The Basement Blues

I've been feeling a little blah. I figured it was just the time of year at first, but, as is often the case, I was eventually able to figure out what's really bothering me. Fortunately, it's nothing serious.

Problem #1: A wet basement. Our first estimate on the basement repair nearly knocked me over. I thought I had prepared myself for the worst, but I wasn't even close. Very depressing.

Problem #2: Fleas. They are back. But it's too early to spray again. Wet basements make flea problems much harder to get rid of, I have learned. They love dampness. Great.

Problem #3: Snot. For over a month now, my daughter has had what they were calling a sinus infection. She has been on antibiotics three times, and she isn't getting better. Her doctor said this morning that she will refer her to an allergist. My best guess? She's allergic to mold and mildew from our wet basement.

Problem #4: Feminine issues. I was on antibiotics myself for a sinus infection a few weeks ago, and I am left with the antibiotics' lovely sidekick, the yeast infection.

Problem #5: Feminine issues times two. I started my period the day after I started using the three-day yeast infection treatment. No tampons allowed during the treatment period. Great. Nothing like being crampy and itchy AND grossly uncomfortable.

Problem #6: Holiday shopping blues. We've been worried about money, especially after the basement estimate that took our breath away. I haven't had any work yet from the part-time venture I mentioned a while back, and all the shopping for my family's gifts overwhelms me sometimes.

Now, all in all, this stuff isn't much to complain about. The yeast infection and the period are both only temporary. We had a second basement estimate today that was only one seventh the cost of the first one (and we feel better about this company for other reasons, too). If we get the basement dry, then the fleas should be easier to get rid of. Also, if the basement is dry, L.'s snot levels might decrease, allergist or no. And shopping, I have to say, will be easier if we aren't destitute. Bring on the sump pump, baby!

Happy Thanksgiving

We got home not long ago from a very nice Thanksgiving trip. My husband and I have had some nice Thanksgivings since we've been together, but I think this one was the best yet. For the first time, my husband and I didn't have to decide which side of the family to upset. This year my in-laws joined us at my parents' Thanksgiving dinner. It was nice -- for everyone, I think. Here are just a few of the things for which I am thankful.

• my husband, who has made the last seven years of my life wonderful (and who is currently washing dishes, bless his heart)
• my children, who make me laugh every day
• my extended family, who welcomed my in-laws yesterday
• my mother-in-law and sister-in-law, who braved one of my family's get-togethers
• my health
• the health of my loved ones
• our home
• my friends, both on- and off-line

There are other things, too. Lots of them. Like The DQ pumpkin pie Blizzard. And Glide dental floss. And naptime.

A belated Thanksgiving to you all, my readers. And that goes for both of you.

Assessing the Assessment

The early intervention people came this week and started the intake process. L's evaluations should be done and an IFSP written by the second week in December. During the private evaluation, which we had to pay for, L was totally fluent. Strange as it seems to say it, I hope she is at her worst for the early intervention people.

Her stuttering is certainly cyclical. She was in a fluent period when she was evaluated, but she is now on the downswing. Her original secondary behaviors have been replaced by new ones: whispering and tilting her head to one side. These behaviors are cuter and more socially acceptable, and so people now don't even realize she's stuttering. In fact, she's so quiet, people don't even realize she's talking.

When she was stuttering at her worst in early October, there was a day she went to the grocery store with me and drew LOTS of attention from people. Every time she started a sentence, she would repeat the initial sound, stuff her hand against her mouth, and allow the pitch and volume of her voice to rise dramatically. People thought she was just yelling to be mischievous. One man even scolded her and said, "Is that you making all that noise?"

Now she does the other extreme: she repeats a sound until her air runs out, and then, rather than inhaling again, she continues to "speak" by moving her mouth but making absolutely no sound. No one else has noticed this but me. It's hard to notice. Sometimes I glance at her and see her little mouth working silently, and I realize she's been trying to talk to me for some time.
She is communicating less, or at least making fewer audible attempts to communicate. When I catch the tail end of one of her "silent stuttering" episodes, I can't understand what she has said because it's either too soft or too distorted by her use of residual air. I ask her to repeat herself, and she just pops her thumb in her mouth and turns away. Too much work. Yeah, baby, I've been there.

Again, it's not so much that she stutters. It's how she stutters that worries me. She just struggles too damn much sometimes, especially for a toddler. I cannot tell you the anger and disappointment I feel when well-meaning people dismiss as mere noisemaking my daughter's efforts to speak; she is only two, but people's reactions to her communication attempts will help shape who she is. I wish I could protect her. I wish I could live the rough parts for her.

And I wish a professional could see her when she is like this. I wonder if they would be so reassuring then. As much as I want L to experience the ease of fluency, I hope she stutters up a storm the next time a speech therapist is near her. I want an assessment based on all the evidence.

Happy Birthday, L!

Today is my baby's birthday. As hard as it is to believe that L is already two, her birth seems so long ago. Postpartum depression as well as severe pre-eclampsia that kept me hospitalized until L was two weeks old made it difficult for me to be the kind of mother I wanted to be right away, and when I think of her birth, I feel more guilt than anything else. I remember the intense anxiety I felt as the nurses brought her to my hospital room each morning. I remember a sense of relief, followed immediately by guilt, when I was put on a medication incompatible with breastfeeding. So many times I think I'd like to just start over with her.

Now when she comes into my room in the mornings, she makes me laugh first thing. Just recently she has discovered she has the power to get up from her toddler bed when she wants. This morning S woke up cranky, and although I convinced him to climb into bed with us and calmed him down, the noise had already awakened L, who soon came pitter-pattering into our bedroom, announcing, "I up!" As my husband hoisted her up onto the bed, she said, "Hi, Daddy!" She giggled as we all hugged and kissed her. She is such a joyful child. I have trouble finding words to express how much I love her.

