Rockin' that Evaluation!

Feeling pretty pleased with himself following his eval.

On Tuesday, Aaron had an evaluation for preschool, to see if he qualifies, you know.   Really more to get an idea of how much he needs in the way of services, 'cause if you're only about six months old or so developmentally, and you're nearly three years chronologically , yeah, you can call that delayed development.

Most of it really was a "can he do this" or "has he done that" kind of a thing.  But then when the speech/language specialist came in, things got interesting.  She asked if he could recognize objects on a page.  Um,  I don't know, I don't think so.   Well, let's see.

She gets out a book with three to four color pictures on a page and shows it to him.  "Where's the bird?"  Just as I get ready to say, "I don't think he knows what a bird is," (he's rarely outside other than being moved in and out of a car),  HE LOOKS AT THE BIRD!!  RIGHT AT IT!!!

Then she asks him to find the ball on the same page.  Found it!  And on and on we go.

Finally, after eight to ten images, and getting every single one, she shows him a page of a child playing with blocks, bathing, and sleeping.  She asked him to find the child washing.  He kind of looked at all of the pictures but not really focused in on any of them.  I told her that most of his baths are bed baths, so it's probably not something he recognizes.  Then she asked him to find the sleeping child.  Again, he really didn't engage.  So I asked him to find who was "night-night."  Bingo!  Right at the baby sleeping.

This kid can learn, and does learn!  We just need to find the key to unlock the safe.

In other news, he also had labs done on Friday.   We've been adjusting his PEEP settings on his ventilator and needed to check that it was going well.  He's been on a PEEP of 10 (crazy high) for two and a half years.  We dropped it to 9, and then two weeks ago to 8.  Before going further, we needed to know that he was still getting the support he needs to ventilate well.  Yep, so tomorrow, we'll try 7 and see how that goes.  It may not sound like a big deal, but believe me, it's huge.  IF he can keep this up, we've got a real fighting chance of being able to get off the vent.  It won't happen today or tomorrow, or even next month.  But that's okay.  I'm in this for the long haul.  It's a marathon we're running here, not a sprint.

So all in all, a pretty good week for Mr. Aaron.  And the month of May is winding down, which means perhaps I'll catch my breath.  School is almost out, the sun is shining, and life is good.

“The central struggle of parenthood is to let our hopes for our children outweigh our fears.” 

~ Ellen Goodman