As expected, but somewhat unexpected.

Little Girl had her evaluation by a speech pathologist on Friday. Her receptive language is on the low end of normal, but still within normal range. At 21 months of age her expressive language is at the level of a one year old. Yikes. I knew she was behind, but I was shocked that she would be considered delayed by that much. Worse still? Little Girl is the "talker" of the two. Little Boy is much quieter and has far fewer words in his vocabulary. His evaluation isn't until May 12th, but I've got a pretty good guess how that's going to go.

It was recommended that Little Girl receive speech therapy one hour a week for the foreseeable future. The paperwork is being filed with our insurance company. I don't hold out much hope that it will be covered, though. If they refuse payment as expected, Georgia has a program called Babies Can't Wait that serves the developmental needs of children until age three. They charge on a sliding scale and come to your house for therapy sessions (a big plus). The downside with Babies Can't Wait is that it could take several months to get going with them. Evidently, Babies Can Wait.

As with the cranial remolding helmets Little Boy and Little Girl had to wear last year, if you have to pick a health problem to have with your children, a language delay is not so bad. A logistical, financial nightmare? Yes. Am I beating myself up for not working more with Little Boy and Little Girl? You know me, of course I am. This is at least partially my fault. I have been totally lax about teaching the bambinos much of anything. I can barely keep up with their basic needs, much less devote time to teaching them things like colors, or numbers, or letters, or any one of the myriad things toddlers should be filling their little brains with. The only consistent effort I’ve been able to make with them is that I talk constantly and narrate what I'm doing all day long. So much so that I find myself doing the same even when I'm not around the babies. Now that's irritating, and probably not least of all to me.

Chatterbug & Hive Boy.

Little Girl has added a few new words to her repertoire. Ball, water (wa-wa), poo-poo, bye-bye, thank you (I think - it doesn't sound much like thank you, but it's always the same two syllables and the context is correct), bubble, and cheese. Add those to the mama, dadda and shoe she was saying and she's gathering quite a collection of words.

Little Boy is still stuck saying only dadda and shoe. Not much progress there, sadly.

Little Boy also managed to give us a pretty good scare this week with his most impressive outbreak of hives to date. We're not sure if it was from a viral infection (he had been running a low grade fever earlier in the day, but I thought it was more teething related than anything else) or an allergic reaction to a diaper doubler I tried using for the first time. Either way, the poor guy was covered in hives, head to toe. His armpits were so swollen and inflamed that he screamed when anyone picked him up. He was an itchy welt covered mess, but his breathing was fine and his face didn't swell, so the pediatrician advised Benadryl, a cool bath and topical antihistamines. It took three days for the hives to completely go away.

B. thankfully was home for Little Boy's hive outbreak. I'd have been quite a bit more panicked had he been gone. He's gone now, just out the door for another three week long class. I'm already tired, but the time will pass quickly - it always does.