Ruthie's 18 month stats

18 MONTHS?!?!?!? When did that happen?!?

Chronological Age: 18 months, 1 day 
Adjusted Age:  14 months, 2 weeks, 1 days

Weight:  18 lbs 14oz 
Height:  30.25 inches

Head circumference: 18 inches

Diapers: size 3

One-Pieces & Dresses: 18 months for most things; pants are still a 12 month

Sleep'N'Plays (what we use for pjs):  18 months, quickly moving toward 24 month....she is LONG!

Shoes: size 2s, and we are "working" on learning how to keep our shoes ON....happily :)

Teeth: 3 bottom teeth and she is currently cutting 4 top teeth - one is partly through and the other 3 are working steadily

Naps:  We have finally decided to give her just one nap. She is now on a "wake-up" schedule, which I never wanted to do, but she was sleeping in late and then cat-napping and was a pill by 4pm.

Sleeps:  7:00pm to 8:00am - naps from 11:00/12:00 to....some days it's only an hour, some days it's 3 hours

Feeds: still 100% G-tube dependent. Eating very small amounts during the day, but is not as interested as she used to be: still not drinking anything.

Personality: She is really learning that she is her own person. She gets mad when she doesn't get her way...and with that, is learning that if she throws a fit, she loses the object she was playing with. This works well in the bathtub when she wants to turn the (cold) water on high to play in it. She's allowed to have it on just a little (she signs for it) but when she tries to turn it on full-blast, I cover the knob and tell her no, and she yells. Then it gets turned off completely. :) It took her a few tries to figure out that behavior only led to her losing what she wanted to play with, and for the most part, she stopped.

She is doing GREAT with her signing! So far, she signs regularly for eat (not that she eats anything), bath, water, more, help, open, play, all done (her favorite and often used to get out of the work her therapists make her do, hahaha), me/please, and pointing for things she wants. She also knows dog, mama, daddy, and milk, but she rarely uses those. She's very into asking for things that we have by signing me/please (same sign, pretty much) and is finally starting to ATTEMPT to repeat our words to her. In the past, any word we asked her to verbally say was repeated as "eh" - always. Last week she said "ligh!!" for light when she wanted to turn off the bathroom light after her bath. Now she repeats it pretty well if we point to the light and ask her what it is. She's trying, but she's struggling with how to make the sound we are using, even if it's a sound she makes often. For example, she can say "babababa" until the cows come home, but if you ask her to say "baba" for bubble, it always comes out "mama." This is a red flag of speech apraxia, from what I've researched. Her "light" does not out with an l, but with a y, like "yigh." Also common with apraxia - the y-sound is much easier to form, and though she is capable of making "lalalala" sounds, she cannot do it when we request. We're working on this every day, and weekly in speech therapy.

Speaking of therapies, they are going well for the most part. We are going to twice-weekly OT starting in February, to target feeding skills. We have seen a lot of improvement in her oral motor strength since starting with this new company/therapist, but her actual eating is starting to decline. We are still looking into the feeding clinic in Atlanta, if twice-weekly therapy doesn't start to show major improvement. Her physical therapy has been bumped from once-monthly back to weekly, due to the fact that she's not walking yet. She's so close, yet so far. I think if she would just let go of the furniture or our hands and take a couple of steps, she'd realize that she CAN do it. Mind over matter. :)

Not much else going on - just daily therapy, trying to get this child to eat something, and....working on the vomiting issue. We have an appointment next month with our GI and we're going to be discussing some serious testing that Jay and I want done. We have got to get to the bottom of this. It goes far beyond reflux, and I'm honestly doubting if reflux was ever the issue to begin with. More on that next month.