the body are connected, how the bones in the skull all need to be lined up right or nerves can be pinched, which affect a lot of things.  The fact that he was a twin (squished in the womb), and breech, and c-section, and he didn't cry right away at birth - all add up.  It affects his digestion, his congestion (remember his breathing problems), he arches and screams and bites because he's uncomfortable.  So she wants to see him weekly for a while.  It's a little out there - but seems harmless and it does make sense at a very high level.  He seemed very relaxed afterwards, and that night he nursed better than he has in a long time, didn't bite me at all, and actually fell asleep in my arms nursing.  Also he's been pooping a lot more the last few days.

 

Today was his PT eval.  Short story: he has the gross motor skills of a 6 month old, fine motor skills of a 7 - 8 month old.  She said he basically got to a point of development and then got stuck.  Why he got stuck we're not sure - maybe his weight got ahead of his strength, and he was able to roll over but then quickly gained weight and couldn't move that weight any more.  or who knows.  It's all about his trunk - his turning and side muscles. He doesn't roll, turn sideways, lean sideways - all things that involve the strength of the muscles at the sides, and affect his balance.  When the balance is affected, it limits them being able to try more movement, or do more with their hands - so he's stuck.  So we have some at home things to do to help show him how to use those muscles, and we'll go back in a few weeks for another check.  I'm glad we went. 

 

Oh – and my babies will be one year old 6 weeks from yesterday.  I can’t even fathom where the time has gone. 

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, overall it sounds like things are going well. It's great that you've got the C-S therapy and PT for Daniel. I'm sure he'll catch up quickly with the added attention.

And the additional pay for the contracting is a nice little bonus. Way to go!

Heather said...

Glad to hear about the appointments. I always believe early intervention is better than later. BTW, when they do switch to whole milk, keep an eye out for constipation. My DD gets that way if she drinks too much milk, so we balance it with water and as she got older calcium fortified orange juice.

cat said...

Glad the work thing got sorted out so well. Gosh, do we have similarities, apart from the kids being almost exactly the same age, we are also busy with PT with the one twin while the other is crawling!

cat said...

Glad the work thing got sorted out so well. Gosh, do we have similarities, apart from the kids being almost exactly the same age, we are also busy with PT with the one twin while the other is crawling!

Kelly said...

Oh! My 10 month old acts like a puppy and this week I even listed all she does like a dog. Too funny!

Marie-Baguette said...

a friend's son was very constipated until she started giving him cantaloupe -- it works like magic! We also like the prune puree by Earth Best. Good luck with everything

Sarah said...

any new pictures of the cuties??

Hopeful Mother said...

Glad to hear your updates.

I'm glad to hear your new work arrangement seems to be going well.

We are doing PT for one of our twins too through early intervention. I have more about it on my blog...

Bea said...

Sounds like it's under control! And yay for sign language - when did you start?

Bea

Anonymous said...

We had lots of issues with our Daniel too. He went through the whole prune juice, mylicon, just being miserable ordeal. Things seemed to have improved now, but I knwo what you are going through.

I get frustrated sometimes with the whole developmental milestone thing. My babies were 10 weeks early and sometimes I have remind myself of that.

Will think good thoughts for continued success with his treatments.....

~Kari

Helen said...

I'm amazed at their progress. Callie sounds way ahead of my two, as they're roughly where Daniel is. I think it's great that you have additional help, and I definitely have work envy for your situation.

My two are 6 weeks away from turning 1, too. Isn't it crazy? How did this happen so fast?