Esias

We had our annual meeting with Esias' Early Access therapists this past week. He is doing great...there has been so much improvement from November of last year. Socially he has met every goal-- he can now get our attention, ask for help, play alongside other children, share (kinda), and many other things. Physically he is doing great as well. Running, jumping, climbing, pushing, hitting, oh wait...nevermind on those last two. Verbally...eh. Still working. He is using expressive language at the level of an 17 month old and receptive language at about 18-20 months. This is not discouraging though. The progress is what is amazing. Feeding-wise-- we decided to go ahead and schedule weekly feeding sessions with the occupational therapist to see if we can't jump start this a little bit. Because Early Access stops when kids turn three and then if services are needed they get them in the schools, Esias will most likely go to a school next year for his therapies. SO, Mom doesn't like the idea of sending a kid who chokes daily to school where they will give him food! The therapist thinks if we work a little more aggressively we may be able to get some progress before the fall when he would go to school. I am hopeful. There are days when he does great and days when he does not. Choking/gagging still happens all the time but we are trying to allow him to work it out on his own and not always need us to sweep his mouth for him. I know that sounds terrible but when we know some day this is going to happen and I won't be there to see it, we want to prepare him.

We also started him on a new medicine called Robinul for his drooling. We started it a few weeks ago and it seemed to dry him up a bit. Then Dan was gone for business and Esias had a night terror-- I wasn't sure if it was from the meds or not, so I called the pharmacist the next day and she said to stop for now, until we could safely test it and I wasn't home alone. It was the scariest thing. He woke up writhing around in his bed. I went in and picked him up but soon realized he was not awake, though his eyes were open. He looked straight at me but was terrified of me. He would not let me hold him or touch him and he threw toys at me. I finally got him some milk and turned on Cars and it was like a switch flipped and suddenly he was snuggling on my lap and back to sleep. Scary though. The doctor said the meds might affect his sleep but he didn't say like this! So we aren't sure if that was a fluke or a side effect.