Books and Medical Updates

Besides keeping up with the other blog, I’ve also had time to finish 3 books in the last 3 weeks.  I read By the Time You Read This which is about a father who writes a manual to his daughter right before he passes away when she was 5 years old.  I liked the premise of the story and there were good bits about growing up, but in the end it was really predictable and too easy of a read for me.  After that I got my Kindle and Chris downloaded the new Dan Brown novel, The Lost Symbol.  It was obvious he did quite a bit of research and I enjoyed the fast pace, on the edge of your seat sense of urgency the book had.  Again, another easily digestible book and I thought The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons were better.

The last book I read was one I picked up several months ago but it had such a slow start that I couldn’t get into it, called Water for Elephants.  I really enjoyed this book and there were parts that were just heartbreaking.  If you want to know what really happens at a circus, particularly in the early late 20’s and 30’s, I think this book does a good job at portraying that.  It was a fairly easy read and eventually picked up so that I could connect to the characters.  My next book will likely be another parenting/child development book, but I might find something else that will intrigue me.

Charlotte will likely be have a behavioral and occupational evaluation in the coming weeks.  The only flag on her behavior is her not interacting or relating with other children and having a lot of tantrums, but the therapists think it probably has more to do with her speech and being 2 than anything so we don’t anticipate anything to come out of that evaluation.  The occupational evaluation is for her lack of upper body strength.

Tomorrow we have her audiology exam to make sure her speech delay isn’t caused by a hearing issue.  We don’t think it is since she turns to us when we say her name or talk to her and she follows directions fine.  We are noticing some improvement in her speech where she is really practicing all the sounds and beginning to spontaneously make the sounds (saying mama to get my attention, momo for more, muhmuh for milk, oh for open, etc).

The therapists told Chris that Cooper is also behind in his speech (since he and Chris still attend therapy with Charlotte), but since he is a boy and they typically take longer to talk, the therapists don’t recommend an evaluation just yet.  In the mean time, all the tricks we have learned to help Charlotte learn to talk, we now do with Cooper.