vacation yayy?

having a baby does something to your brain.  something horrible.
vacations suddenly change from welcoming lights at the end of the tunnel into foreboding storms looming on the horizon. 

you find yourself thinking: "oh god, not vacation." 

your mind turns into a constantly running checklist.... "must bring pack and play, portable high chair, jogging stroller, a bazillion toys, a bazillion changes of clothes, baby sunscreen, baby hats, snacks for the car..." so much gear.  so much preparation.  mind becomes hazy.  mental checklist is pushed to the back of your brain as you reach for the wine. 
oh god, vacation.  anything but vacation.

billy was in the kitchen the other night and made the mistake of making small talk with me about vacation.

billy: "hey babe i checked out usair they've got some really great flight deals right now to wilmington."
meg: "WHAT!?"
billy: "yeah they're only like..."
meg: < hysterical high pitched laughter >
billy: < turns pale >
meg: "ARE YOU CRAZY!?!?!  WITH FINN!? YOU WANT TO FLY WITH THE BABY!!! WHAT ABOUT THE HIGH CHAIR? WHAT ABOUT THE STROLLER? WHERE DO WE PUT A CARSEAT? WHAT ABOUT HIS TOYS? WHAT ABOUT THE ..."
billy: (quietly to himself) "people fly with kids all the time..."
meg: "CRAZY PEOPLE! CRAZY PEOPLE FLY WITH KIDS!!!" < hyperventilating > "WHAT ABOUT TUCKER! WHAT ABOUT THE DOG!? HOW DO WE TAKE THE DOG TO MY PARENTS IF WE'RE FLYI..."
billy: < backs slowly away >
meg: < brain explodes >

i wish very frequently that i was a non stressing non list making mom who threw a floppy hat and a towel in a beach bag and jumped into the car without a second thought. 
(billy's mom tells me stories of driving from new york to florida in a station wagon with 4 adults and 6 children under 8.  and flying to hawaii with twin two year olds.  there's more trip stories but i can't remember them because the oxygen stops reaching my brain halfway through.
what?
how!
where did... how did... when did....
*blacks out*)

we're going to the beach for a nice relaxing family vacation over labor day.
i've been chewing my nails and organizing clothes and eating boxes of homeopathic anti-anxiety pills for a week just to get to the comfortably frazzled mental state that i currently reside. 
vacation?  hahaha, oh vacation! yes we're going on vacation! 

the good thing about this upcoming vacation is that it's going to be of thanksgiving and christmas proportions in terms of the amount of family per square foot.  when things reach this level of chaos i normally short out, my brain resets, and i'm completely fine... except for the facial tick i get whenever i have to go pee and realize i'm sharing a bathroom with 6 pre-pubescent boys.   funny enough, it's at this crazy point when i throw in the towel and commit to riding out the wave of vacation on auto pilot that billy typically loses it.  talking him off the ledge helps me maintain some mental clarity, so it actually works out.  (look who's crazy now, sucka!!)

despite the pre-trip packing stress, all the little details to remember, the enormous amount of family, the smell of the bathroom, and the baby to take care of, i am feeling strangely excited about this vacation.  finn hasn't been on the beach since he could walk, so i know he's going to have a blast.  and i'm really excited for him to be surrounded by cousins and loved ones and chaos for a few days... he tends to thrive in that environment.  i feel so blessed that we have the opportunity to go on this trip, and i'm looking forward to the memories we'll make. 
i think we're gonna make some good ones. 
even if we have to start to drinking bloody marys at 9 a.m.

Little goals.

Finn has being doing so well in his first couple of weeks with Early Intervention.  There have been so many little moments that have been SO big for him, and we are so so encouraged. 

Rather than rattle off my long mommy list of "omg Finn did this!", I thought I'd focus on a couple of things we have been working on and are especially proud of!

I personally do well working on specific goals every couple of weeks for Finn.  It helps me focus and makes things a little less overwhelming.  So two weeks ago we started working on brushing Finn's teeth and having him use a utensil to eat.  These were tough goals for us because Finn wanted nothing to do with either. 

The tooth brushing- forget it.  Finn didn't cut his first tooth until he was 10 1/2 months old, so I didn't even get him a toothbrush until this past April when I was shopping for his Easter basket. 
God he hated that toothbrush. 
Every morning he would come into the bathroom with me and smile as he watched me brush my teeth, and then as soon as I came near him with his little toothbrush it was all over.  I don't know what he does to get his lips to close that tightly, but it was harder than prying open a jar of pickles to get into his mouth.  Impossible.
His early intervention teachers encouraged me to try different approaches- use my toothbrush, use an electric toothbrush, try different toothpaste, offer a reward, don't give up.
Lucky for me the very first thing I tried worked.  I put a little bit of his baby toothpaste on MY toothbrush and he was willing to try it.  Then I added the "special reward" of getting to drink a sip of water out of a little paper bathroom cup, and he was sold.  (Finn loves to drink out of these little paper cone cups they have at the water station at our pool, so I thought he might be excited about the little paper bathroom cups and I was right!) 
He loves to brush his teeth now and it's amazing to see what a little creativity and determination can accomplish.

