The Circus Clown

We have been so busy with so many fun things this summer that not only was I late on scheduling Cameron's 18-month well-check, I am late on blogging about the current status of our little guy as well. I'm pretty sure I'm going to just have "Better late than never..." printed on a t-shirt and never take it off.

Where to start? When I took Cameron for his well-check on July 29th I still had a lot of concerns regarding his development, even though our intervention teacher had been seeing him twice a month throughout the summer. I brought these concerns to the doctor's attention and she was concerned as well. We both felt that Cathryn (the interventionist) was really doing more evaulation than actual therapy. While evaluation is helpful for both his future in school and in tracking his current progress, the doctor and I both felt that he still needed some type of therapy to help with his progress. At the very least, we felt speech therapy was a good place to start since he uses very little words. So we agreed that I would discuss a new course of action with our case worker. Health wise, he still continues to grow well on his own curve and even worked his way up to about the 40th percentile in weight! He's still pretty vertically challenged like his mother but there's really not a whole lot we can do about that!

Last week I called our case worker, Jill, and discussed things with her. I told her that even though we'd been doing the early intervention stuff since the beginning of summer, he still wasn't waving "bye-bye," still wasn't referring to any of us by name, still not pointing at things. She told me that if I wasn't happy with how things were going, then we definitely needed to rework things. She and Cathryn came to the house the very next day armed with a new plan.

Cathryn will now come 3 times a month and work on specific activities with him each time she's here. She will bring some written information for me on each activity that she does so that I can read about it and continue the activity with him at home. We are working on a series of things that will hopefully, eventually lead to Cameron pointing at things when asked. It will be a gradual process that I won't really bore you with now since this is an already lengthy post. The goal is to have Cameron pointing by January 2010.

In addition to Cathryn's visits, we will also have a speech pathologist come once a month and work on word function with Cameron. He actually says a lot of words, but only uses a few. We think that Cameron and the rest of the family would be much happier if he could use more words to relay his needs and wants to us.

On top of all of this, someone from the Parents As Teachers organization (A great organization I highly recommend to any parent. It is for all kids, delayed or not.) will be coming once a month and working with us as well. She will communicate with AEA (intervention org.) about Cameron so she can plan her activities accordingly.

So, in case you've lost count, that's five visits per month for our little dude. It's a lot, I know, but we are really excited about it and think it is exactly what we need. I had lost my optimism for a while but I've got it back in full-force now! And as you can see, Cameron is pretty darn excited about it, too.

Like he's done his entire 20-months of life, we just keep holding up the hoops and our little circus clown jumps right through them. He rolls with the punches and amazes me everyday with how far he's come. He is a joy to be around and sometimes I wonder if he's teaching me more than I am teaching him.

But since I've already written a book, I'll save all the wonderful new things he's doing for future posts. For now, I'll just leave you with a few shots of my big boy taking a break in a big-boy chair. Because after all that hoop-jumping, sometimes a guy's just gotta sit back and take it easy.