Enter the Terrible Twos

So I haven't updated in a long while, even though there has been news to report. Bad Daddy! So from latest to newest:

We celebrated Fox's 2nd birthday yesterday. Since he's still not talking, we figure he doesn't understand a lot of what's going, so we haven't bothered to make too big a thing out of it. Of course that didn't stop us from buying half a dozen different toys (all of which had to be assembled by me, the assembler extraordinaire) and a big chocolate cake from Sobey's. As expected, he really enjoyed the cake! We even let him have an extra big portion.

Presents included the new green wagon for two with the cup holder from his grandparents, an Elmo tricycle with handle so we can push him around while he gets used to the idea of tricycling, a Fisher Price parking garage with spiral ramp, 3 or 4 books, a train, a sand and water play set and a Playskool Busy Basics Poppin' Pals, which we've recently discovered he likes a lot. We also measured the boy and he's 3 feet right now. According to folk wisdom we've heard, you double the height at 2 years of age and that's around how tall he'll be as an adult. So right now the guess is just shy of 6 feet, which is unsurprising. If I hear what a big boy he is for his age one more time...

Also today, we have Fox's 2 year checkup. No concerns except for the speech and language delays.

On that front, we've noticed that he's back to babbling a bit, unfortunately still just a string of one sound. "G-g-g-g-g-g" or "B-b-b-b-b" seem to be the popular ones. But I suppose it's progress, right?

We also attended the Child Health fair a couple of weeks ago and got lots of helpful information. According to the nice and helpful lady by the name of Michelle we talked with there, Fox probably should have been on their list of babies at-risk for developmental delays because of his Preemie status. Likely he was missed because he didn't need to go to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit; we had a heat lamp in our room at the hospital and he was under that most of the time. In any case, she also did a little more of an assessment, and put us on the waiting list for her group, which was much smaller than Kidsabilty's. In the meantime, we had also contacted Community Rehab, in an attempt to pay for assessment and bypass the 5 month wait at Kidsability. We also had an assessment with someone from Kidsability, which is where we found that Fox had a love for the Poppin' Pals, type of toy.

Michelle later had a home visit and went through longer tests with Fox. Her diagnosis was that he's developmentally delayed (no surprises there). She also got our permission to contact Kidsability about adding him to get assessed for Occupational development, which has to due with "appropriate play". For example, whether you use a toy car by pushing it along. Not quite as concerned with that, but it never hurts to be sure and it's better than finding out when we finally do get our appointment and then have to be scheduled for another one in 4-5 more months.

Unfortunately, our experience with Community Rehab hasn't been a good one. We haven't heard back from them as of the writing of this post. Lisa gave them a call and we found out a week ago someone had been assigned to our case, but we still haven't heard from them. Lisa called to enquire about it again and was just directed to voice mail, which still hasn't been returned. It's quite frustrating to not get any response from a place we intend to pay, so we're looking at other options. The website for Ontario Association for Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists gave us a few more leads that we'll give a try, and hopefully we'll have better luck there.