Saturday, March 6, 2010

Lillie's Developmental Evaluation

We took Lillie for her first developmental evaluation yesterday. Two therapists (one speech, one occupational) played with her for about an hour. Lillie did great and we found out she is not significantly delayed in any area (we kind of figured that already). She is "at risk" for becoming delayed in a couple of areas where she didn't score quite as high.

Her "Receptive Communication" skills were a little low. We know she can hear, but she isn't making the connection between sound and meaning yet, she isn't "looking for the source of the sound." They want us to get her hearing checked to rule out a physical hearing problem. The other area she had a lower score in was "Adaptive Self-care"...she got a lower score here partly because she isn't eating solids yet. The therapists said that's not really fair because she is getting the best nutrition possible and that shouldn't count against her, but it sort of does on the test (standardized testing is already affecting her). Since she does have a "week latch" the therapist gave me some exercies to do to strengthen her face muscles and get her ready for the spoon. She also taught me the correct way to introduce the spoon so we don't form bad habits from the start.

Not surprisingly Lillie scored very high on social skills, particularly adult interaction. She loves attention and she prefers people over toys!

She was within normal limits in every other area. Her "Fine Motor skills" scored on the low end of normal, and the therapists recommended occupational therapy once a week to help with fine motor skills and hearing skills. If we lived anywhere else, a therapist would come to our house for this. But they have no home-bound occupational therapist for Sumter County!! They have one Sumter County therapist, but apparently she isn't occupational, not sure what she is. So we don't know yet how far we'll have to go. We should know in a couple of weeks. I will be placing another call to the "boss" of the therapists though and seeing if I can pull some strings (we're friends with her parents and I spoke with her before the evaluation). Not likely, but I'm gonna try.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

DIYDish

www.diydish.com



This is a cool new site about how to "do-it-yoursel" crafts!!! Looks like it's going to be fun!!!

"To celebrate the launch of this new show, our friends at Janome are letting us give away TWO (yes, TWO!!) dream machines! Someone is going to win the Janome 350e EMBROIDERY machine and a second person is going to win the Janome DC4030 SEWING machine! Now how cool is that?!"

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Down syndrome update

Thanks to Lacey, I now know that I was wrong about the types of Down syndrome. I've corrected the posts below. All Down syndrome is Trisomy 21. The 3 types are Nondisjunction, Translocation and Mosaicism. I have a call into the doctor's office to find out what type Lillie has (again). Apparently the nurse I spoke to before doesn't have a clue what she's talking about!!

Update: I looked at the report when we were at Dr. C's last week. It doesn't say which type, but it says that all cells have the extra 21st chromosome, which rules out Mosaicism, and it doesn't say that the 21st chromosome is linked to another chromosome, which rules out Translocation. So Lillie has Nondisjuction Trisomy 21...the most common form of Down syndrome. Now we finally know!