Magic Shoes and Bulking Up

Taylor had a busy, and frustrating, week this week. I'm realizing my blog posts are more infrequent - the first weeks of school have been CRAZY with lots of "parent orientation", in addition to crabby kids at the end of the day. So, I'll try to catch up on the past week.

Her big focus this week was getting orthotics for her feet to help her start practicing standing and working on growing bigger. The orthotics were a total zoo. You can imagine trying to get orthotics perfectly made for a tiny baby. Taylor is still really little and her feet are quite small, so I'm in awe that anyone would even try to make her orthotics. I had taken her to get casted several weeks ago in Issaquah (about a 40 minute drive) and David, bless him, signed up to take Taylor to pick up the finished orthotics in Mt. Vernon (almost 90 minutes away). We were trying to work with the "best" baby orthotic maker that our therapist had recommended, thus the traveling circus to connect with their traveling clinic. David came home with orthotics that looked different than what the technician had talked with me about in Issaquah. When I took them to Taylor's therapy session, Susan was livid. She totally let the poor technician have it over the phone and insisted that they fix it immediately. They didn't fit well and didn't have some of the bracing stuff that she had requested. So, David's 4 hour trip was essentially a waste. Thursday, I took her to the orthotic company owner, who happened to be at Swedish Hospital in Seattle (don't get me started on the craziness of trying to schedule meetings with these specialities). He agreed the original pair were poorly made and made her a pair of good, temporary orthotics on the spot. Her shiny, pink pair should arrive in 2 weeks. The good news - Taylor can finally practice standing. She wasn't placing weight on her feet equally and Susan wanted the orthotics before she practiced standing to ensure that she learns correctly, which hopefully will help her walk normally. So, after about 8 hours of orthotics appointments, we finally have a temporary pair that can work for now with a great pair on the way. Of course, the big kids are fascinated with Taylor's "magic shoes", but I'm terrified they will get damaged. They are worth their weight in gold given how hard we had to work to get them. I'll post a pic soon. Needless to say, she doesn't enjoy wearing them, so I haven't snapped a picture yet.

Thursday was a really busy day. I also took her to the feeding specialist at Children's. Thankfully, her endocrine tests came back normal, so now we just need to focus on fattening her up. We didn't learn anything earth-shattering - other than we shouldn't worry about normal eating milestones for now (such as getting her to eat solids), but should instead focus on increasing her caloric intake. The therapist was nice (and also had kids at Lauren's school - small world) and the meeting was pleasant, although another morning at Children's is not my favorite way to pass time. Unfortunately, she didn't have magical answers for us, but recommended that we see a nutritionist (!) to help Taylor with a feeding plan. Taylor will soon have more team members than most professional athletes - it's seriously amazing. In the meantime, we're working on loading her up with baby food (she's getting all of the fruit she wants and the dreaded vegetables have largely gone by the wayside) and as much formula as she can guzzle. An indication of how far off we are - the feeding specialist said most kids Taylor's age are eating 2 jars of baby food per meal - we're lucky if she eats 2 jars a day. So, we have work to do, but we're glad she isn't alarmed. The next step is meeting the nutritionist and we have another feeding specialist coming to our house on 9/22 to look at Taylor's high chair and give us hands-on coaching - which feels a bit weird with our third child, but we'll take any help that will help Taylor.

Finally, we saw the speech therapist for the first time (also on Thursday - a banner day for appointments). She was really nice and great with Taylor. She gave me several good ideas to focus on (more working on nodding yes and shaking head no, giving Taylor choices using flash cards of common objects (do you want your bottle first or baby food?), and continuing to talk with her). She recommended against working on sign language for the next several months until Taylor gets better control of her fine motor skills on her hand. But, we can work on building her vocabulary so when she can speak, she'll be able to be a motor mouth from the get-go. We also won't see her regularly for several months, which is actually a gift right now, due to her aggressive therapy schedule.

We had a poor week of therapy since Taylor was so busy with other appointments. She was tired and not too interested in her therapy, so we're hoping to get back on track next week. She also starts her new school on Monday, so we're anxious to see how that goes. I've started asking all of the various folks we're meeting with for their opinion on Taylor's therapy plan and so far, they have all agreed that it is very aggressive, but great for Taylor if we can manage it as a family and pay for it (thank you again Microsoft for killer insurance). So, we're feeling peaceful that we're doing the right thing for Taylor, although this week was fairly exhausting for all of us. We're craving a routine and some sense of normalcy from a week-to-week basis. The various specialist appointments make this difficult, but I think we're doctor-appointment free next week - hooray!

Amidst the nuttiness of poor Taylor's schedule, Lauren and Jacob are adjusting to their new schools and Taylor is so happy to see them when they come home. Of course, they each have a runny nose already, so they'll probably share that with her too soon. But, it's great to see them all laughing and smiling at each other at the end of the day.