Developmental Testing

This is Mena playing in her new sandbox in the backyard after the physical therapist had left this morning. The PT did some standardized tests with Mena and determined that her Gross Motor, Fine Motor, Problem Solving, and Personal-Social are all above the 18 month age expectations. The testing confirmed that Mena's communication/language is behind for her age but these tests did not tell us how far behind. We will see the physical therapist in a month and we'll continue to see the language teacher weekly.

Gene and I talked about how different the opinions are between what the pediatrician was saying at her 18 month check up and what the physical therapist was saying this morning. Gene and I feel the physical therapist using standardized testing in our home was probably more accurate than the pediatrician just taking 15 minutes to observe her in the exam room. The pediatrician was talking off the top of his head whereas the physical therapist was able to give us documentation to show why she placed her where she did on the developmental charts, so that seems more valuable of an opinion to us.

Yea, Mena has come so far in the time I've been home with her!

Update: Gene and I went back through our copies of the standardized tests previously done on Mena. By reanswering the questions we were able to determine that Mena has jumped 40 points since January. She was below the 12 month mark in January and is now between 12 and 14 months.

19 Months Old

Mena is 19 months old today. Our home scale shows Mena weighs 27 pounds. She now has 12 teeth (8 front teeth and 4 molars). She's wearing size 2 tops and size 18 month pants. The nice weather has meant we could pull out some short sleeve shirts and Capri's. I've seen her tug on her shirt sleeves like she thought they weren't pulled down her arm all the way! She's also been able to go bare foot around the house and she's fascinated with her toes. She keeps signing "more" for "This Little Piggie."

Mena can now walk all over the house and she's begun picking up speed. She has also figured out how to push or pull a toy without leaning on the toy and she's rediscovered a few toys that she'd previously not shown much interest in because they wouldn't support her while walking. The physical therapist is disagreeing with the pediatrician as to how far behind Mena is in her gross and fine motor skills. The first thing the physical therapist did was give me some new activities to do with Mena to improve her balance which has resulted in her much improved walking. The next thing the physical therapist wants to do is some tests that will show what developmental age Mena's skills are putting her at. The physical therapist has agreed to come twice a month and the speech therapist is continuing to come weekly. Mena isn't speaking any new words but she's learned to sign "up" and "all done" which have both proven helpful. Mena is also starting to respond to regular phrases that we're repeating a lot, like "let's go brush your teeth" or "time to put your pajamas on." The fact that she's understanding us more is really nice.

This picture shows Mena with her new peg board. She stacked 7 pieces high for the first time so I snapped the picture.

Easter at Home

Mena's third egg hunt was at our house after nap on Easter. She was really excited for the Easter Basket of goodies. She liked the bunny bells and her book, but she wasn't much interested in picking up all the plastic eggs that we'd hidden in the living room.

Easter at Grandma Olson's

We celebrated Easter with my family at Grandma Olson's house. In the first picture Mena is playing with her new tea set with Grandma Frye. In the second picture Grandma Olson is showing Mena her cousin Jake. In the last picture, Mena is finding plastic eggs hidden in the living room. She had a better idea of what to do this time around. We had a great visit with Grandma and Grandpa Olson, Uncle Jim (Grandma Frye's brother), Grandma and Grandpa Frye, Aunt Beth with cousins Peyton and Tyler, and Aunt Peg with Uncle Jon and cousin Jake.

MOM's Group

Every Tuesday Mena and I have been going to MOM's group. The Tuesday before Easter we did an egg hunt out in the yard for all the kids. It was Mena's first egg hunt and she didn't quite get the concept. She started by picking up the eggs and putting them in her bucket like I showed her. But then she thought since there were so many on the ground that maybe she should put hers back on the ground next to the ones she was finding! Aunt Peggy and I started laughing. Peg and Jake are also going to MOM's group but Jake's still too little to play with the other kids. The little girl with the purple jacket on is Brinn and she also goes to the same story time at the library that we go to each week.

Coloring Easter Eggs

Mena had fun dyeing Easter Eggs. She got excited each time I pulled an egg out and it was colored. We did 12 eggs and then I told her we had to stop. Neither she nor Gene will eat boiled eggs so that was plenty for me to eat for the week.

You can kind of see the mark below her right eye. She got her first black eye when she fell in the backyard and landed just right on a walnut shell! Poor kid.

Going to the Park

Mena's favorite place is outdoors now. This picture shows how she's learned how to walk up and down the stairs while holding onto a railing. She's getting stronger and better balanced and is so proud of being able to do these things herself!