Apparently, S does, too. When he leaned over to hug and kiss her this morning, he laughed and crooned, "Wittle metucky fwied chicken!"

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Nine Weird Things

Because I'm all about the self-tagging, I'm stealing this meme from Writergrrl. Nine weird things about myself? This one, I have to say, should not be too hard for me.

1. I am fascinated by my children's earwax. I look in their ears frequently to see if there is any ready to harvest. I am slightly disappointed when I don't see any.

2. My husband and I met online. No, we didn't have a torrid Internet affair and meet for the first time on our wedding day. We met through a personals site, met in person a couple weeks later, and dated for a year before getting married.

3. When I walk, I do a weird spelling/typing thing with my feet. I think of a word, and I imagine I'm typing it out on a keyboard, so I say each letter to myself (silently) as I step down on the appropriate foot -- the left foot for letters typed with the left hand, and the right foot for letters typed with the right hand. If two consecutive letters are typed with the same hand, I have to wait another step until that foot comes down again to continue spelling. Each word has its own weird walking rhythm. For example, the word rhythm would be R(left) H(right) (left) Y(right) T(left) H(right) (left) M(right).

4. I am really good at Pig Latin. My father used to have long, involved conversations with my brother and me in Pig Latin when I was small.

5. As I get to know new friends, I notice myself taking on some of their mannerisms. It bothers me a bit. I don't do it on purpose at all, and it makes me feel like a phony.

6. Not only do I sometimes pass out at the sight of blood, but I sometimes pass out at the mention of blood. I passed out in health class in elementary school a few times, always during the chapter on the circulatory system. And I passed out during my mother's first talk with me about menstruation. (Fortunately, the anticipatory talk bothered me much more than the actual event.) Once I passed out in an acquaintance's car when she casually mentioned that her baby's penis had bled inordinately after his circumcision. Somehow we didn't make that leap from acquaintances to friends. Go figure.

7. Some melancholy music just sucks me under. Certain songs by Nine Inch Nails, for example, can put me in a deep, dark funk for days.

8. Even at my very largest and my most out of shape, I have always been able to sit on the floor with the soles of my feet together, my heels back close to my body, my knees touching the floor, and my head to my feet or the floor. It's a fairly useless talent.

9. I have a bad habit of leaving the kitchen cabinet doors open. After I've made dinner, it's not unusual for almost every cabinet door to be open. Is it dangerous and annoying? Yes. Does that compel me to close the doors? It seems not to.

L.'s Evaluation

L. had her speech evaluation today at a local university clinic. Initially we were told she couldn't be evaluated until January, but only a few days later we got another phone call saying someone could evaluate her sooner after all. It turns out they weren't initially anxious to see L because of her age; stuttering apparently begins when children develop more complex expressive language skills. To quote the speech pathologist, "When I first heard that a twenty-two month old had been referred for a fluency evaluation, I said, 'It's impossible. She's too young.' But then when I read the case history and the sample sentences she was saying, I decided okay, maybe I'm wrong."

During the evaluation, L. was incredibly fluent. Naturally. It reminds me of the Michigan J. Frog cartoon. There were only two or three moments when she stuttered, and even those were minor. I did, however, give them a tape of her talking at home, one segment from several weeks ago when her speech was quite severe, and one segment done last night when she was just mildly disfluent. Once they watch the tape, they'll realize why I took her in, I'm sure.

The plan right now (pre video viewing, of course) is to watch her for a while. They will contact me once or twice a month to check in, at which point we will decide whether or not they should see her again, based on how her speech is then. I am also to call if it becomes severe again. They gave me a list of things to do (slow my speech, encourage turn-taking when both kids are vying for the spotlight, etc.) , most of which they said they noticed I'm already doing. If L is still stuttering in 12 months, they/we will start an intervention program that seems to work well with preschoolers.

L. was very well-behaved for the evaluation and just ate up all the attention. She did manage to embarrass me a bit with her insistence that every doll's clothes must come off. Both the pathologist and her student couldn't get over L's language level. They were most impressed with her use of the word manatee (she saw one at the zoo and liked it) and the sentence, "I pretending Mommy a bunny." It was kind of funny watching these two grown women nearly wet themselves over the jabberings of a small child. The elder woman was orgasmic over L's correct use of the "-ing" ending.

Because I'm too lazy to put the rest in paragraph form, here are a few of the main points from our post-evaluation conversation:

• L's good language skills give her a better shot of overcoming stuttering.
• Secondary behaviors are indeed rare in children, but they are not unheard of.
• L's being a girl gives her a better chance of outgrowing the stuttering.
• The fact that my dad and brother outgrew their stuttering is another sign in her favor.
• Stuttering usually begins very mildly and without any tension. It's rare for it to come on so strongly.
• They said it was a good sign that the few disfluencies L had today seemed to be without tension. (I am not sure I entirely agree with their assessment on that point. True, there wasn't much tension. But I think it was there. Just a touch, under the surface. Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive, or perhaps it is my stuttering radar picking up on what others don't hear. I'll hope for the former.)
• They recommend the Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention if she does happen to continue to stutter after twelve months. (I had my initial misgivings about the program when they first explained it to me, but the more I learn, the more optimistic I am about it.)

Overall, I am pleased with the evaluation and the professionalism of the evaluators. They were really good with my daughter and did indeed know their stuff. And they left me with the hope that L might very well shrug this thing off and trample all over it like a jacket she's determined not to wear. Nothing would make me happier.