Turning Three (12-31-11)

Dear Cayden,

One day this fall we were on a mommy and Cayden date at Schlotzsky’s. You were sitting across from me in a big chair and I looked at you and realized just how much you are growing up. There is this commercial by State Farm insurance that shows this dad talking to his daughter about safe driving. When it cuts to the daughter, all the dad sees is his little girl of years ago. In reality, she is all grown up. At that moment that I looked at you sitting across from me, I realized how that felt and I started tearing up. I know, it seems silly because you are only three today, but the changes this year have been astounding!

It seems like yesterday that we saw the two pink lines on the pregnancy test and were stunned, surprised, and overjoyed all at the same time. We couldn’t wait to be parents! Of course, we had no idea the journey we were embarking on and, honestly, even if we did, I’m not sure we could say we would change things.

This has been one heck of a year! The roller coaster has been all over the place and just when we think we are on steady ground, we do a loop-de-loop and find ourselves all sorts of turned around. Some loops smooth and others that have us ready to pull the emergency brakes!

This year, you had your first play dates and met some wonderful kiddos your age, including your preemie buddy, Travis. It was hard for me to take you around other kids, but we knew we had to socialize you. Even though you didn’t know how to play with them, you sure did enjoy observing them and even trying to interact with the other kids. You visited San Antonio for the first time. Gamma and Big Pop came with us. You rode a boat, went on a drive through safari, visited the Alamo, walked the River Walk, sucked from a straw for the first time, and played at the park. You had such a great time.  Not long after vacation, you proved to us that you know that a spoon and fork are not just fun waving items! You still prefer your hands, but you do enjoy giving utensils a good go. And who knew that you would be drinking exclusively from straws of multiple sizes and types by the middle of the summer?! You have quite the fondness for sweet tea, just like your mama!

You enjoy being outside and would much rather play there than inside. It’s been incredibly fun watching you explore and discover the world around you. You love sticks and rocks of all kinds and have been known to carry them around with you. We’ve had to limit them inside the house because you have quite the throwing arm…You enjoy walks in your wagon, on your tricycle (which we push you on), your police car, and even riding your miniature four wheeler.

You make us giggle with little OCD tendencies. If you move things in the bathtub, you rearrange them just like they were before you moved them. You line your trains, markers, crayons, etc. up evenly with each other and you are known to melt down if you don’t get it just right. You insist on doing things a certain way and things being just so! You have done more hands on activities, like dying Easter eggs, making ornaments, putting baking soda into vinegar to make bubbles, helping to make cookies, etc.

You keep us laughing with your quirky toddler ways. When you do throw a tantrum, you are SO careful about it. First, you sit down carefully on the floor, then you slowly put your feet out behind you and lower your upper body to the floor. Then you carefully turn over and once that is done you start screaming and crying. You are the only kid I’ve ever seen throw a tantrum like that. I know we aren’t supposed to laugh, but it sure is funny. Speaking of tantrums, you are king of pretending to cry and be upset and when I call you on it, you start laughing. What a silly boy you are!

Have I ever told you that you give the very best hugs? You do, and I love it when you get in my lap and lay your little head on my shoulder and throw your arms around my neck. I treasure those sweet moments. You tell us you love us by singing “I love you” with your little hand making an “L” shape because you can’t manipulate your hands to do the correct sign. Some people probably think we are letting you call us a loser because that’s what that sign normally means, but really, we are just exchanging our “love yous” with each other. You either turn your head so we can kiss the side of your head or you give us an wide open mouth kiss. It’s pretty funny to you when we ask for a kiss and you turn your head or you say “no”!

You’ve really exerted you independence this year. You want to do everything by yourself and often, you want to do it for us too. You are quite the little mimic these days. You’ll mimic as much as you are physically able to do. It has definitely been a year of  giggles. Other than hearing your little voice, nothing is sweeter than your laugh. I love when you get the giggles over something you heard or saw. Usually, it causes everyone in the room to get the giggles with you too. As the year has progressed you have shown a love of playing pretend. You cook us meals in your kitchen, you feed your new baby, you even feed us with your play food, and pretending to take our picture saying “eeseee”! You love it when someone picks you up and dances with you around the living room, giggling and signing for “more”.

You got your own big boy bed this year and even moved bedrooms to accommodate all of your fun stuff! Some of your favorite toys this year are: Chuggington trains, play camera, trampoline, hot wheels/matchbox cars, your new tools, books, anything outside, puzzles, your learning games, big cars and trucks, legos, play kitchen, Mr. Potato Head, and your paints.

