The Little Peanut

Happy Holidays from Peanut!!

We had a great time this past weekend visiting Jellybean Jungle. Will loved playing in the ball pit, and running around for 2 hours almost non-stop. There were a few groups of other kids there, but he was happy to just play and on occasion run around them. He spent a lot of time in the ball pit. It took him a little while to move away from the edge because he was uncertain about it, but he laughed and giggled when other kids would jump and fall in it around him. He also has gotten over his fear of the slide. We spent a good half hour going up the steps… down the slide… repeat. He was a little upset that we had to leave, but I am glad he had so much fun. Its definitely a place we will return to. I also highly recommend it for anyone with a young child. Its clean, inexpensive, and only for kids under age 5.

Definitely check it out www.jellybean-jungle.com.

Here is Will in the ball pit…. Bazinga!

We had Will’s 2 year well-visit last night. All went well, and he is doing great. He is 34.8lbs and 37.25″ tall. He hated being measured, but other than that, we had a happy visit. The doc said he is growing well and healthy… he is in the 98th percentile for his age. I asked her a bunch of questions and gave her an update being we haven’t had a well visit since 18 mos… She was very positive about everything. We are on the right track for getting his ears checked, she thinks he is a candidate for tubes. Also, I shouldn’t be as concerned about his lack of variety in his diet. All toddlers eat the way he does. If he has a particularly picky week, then I can get him some “Next-Step” toddler formula – they make a soy kind. She suggested this as an alternative to Pediasure (which has dairy in it, so he can’t have it). Other than that, not a whole lot to report… I have a giant Peanut, and he makes me so happy!

I decided I wanted to do some kind of Godzilla-like costume for Will this Halloween. Considering he likes to run everywhere and knock things over, it seemed 100% appropriate. While shopping at Target this weekend, I saw this costume, and I had to buy it before they were sold out everywhere. This is a 2T-3T size, so we did a trial run to see if it fit… it does, but I hope he doesn’t grow too much over the next month. LOL

I can’t wait till Halloween!!!

We got Will a new toddler table. here he is playing with one of his chunky puzzles.

A few weeks ago we started the process to see if Will qualified for Early intervention. We had 2 people come out and give him an evaluation, and based on their testing and report, they determined that he qualified for help from Early intervention. Today was Will’s first session, and we didn’t really do much of anything other than chat with his therapist lady, and she observed him playing. She is going to work with him once a week to help him overcome some of his problems with speech, and balance, and gross/fine motor skills. She is a developmental interventionalist, or basically someone who specializes in how children learn (in general) rather than specifically a speech therapist or occupational therapist or something like that. I am a little anxious about it, but also looking forward to seeing how we can help Will and help him to be less frustrated because he can’t really communicate with us. I also hope that we can calm down the giant meltdown fits… sometimes I am at my wits end. :\

Today we went to CHOP in west philly, and got an allergy test done. This was one of the things recommended from the feeding evaluation. Being he was getting a minor rash around his mouth when eating certain dairy, and also that he was on soy formula, and now soy milk… they thought it best to go get tested.

The results:
Will is allergic to cow’s milk dairy. Not lactose-intolerant. But allergic to dairy.

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Will had his early intervention evaluation yesterday. They determined that he does qualify for their services, so we will go through the process to further evaluate him, and meet with a case worker and then get assigned a “therapist” that specializes in what he needs. Basically it looks like he has multiple issues, so they are recommending someone who is a specialist in “Developmental Intervention”, or how children learn… which means they specialize in all of it, not one specific area. Will needs help with speech, and with eating. But also he has a lot of sensory issues and is not really aware of what he is doing all the time. Hopefully with some help we will be able to get him to learn more, and be aware of what he is doing… and also help him with communication so he isn’t so frustrated all the time. I’m hopeful that this will help us… we’ll see. Its a process that goes through the state, so it may take a little while, LOL

Will has some feeding issues, and it was suggested to us to make an appointment to get an evaluation by the feeding team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). We made the appointment about 2 and a half months ago, and finally had the appointment yesterday.
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Will had his first beach visit of the year this weekend! We went to visit with Pop-Pop and Mom-mom Lowess down in Wildwood NJ. We arrived friday and attempted to take Will to the beach late in the afternoon. He wanted no part of it, and wouldn’t let me put him down. I think the big-ness of the ocean scared him a little, plus it was such a different environment than we are usually used to.

Saturday we went down to the baby pool which is part of the condo complex where we were… this was a little better. Will was still afraid of the water, and very clingy, but he seemed to understand that he was warm, and the water felt better, so he put up with it, even though he was very cautious and unsure of what was going on.

Here is a photo of Will in the baby pool with mom:

We decided to head back to the room for dinner, and we had lots of play time there. We had a little difficulty getting him to sleep on friday night as it was a totally new environment so he was a little scared. Saturday night wasn’t as bad because i think he was just SO tired from the sun and running around that he conked out on the couch. Sunday morning we had breakfast while watching Caillou, and then we decided to try the beach again. We took him around in his stroller first which he seemed to like because he could see everything and he wasn’t as scared of it. Also the tide had gone out so there was a lot of hard sand to push the stroller on… Once we were done walking he seemed hesitant to leave mom, but eventually ventured out and played in the sand a little. It was a short trip, only for the weekend… but it was nice to be on the beach. Next time I hope he likes it a little more and we can truly enjoy it.

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