A few weeks ago ECI came out and evaluated Sadie. As far as her development is concerned, everything is on track and she is doing fine. However, they said that she is a very content baby, meaning she is happy with whatever toy we give her, happy to be on the floor playing on her back for long periods of time, and doesn't fuss a whole lot. Apparently for a 6 month old baby this isn't normal, so this qualifies her for ECI service. If she had been a little bit older, then Sadie wouldn't have qualified, being content is an older trait I guess. They will come back out on the 28th and we will outline a plan and come up with goals that we want Sadie to reach. They will still work on her development and push her to do new things like roll over more than she does, crawl, scoot, stand, etc. As we work with ECI we will have to watch to see if any of her development is affected by her eye sight, for instance, when she starts to crawl, does she run into things more than usual, and when she can eat finger foods, does she pick it up with her fingers and how is her accuracy? I am pretty optimistic at this point, Sadie shows some very good signs that her vision is still good. In the nighttime she is able to find her pacifier in the dark and put it in her mouth, she is accurate right now when reaching for toys. So right now, the vision specialist with ECI isn't too concerned but she told me to look out for certain things and to notify her if anything comes up. The therapy won't start for a few more weeks so we'll keep you updated as that progresses.
Sadie is doing well though, still growing. She has been on solid food for about a month now. She has tried pretty much everything, well, in stage one, and her favorites include, squash, oatmeal, and pears. But she prefers the squash. We are really not sure where she gets that from since we don't really do the squash thing. Oh well, it's a very healthy choice so I won't complain!! Her teeth are almost completely all the way through. She is also saying, "da,da,da" and "ba,ba,ba." I told Tony it's hardly fair that dad's get two consonants, d and p that could mean dad, "da and pa" and we mothers only have "m" and it's very hard to say! When I try to get her to do the m she just stares at me and sometimes will mimic my mouth movements.
Sometimes Sadie will try and hold her own bottle now but her favorite thing to do is to hold my thumb (away from the bottle) and she also tries to grab my other fingers on occasion. This makes it particular difficult to feed her sometimes. But the thumb is an every time thing and when she loses it she gets a little frantic until she finds it again. It probably won't be long before she is holding her bottle though.... :-(
I forgot to relate a story in the last blog post about one of our trips to the doctor. Sadie and I were in the neurologists office and she was sitting on my lap, the neurologist and I were looking at a paper with his notes on it and he was explaining things to me and Sadie kept looking at the paper and then at me with the look that said, "What is going on mom?" It was very cute and also kinda sad that she just didn't understand what was going on. She is such a trooper though!
We are finally getting some much needed rain. The fires have been all around us, so we have missed them, thank goodness!
As for news with Tony and I. I know some of you know that Tony had to become certified to be a composite teacher. He took that test last Saturday. We don't know the results yet. We also still don't know about cuts but they did say that they will be adding another period next year. I guess this will cut costs somehow. So Tony will be picking up another class probably. As for me, many of you know that I have been looking for a part time job. I have experienced a rainbow of emotions over this, excitement, anger, resentment, sadness etc. But it's just the way it is and sometimes you gotta do what you have to do even if you don't like it. On a different less depressing note, Tony and I will be singing at church on Sunday. Well, at first Tony was asked to sing in a men's quartet, but they couldn't find a fourth guy so I am singing alto with 3 men. We are singing This is the Christ. Other news is, after 7 months I have finally received a church calling again. I haven't been sustained yet so you will all have to sit on pins and needles for a little while. You can take some guesses at what you think it might be!! Well Sadie is helping me type this and as you can imagine she isn't much help and right now she is trying to pull everything off of the desk so this post is going to end here! The picture is of her eating her favorite food and the video is her eating her favorite toy, enjoy!
Love,
Rachel