We enrolled you into The Little Gym this summer. At first, you were in sensory overload and I thought we had made a HUGE mistake. Then, to our surprise, you started enjoying gym. You have moved up to the age appropriate class and are such an amazing listener. Even if it scares you, you almost always try to do a new skill. You can now do a forward roll, have developed better upper body strength and in less than six weeks of time, you made three months gain in your gross motor skills. It’s been worth every penny seeing you become more confident in yourself.

We had record highs and a serious drought this summer, so swimming happened in the evening hours. You wore big kid floaties in the pool this year and did incredibly well “swimming” around. You weren’t even scared of the deep end, even if it made everyone else catch their breath and promptly return you to shallow waters. You even let us show you how to float this year and tried to jump off the side of the ledge into the water.

This year, your Uncle Adam got married to Jennifer. You were an honorary member of the wedding party. Let me tell you, there is nothing cuter than you in tiny Wranglers, boots, and a western shirt. While shopping for your tiny wedding attire, we discovered that you would let us put a hat on you! So, we bought two. Oh,and talking about cute… I can’t wait to show your future dates the adorable picture of you in your tool belt and Grandma’s high heels! What personality!

Emily has become your steady play mate. It’s the sweetest thing watching y’all hug each other and show sweet cousin love. Y’all still have sharing wars and the toddler tantrums that come with that. Yet, you both get so excited when you get to play together. Recently, you both think of each other more often that not and bring the other one things you want to share with them or you want them to have.

You had your first kid friendly birthday party this year on your half birthday. You had an amazing time! You were invited to a few other kid friendly birthday parties this year. At one, you rode a horse for the first time! You weren’t overly sure about that, but you loved feeding the horses carrots and had no qualms about sticking your hand dangerously close to their rather large chompers.You still love animals and I frequently find you loving on the cats and dogs, even snuggled up next to them. It’s just so sweet.  I would venture to say that if I let you, you’d snuggle with the lizards and turtle too!

This summer you officially got your first real illness since being home from NICU! It scared the pants off of us. You have been diagnosed with Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease twice since the summer and then some nasty sinus infection/virus recently. Unfortunately, it’s just a horrid little side effect of making new friends and trying out new places. Your immune system just isn’t ready for all that is out there and you were unlucky enough to get some bugs this year. Watching you feeling like crud is really scary and hard for us, yet we are super thankful that it wasn’t worse.

Developmentally, you never cease to amaze us! You blew us away when we realized that you knew the entire uppercase alphabet in a multitude of formats! You can match things like a pro and are constantly improving your fine motor skills, and other cognitive skills.You really love to learn. You know pretty much all of your body parts and can point them out to us on you, a doll, and another person. You know many of your numbers and are learning lower case letters. You can even distinguish the differences between similar objects.

You finally started speech therapy with Miss Donna early this year. The struggle to get these services was completely worth the wait because you just flourished. After only a few visits, she had you blowing through a recorder and making sounds that we hadn’t seen or been able to get you to do before. You started learning more baby signs so that you could communicate with us. Through the course of speech therapy this year, we have discovered that you know so many words and phrases and can use them appropriately, but only spontaneously. It indicates possible childhood apraxia of speech. You have an oral motor delay that causes you to be unable to make certain facial movements, which explains your previous inability to mimic facial expressions and smile on command. This oral motor issue affects your speech dramatically. You’ve pushed through some tough times this year to overcome and work through the frustrations you are experiencing from not being able to make your body do speech wise what your little mind knows you want to do. Amazingly, you can now stick you tongue out, smile when asked, move your tongue side to side, drink from a straw, blow bubbles, and say “bye”, “hi”, “daddy”, “mommy”, “mama”, “puppy”, “baby”, and “go”! Your mind tells you that you are saying “mommy” but it comes out as “bobby” quite often. It took us a while to figure out who “bobby” was, but now, we know we get it and it is music to my ears! You’ve learned over thirty signs, shown instant mastery of using communication books, and are using many signs unprompted and learning to use the signs to form sentences/phrases.  It’s adorable to see you communicate in sign language with your surroundings, even using it with the animals. The signs have helped cut down on the frustration tantrums, but we still see them, especially when you know how difficult something is for you that we are asking you to do in therapy.