The goal of having Finn use a utensil to eat was a little different.  I know that technically Finn is still pretty young to be eating with a spoon or fork all of the time, but the goal here was for Finn to use an object correctly and understand it's purpose. 
Finn has always been a great eater and will eat very nicely off of a spoon that I am feeding him.  But when I tried to turn the job around and use hand over hand to make him hold the spoon, it was a nightmare.  Lots of morning outfits ruined, and lots of pissed off Finn faces. 
So I decided to bring in a new utensil- the fork! 
I thought he might like a baby fork better because he could stab his little pieces of food and see a clearer cause and effect than he might with a spoon.  The baby fork was met with some apprehension, but with lots of over the top encouragement and sound effects we won him over. 
Yesterday he started doing it all by himself.  Billy literally saw him look around to make sure no one was looking before he used it.  This morning he let me take his picture. 
Lazy baby- you're busted!  I will spoon feed you no more!

I love these little goals because I can look back to two weeks ago and see clear progress. Way to go, Finn!

It's fun to see him learn and for me to learn how he learns.  He forces me to be creative and I like that. 

One of the funniest things I've noticed the past two weeks is that with all of the hand over hand modeling I have been doing with making him point and use a fork and wave and everything else, Finn has really picked up not necessarily on doing what I'm making him do, but on using hand over hand.  He loves to use hand over hand on me now!  If he drops something he will come get me, grab my hand, and put my hand on what he wants me to pick up.  Like he is modeling it for me or something!  I'm the teacher, baby!  Sheesh!  I have to laugh, because he's smart as a whip in the weirdest way. 

My next goal for Finn is getting him to use his hair brush and getting him to do a simple puzzle.  Because what's more important than good hair and problem solving?  ;)  Thanks for checking in on us!

babysitter blues

confession: i might be the only mom in the world who smiles when i drop my boy off at the babysitter and he cries. 

when he was smaller and less mobile i could sneak out unnoticed while he was distracted with something else, and he never seemed to mind.  which was a relief for me then, because i would have been a mess if he had cried.  he's been going to sandie's since he was 8 weeks old, and i was glad he felt comfortable.

but the past month, there has been clinging, and crying, and taking my hand and pulling me back to the door.  increasingly desperate acts to keep me close to him. 

it's gut wrenching. 
and as far as i'm concerned, it's better than birthday cake. 
it's better than getting flowers for no reason. 
it's better than new boots.  ok new boots might be a little bit better... (new boots!!!)
and although i always get a catch in my throat at him being upset for any reason, this blatent display of his desire to maintain a connection with me is EVERYTHING. 

there are a million different moments in a day with finn. 
some of them make me feel like i'm falling, or sinking, or drifting away. 
scary moments.  really bad scary.  
like a tiny moment where he'll reach for something, but then get distracted by his thumb and stop and jerk it around in front of his face for a minute.  everything will be fine and then suddenly i'll feel sick and i'll want to take the thumb and hide it, put it away where he can't see it.  how can a little thumb twist so sharp into my gut.
but then there are also lots of good moments.
little sparks that light up my whole day.  when i tickle him and he stops and grabs my face to center his gaze into my eyes and give me a kiss.  when he toddles quickly across a room and stops fast when he gets to the stair to turn around and come back to grab my hand. 
when he laughs.

since our first two days with early intervention this week, there have been a lot more scary moments.  in this process billy and i are learning a lot, and with greater knowledge there are sometimes greater fears.  challenging finn and making changes has been hard for him, and his frustration is hard for us.  but despite the increase in scary moments, there has been double the increase in the lightbulb moments. 
he's trying. 
it's amazing to see him try.

all of the little sparks light me up.  they make me warm inside.  i hold onto them so i can pull them back out when i need to. 
but the best spark is definitely his new separation anxiety. 
because it means he feels connected to me.  that i get him. 
so after the twenty minutes it takes to peel him slowly off of me those two mornings a week, i shut the back door of his babysitter's house and smile. 
i've still got him. 

i feel like we're all in a dark room that gets bigger every day. 
but as it gets bigger it gets not quite as dark. 

Early Intervention, Day 1!

Thanks so much to everyone who read my blog about Finn yesterday and took the time to send us some love.  It was hard to write, and Billy and I thought about it a long time before we hit "publish".  It ended up being a huge relief.  So many people reached out to us with the most kind and encouraging words, and with so much love and tenderness for our Finn.  It really means the world to us.  Thank you, from the bottom of all of our hearts.

