Meeting the other side of the family

We're spending Christmas with Tom's family in California, which means Quinn is meeting the rest of his family. Here's a look at how it's going:

Cuter by the day

Some of my recent faves:

The long-awaited neuro-psychological assessment

We're in California visiting Tom's family. So we took the opportunity to drive to San Francisco and have Quinn assessed by a neuropsychologist who specializes in international adoption. She put Quinn through a series of tests and scored him on a number of different levels.

The upshot is that, at 18 months old, he scores as an 11-month-old in most areas. That's a significant enough delay that he probably won't catch up on his own and needs some pretty serious intervention and attention. Luckily, he'll get a lot of that through the Arizona early intervention program. But it was a good wake-up call for us that we need to be working with him a lot more intensely.

I got a good start today at library story time, of all places. We did rhymes and sang songs in addition to reading books, and it really struck me that I should be doing stuff like that with Quinn. But I may be going at it to excess. I obsessively sang, "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," complete with hand motions, to the poor boy all afternoon. He did humor me with a twinkle hand motion at Macy's, which warmed my heart. Then he sighed and went back to our beloved hand games and I decided it was time to give him a break.

You want to do WHAT to my baby?

It looks like Quinn might need surgery. He got a clean bill of health from the neurologist, but the orthopaedic surgeon she referred him to thinks Quinn may need to go under the knife. His brachial plexus injury has taken away one critical movement: put your right arm in front of you, with your upper arm against your body, like you're in a quick-draw contest. Point our hand straight out, and then rotate your forearm away from your body. That's what he can't do. There are two muscles that help you do that, but five that help you rotate inward. So what they do is take two muscles from the inward rotation and move them to help with the outward rotation.

He'll begin pretty extensive physical therapy soon and then be evaluated again in a few weeks. If they determine the surgery is necessary, it likely would be done when he's 2, which would put it next June or later. The surgery itself takes three hours and is fairly complex, but honestly, it's the recovery that scares me: A MONTH in an upper-body cast that immobilizes his right arm like he's swearing to tell the truth in court. A MONTH.

I've heard that little patients are quite resilient and that Quinn will probably do just fine during recovery. But it sounds awful to me.

Has anyone gone through anything like this? Any thoughts on kids and surgery?

Hooray! He failed the test!

It probably isn't something we'll ever feel again, but today we're celebrating that Quinn scored low enough on his assessment to be eligible for the Arizona Early Intervention program. He scored with a 25 percent delay in all areas except for communication, where he scored a 50 percent delay. The evaluator, Patrick, said the communications score is a little goofy since Quinn doesn't yet understand English. And he also said he shows no signs of cognitive delays, sensory integration issues or autism. All his delays are physical, for which we're grateful.

His eligibility for the program means he'll get access to all the specialists he will need without having to fight with our insurance company; the state will do that for us. And whatever our insurance won't cover, the state will.

For Quinn, that means a feeding specialist to get him eating solids, an occupational therapist to get him using his right arm, a physical therapist to get him walking and perhaps a speech therapist to get him talking.

Here we go!

A breakthrough day

The Mighty Quinn had not one, but two, breakthroughs today.

First, at lunch, he seemed VERY interested in my milkshake so I dipped the nipple of his big-boy bottle (his new sippy-cup-style bottle) into the milkshake and he slurped it right up. We did it about three more times with the same results. Then I offered him some on my spoon and, as usual, he turned his head away in despair.

Then, this afternoon, Quinn was playing on one side of our big square coffee table and I was on the computer on the other side. I saw a head slowly rise so I crawled around and watched him pull himself up into a standing position for the first time.

Hooray for Quinn! It's amazing to see how fast he is coming along - learning and growing every day. Also becoming MUCH more of a handful. A week ago I could sit him down with his toys and he'd be good to go. Just now I sat him down and he crawled straight to a large, heavy framed photo Tom has leaning on his office wall and just about pulled it right down on himself. Now he's having a good cry because I moved him away from it. Mean Mama.

The Christmas decorating dilemma

A kid certainly makes the holidays more fun. You can walk through the mall singing along to Christmas songs, and if you have a kid with you, no one even looks at you. Take it from someone who knows, that's not the case when you're alone.

However, Quinn does present a dilemma when it comes to decorating. He is now crawling all over the house and he likes to reach up and pull things he comes across. So: Christmas tree or no Christmas tree? I am nervous he will pull it down on himself. But I also want him to have a tree since he LOVES lights. I'm considering skipping the big tree and putting a small tree up high where he can see and not touch.

Any ideas?