You’ve always struggled with certain sensory input and this year we were able to complete a sensory profile for you. You were diagnosed with auditory sensory processing disorder and oral sensory processing disorder. At the beginning of the year, you would have a complete meltdown and panic attack over loud sounds or unexpected sounds. Throughout many efforts this year, you have been able to tolerate more sounds and we have learned to see the distress signs, which helps us help you quicker. You still put everything in your mouth. Seriously, if it fits, it goes in your mouth! You frequently chew on your socks or shirts, and even your shoes at times. Yuck! We have noticed more sensory issues as you have gotten older. You are extremely tactile and you still have aversions to anything sticky, dirty hands, many textures, etc. We have to give you credit because you have overcome many of the other texture aversions, which has enabled you to add more foods to your diet. You rarely sleep through the night and we think we have narrowed it down to sensory issues. We are learning ways to help you wind down at night so that you can sleep better. Some nights are more successful than others. Many nights you end up snuggled up in bed with us.

We are pretty certain that your diagnosis of cerebellular hypoplasia is what is causing your global motor delays, including your speech issues. You are still making great strides and we all have faith that you will continue to amaze us. Your neurologist, Dr. Rivera, thinks that because you have made amazing improvements developmentally this year that your little brain is still finding the alternative paths and forming the pathways needed to do certain skills.

The really cool thing is that your little mind is just in overdrive observing everything around you. You are a sponge, just soaking everything up. Then you blow our minds by showing us you know things we had no idea you knew, especially because it wasn’t a skill we had worked on, like letter recognition!  More cognitive awareness is what all parents want for their children as they grow and we are no different. You’ve come so far and are doing such wonderful things. The downside is that with that awareness you learn and realize that you have limits too. My heart broke this year when you realized you couldn’t do something and were upset. As a mom, it’s tough when you can’t fix what is making your baby hurt or sad or frustrated. And this, well, I can’t fix it, just encourage you to keep trying and pushing forward.

Now that you are three, you are aging out of the ECI program and will begin PPCD (Pre-school Program for Children with Disabilities). I am NOT ready for this big change in your world. I am worried sick that you are going to regress and be too overwhelmed to feel comfortable. It’s super scary to hand you over to someone to care for you during the day that I don’t know and that doesn’t know you like I do. It’s been very bittersweet saying “bye” to your therapists who have done so much for you. In just a few short days, I’ll be packing your backpack, lunch kit, and putting you on the school bus. How is that even possible?! Somehow, I think you’ll cope better than I will.

Medically speaking, you are hanging in there. You still struggle with reflux and we have discovered after two ER visits, another way to make us panic, that you have some severe constipation issues as well. We’ll be discussing the long term plan for the reflux soon, as we want to make sure that the treatment you are getting is more helpful than harmful.You are practically caught up to your age for your height, but are still struggling with your weight and continue to keep a failure to thrive diagnosis. You teeter between 20-22 pounds depending on the scale, clothing, etc. The constipation requires certain treatment, while you weight gain needs another. Needless to say, we walk a fine line making sure you get what you need. You continue to have great days for eating and some really rough days where you don’t eat or drink much of anything.

You had trouble with your most recent hearing test with an indication that you have fluid in both ears, even though you aren’t showing any symptoms. We are in a watch and wait pattern on that. You got excellent news at the dentist – you have healthy teeth and no cavities! That tickled us pink, seeing as how you eat things on a regular basis that would make the dentist cringe.

After your PPCD evaluation, we discussed your muscle tone with the pediatrician and your gait. You still can’t run or jump and you tend to turn your toes out. We’ll be consulting a pediatric orthopedic doctor to see if you need braces or if this is something that we just need to watch.

This year has flown by! We’ve cheered as you have mastered or learned new skills. We’ve cried for you when you started realizing your limitations. We’ve know that you may never be able to do certain things, and that is absolutely okay. Everyone has something that they just can’t do, but everyone has a talent. I hope that as we start the new year, you will be able to see your strengths and not be so discouraged by things we can’t change. That’s a tough lesson, especially for a three year old little boy. This new year will bring new opportunities and challenges for you. We hope that you continue to meet them head on and give them your best shot. You have a fighting spirit Cayden. You’ve overcome so many odds. Many people thought you’d never survive such traumatic arrival. Look at you now!

Cayden, you are the BEST thing that has ever happened to me. I love being your mommy more than anything in the world. Your big smile and sweet laughter always make things better after a rough day. Like I said earlier, if we could change things, I’m not sure we would, simply because everything you have been through has made you who you are and that, well, it is just amazing! I can’t wait to see what the road to four brings for you, but, can you not get there so quickly?!

Happy third birthday!! I love you all the way to the moon and back my sweet, silly little boy!

Love,
Mama

P.S. Click the bottom picture to see the rest of his three year pictures.

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