I'll keep this recap of our first experience with Early Intervention brief. 
In one word, it was surprising. 

For some reason I had it in my mind that when the developmental teacher said she was coming over to "play" that there were going to be lots of laughs and games and Finn would miraculously emerge with a new skill and a grin on his face.  That did not happen.  Billy and I realized pretty quickly that Early Intervention is WORK.  Work for us, and work for Finn.  It was not easy, and it was not fun.  Not yet, anyhow.  I feel as though it may be akin to breaking a horse. 

Maybe calling my 17 month old a horse is offensive, but I feel the analogy is accurate.  Especially considering our sweet, good natured, tantrum free little boy responded by literally bucking like a bronco when I tried the very first of his teacher's gentle suggestions.  I swear to you, he knew exactly what was going on.  He seemed to be listening quietly but defiantly to everything she said, and then he turned and gave me this dead on "ohhh helll no" face.  It went downhill from there. 

We have a few basic things to work on this week.  The main thing is hand over hand.  Taking Finn's hand and making him point to a picture in his book.  Helping Finn's hand hold his brush and brush his hair.  Helping Finn's hand hold his spoon and feed himself.  I am telling you, he wants no part of it.  He literally would not eat his applesauce tonight unless I fed him myself.  He could secretly be a very lazy genius. 

Seeing his exaggerated defiance at the slightest of change was so shocking that it was funny.  Our teacher let us know that she wants Finn to get a little frustrated, so that he learns he has to give something to get something.  We previously have avoided his frustration at all costs and line up his day so that he gets everything he needs in a timely manner without having to ask for a darn thing.  Turns out we may have been creating a monster.  I think this monster exists in any spoiled toddler, regardless of developmental delays!  We all had a rude awakening.  I'm sure tomorrow's visit with his speech therapist will be quite interesting.

Despite the Murphy temper showdown, we are confident that this is really going to work for Finn and that he really is going to make big strides in this program.  More than anything, we're grateful for the league of cheerleaders he has in his corner. 

Lots of love from the fighting Irish.

our sweet finn wilde.

it seemed as though finn baby was always trailing a bit behind from the start.

he was two weeks late arriving in the first place, and finally came out through blunt force.  i still remember the look on the ob's face when she came rushing in to our delivery room between pushes and told me it was time to go to the operating room, that finn wasn't doing good.  she cut him out, blue and quiet with a cord twice around his neck.  his apgar scores were low.  they finally forced a couple irritated cries out of him, and then handed him to billy.  i looked on from the table with a tired grin on my face, tears rolling sideways into my hair.  
he was perfect.

he was alert from the beginning, with big eyes open throughout  most of the day.  he was peaceful, too, unless he was hungry.  and i spent most of his first nine months with him strapped to my body, carrying him around everywhere i went.  because he loved holding on to me so much, and because i loved holding on to him back.

he was late with all of his milestones from the get go.  when we laid him on his stomach for "tummy time" he would just turn his head and lay on one side of his face, staring and cooing happily at a toy.  he didn't have any inclination to hold his head up for months and months.  he was late sitting up by himself.  he was late pulling himself up to stand.  he was late crawling.  his teeth came late.  he was a slow and cautious walker.  at the time, we didn't think too much of anything.  he always eventually mastered these skills, it just took him a bit longer.  when he was slow to start talking, many friends and family members reassured me- boys are later, he's just so laid back, you anticipate his every need he hardly needs to ask for anything, etc.

at finn's 15 month appointment the doctor mentioned that finn should have five words that he used regularly.  i was a bit surprised.  he had, in the past, said mama and dada and baba, but he didn't use any of these words regularly or necessarily correctly.  we could count on one hand how many times he seemed to say them with intent.  i told the doctor we were a bit concerned, and he said if he didn't have many more words by 18 months then we could talk about doing early intervention speech therapy. 

we also were sent back to his ent doctor to have the tubes in his ears checked, under the pretense that if he wasn't hearing well he wouldn't be talking well.  i can't tell you how hard i prayed that those tubes were blocked and he couldn't hear a darn thing.  because i knew that was an easy fix.  a tube replacement and the words would start pouring out for sure. 
he passed all three of his hearing tests.

billy and i kind of took this in stride and thought that finn was just going to be later at mastering this talking thing, as he was with the rest of his skills.  the strong and silent type, you know.  but in the past month we noticed that finn seemed to be talking less.  now instead of babbling to himself in his crib in the mornings he was quiet or just hummed a bit.  we realized he hadn't said mama or dada in weeks, and that he had only said baba a few times.  he wasn't babbling much at all.  we began to grow more concerned and started doing some research online about where finn should be with his speech and what our options were for speech therapy.  we called his pediatrician and he went ahead and referred us to the early intervention program.  we set up a time for someone to come out and meet with us at the end of the month, the earliest available appointment.

