Smart Guy

Dearest Blessings~

Woo hoo!  Grace, you stayed sleeping until 5am this morning!  Plus, you slept in your bassinet!  Gigi changed your diaper and then I nursed you.  Joshua, you and I slept on a futon mattress on the floor.  Gigi slept in a twin bed next to us.

Joshua, I woke you at 7am so we could make it to our 8am appointment at Wake Medical Hospital to the Special Infant Care Clinic (SICC).  Gigi  helped give Joshua a sippy cup as I did a quick pump before we left.

The point of today's visit was to test Joshua's development at his 'corrected year and a half' age.  The child development specialist was Jim Helms and he completed a Bayley Test on Joshua.  This tested his Cognitive and Language development.  Here's the break down:

'The cognitive scale looks at how your child thinks, reacts, and learns about the world around him.  Toddlers are given items that examine how they explore new toys and experiences, how they solve problems, and their ability to complete puzzles.

The language scale has two parts.  The receptive part looks at how well your child recognizes sounds and how much your child understands spoken words and directions.   Toddlers are given items that ask them to identify pictures and objects, follow simple directions, and perform social routines such as wave bye-bye or play peek-a-boo.  The expressive part looks at how well your child communicates using sounds, gestures, or words.  Toddlers are given opportunities to use words by naming objects or pictures and answering questions.'

The scores ranged from 1-19 with a score between 8-12 being considered average.  Joshua, you scored a 10 for the cognitive part.  You scored a 14 in the receptive language part and a 5 in the expressive part, which we anticipated.  You were 22 lbs 6.5 ozs today.  You're 21 months 3 days with a corrected age of 18 months 19 days.  :-)

The neonatologist was actually pretty impressed at your scores .... especially the high 14!  She knows your expressive language will follow soon.  She recommends speech therapy, which you're already in.  She complimented daddy and I for being proactive in your development!  Woo hoo!  You're such a smart guy!  Of course, we knew that!  :-)  

Some of the tests that Jim had Joshua do was to stack blocks together (he stacked 5 blocks on top of one another!) and put six wooden pegs in holes while being timed.  He did that three times!  Jim asked me, 'Is he always this fun?' and I, of course, said yes!  ;-)

You got discharged from the SICC, but I'm sure we'll see some of them in the future when we visit the Intensive Care Nursey (ICN) nurses over time.  As we were leaving, Joshua fell and bumped his head.  One of the nurses gave me a little Green Bay Packers teddy bear.  :-)

Yesterday, for got to tell you, Lois said to Joshua, 'Point to the fish' in a book.  Joshua got it right and then went to the aquarium in the kitchen and pointed to the gold fish!  Again, you're such a smart guy!

We got back to Gigi's before 11am and ate lunch and visited.  Grace had a fun time with Gigi and Uncle James.  I loaded you all up and then headed back home.  We were home by 2:30pm and stayed downstairs since it was hot upstairs.  Joshua napped on a pillow as I nursed Grace.  I changed everyone's outfits and diapers when we got home since people had sweated in the car.

We got to visit with Aunt Katie for a little while.  She brought over some toys and sippy cups from a friend.  One toy had balls that you're suppose to put in a boat .... Joshua just threw the balls around.  :-P

We were all excited when daddy came home .... we missed him last night!  We all got to relax this evening as a family.  :-) 

Oh, I almost forgot, Joshua woke up with several big bug bites .... two on one leg and one on his face.  We put some lotion on the ones on his leg.  We'll see if they go down.

Tomorrow's another work day.  I know you all will have fun with Penny!

Sleep tight you two!

I love you both!

~Mommy