11/04/08

Sorry for the lack of updating lately. With the anniversary of Skylar's death, our busy weekends, and the fact that I have been keeping my nephews and niece for a few days at a time has been wearing me out.

So lets see here.....

On Wed. Oct 22nd I took Korben into the dr's to have his ears checked. Supposedly he had gained 5 lbs in 2 months but I am not sure about that since they used the 'big boy' scale - an adult one instead of the normal baby scale they usually use on him. But I guess it is quite possible since he keeps growing taller and taller. I told the dr. about his really bad fussiness, lack of naps and staying up late, and banging on his ears. She couldn't find anything wrong with him. I told her I had a consult appointment set up to talk to her about his speech and she told me to cancel that appointment and she had time to talk to me right then about it. She thinks the fussiness is partly 'the terrible two's' but mostly because he is frustrated that he can't communicate with us. She tried to get him to talk but he wouldn't say a word for her. He did point to the clock, light, and some of his body parts for her. So she said well he does understand and we knew that, he just can't say that many words. So she recommended I contact a program called Sooner Start as she thinks Korben has about a 3 month speech delay. She said that she normally doesn't give out the recommendation until 2 yrs old but that they would evaluate kids at 18 months but no earlier. So after I let her office I got him set up for a home evaluation on Mon. Oct. 27th.

On Sat. Oct 25th we went to a Halloween carnival with my mom, nephews, and niece. We all had a good time. Korben played a few games. He was able to grab a rubber duck and you get however many of pieces of candy that was written on the bottom of the duck. Then he pulled a sucker out of a pumpkin and then he went "fishing" which was the favorite for all the little kids. They gave the kids a wooden play fishing pole and the string had a clothes pin on the end of it. They would cast their line over a high table (the kids couldn't see on the other side) and you had to tell the workers if it was a boy or girl fishing, they clipped a little bag full of small toys (McDonald's toys) stickers, tattoos and candy and then tugged on the line for the kids to reel in. Ryan & Zylee loved it so much they did it a few time each. Then we did the cake walk, Brent sat outside with Korben talking to his mom & brother on his new phone. Between all of us we won, a big plate of cupcakes and 4 cakes! We had a good time there and will go back next year.

The next day we went to Tulsa for Courtney's (Brent's cousin) wedding shower. We had a good time there visiting with everybody. Korben caught up on some sleep that day. We actually had to wake him up that morning, then he slept for an hour on the ride up there, then he took another nap on Brent's lap while at the shower, and he still went to bed at his normal time. Lately he has been going to bed on time but he still is skipping most of his naps.

On that Monday a woman came out to our house for Korben's home evaluation. Basically she just asked me a bunch of questions, like 5 or 6 pages full of questions. She rated each question then totaled them up at the end. They were questions like can he eat properly with a spoon? A fork? (no for both of those) Can he build a tower of blocks, does he get excited when you come home after being away, etc. She gave him an over all score and then showed me each category broke down. He had to have a total of 50% delay from the total score to continue on to the further testing. He got an over all score of 45% delay. His biggest delay was actually in fine motor skills - she said fork & spoon were biggies. His next biggest delay was in speech. Since he was so close to the 50% I then had the option of doing the further testing. She said on the next testing is where they actually play with him to see exactly what he can and can't do. Plus they give him a hearing test and test for autism. She told me not to worry about autism though but they screen every child for it. I decided it would be a good idea to continue the testing if he doesn't end up qualifying for the therapy I am hoping to at least get some pointers from the speech therapist to help him with his language. So on Nov. 18th he has his testing, the woman who came to our house will be there as well as a speech therapist and a physical therapist. I am glad I took him into the dr's and asked about all this then and didn't wait until he is 2. Oddly enough Korben has been saying more words lately and is trying to use his fork and spoon lately. I told Brent Korben is going to make a lair out me and they are going to think I am nuts for bringing him in. :)

On Oct. 29th we released balloons for Skylar. We all wrote little notes and attached them to our balloons. Korben and I were outside when Brent came home from work with all the balloons (we ordered them the day before and had Brent pick them up on his way home) and Korben got all excited and said 'bloon, bloon, bloon' he got to release one too and he loved it.

On Oct. 30th Brent and I took Korben, Kaylan, Ryan, and Zylee to 2 of the local highschools where they had trick or treating and games. Korben had is trick or treating plastic pumpkin pail and when they gave him candy in there the first time his eyes were huge and he started looking in there to find out what they put in there. He got tootsie rolls so we let him have one. He loved it!

Well I am going to go ahead and post this. I have been working on this since Nov. 4th and it is now the 10th! We've been busy and Korben's been really, really sick. More to come later this week.

Pics are of the shower, Halloween & days leading up to. I think Korb looks just like Brent in the picture where he is sitting on Brent's lap & they are both looking at something, same expression...don't you think? Oh and the pics of Brent & I were taken on our anniversary, I found them on my mom's camera.