we felt good about not waiting until finn's 18 month appointment to get early intervention services, and about being proactive about his speech, but in the process of researching his speech delays we came across many other "red flags".  little quirks and funny habits that we just chalked up to finn's interesting little personality we discovered were actually markers for autism.  he has never been able to point or wave bye-bye.  if we point to something he can't follow our point, he just looks at our finger.  he can easily get obsessed with spinning things like ceiling fans, wheels, certain toys, and play with them for long periods of time.  we realized most of our playtime with him involved following him around trying to get him to interact with us.  he never brings us a toy or shows us something, he doesn't know how to ask us for help.  he doesn't pay any attention to what we're doing, nevermind try to imitate us.  the more we read the more we realized and the more we started to panic.  our minds started racing back to all of the funny little incidents that had taken place over the course of his life.  like at the memorial day picnic when he laid in a hammock for an hour, content to be pushed back and forth in the breeze while the other toddlers explored.  like all winter long when his favorite toy was the oscillating space heater.  like when he was a teeny tiny baby and loved hanging upside down.  we read that batting at his ears wasn't necessarily because his tubes were bothering him, and that flapping his arms when he was excited or upset might not be some kind of misplaced wave.  we learned that all of these behaviors could be signs.  warning signs.

on the other hand, finn has a lot of positive habits and traits that we find encouraging.  he still loves to be held, touched, tickled.  he prefers to hold hands.  if you're sitting on the swing with him, he'll rest his hand on your arm affectionately, or lean his head against you.  he gives big hugs and kisses.  he smiles, he laughs heartily.  he clearly understands us and follows directions when he wants to.  he will scamper into our room at night as soon as we tell him it's time to read "night night books" and have his "baba".  he will lead me down the hallway in the morning by the hand when i tell him it's time to go have breakfast.  he makes eye contact.  he plays peek-a-boo.  in the past couple of days, we have clung to these little things like inflatable rafts in a foreboding ocean.  we hold on to them with hope in our hearts and lumps in our throat.  we are afraid.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

i wrote those words in june.  i was scared to post them then.

i know i have been absent from the blog for awhile... months... putting every ounce of me into finn's little self.  spending my days searching through his eyes, trying to find him and be exactly what he needed me to be.  i'm still doing that.  but i'm not so scared anymore.  i want to talk about what we're going through, because it helps me, and because i think it's important.

there is nothing harder than admitting that your baby might have challenges.

of all the things billy and i have been through, this hits the hardest.  it sits the heaviest.  it hurts the most. but we found that we were much more comfortable talking about the hard stuff with the risk of doing too much, than ignoring the tough issues and defending our boy at the risk of doing too little.

we're all in.

when the time came last week for his early intervention evaluation, i prayed that the team would show up and tell me that i was crazy.  that i was a neurotic, hyper, overparenting mom who needed to give her son some time and stop being a hypochondriac. i prayed that it was me.  i prayed that they would tell me i was the one who needed therapy.

they didn't.

so onward we go, full speed ahead, with a developmental therapist and a speech therapist coming once each week, and amazingly supportive friends and family at our sides. we are doing everything we can and more to make sure he has every possible resource available to him.  and he's lucky, because he does.

the most important thing to take from this blog is exactly what finn's sweet babysitter, sandie, said to me on thursday after i struggled through reporting his poor evaluation scores:

"well meg, he's still finn.  he's still just finn."

and it's true.  he's our sweet, funny, good natured, loving little boy.  

he's as happy as a clam and has no idea that we're worrying ourselves sick over him.  i hope he stays that way.  i think he will.  god knows if he asked for the moon, or heck, if he even learned to just point to it, we would go up and get it for him.

i'd like to use the blog to post some updates on how he's doing and on what we think about early intervention overall.  so far it's been a wonderful and encouraging process.  i hope that you all will keep finn in your thoughts, but most of all that you won't hold this blog against him.  by all accounts he is still just a happy little boy that toddles around our house with a ball in one hand and a fistful of cheerios in the other.  we are certainly a long way off from sticking him with any type of label, and at this point are just treating his delays with extra help.  at best, it could turn out to be nothing and no harm will come from the extra attention.  at worst, it could turn out to be something and he will have been equipped with every tool in the shed from the get go.

sometimes these internet lives only show the happy things.  and i didn't want to be scared that finn might have some challenges ahead of him and be silent about my fears.  i wanted to say that finn might have some challenges ahead of him and that's okay.  and we're going to talk about them.  and we're going to deal with them.  and darn it if we aren't going to love him to pieces along the way.