First time

I have to admit, when a friend of mine sent me the link to LiveJournal and suggested I open an account here, I was dubious in the extreme…
I thought to myself, I don’t have time to waste time journalling on some website every day, knowing that mist likely no one will ever read it. I have too much to do, too many places to go, etc etc. You know, the usual excuses. Then I thought to myself, well, even if no one ever reads it, it won’t be a waste of time. In fact, I consider it part of my New Year’s resolution to start doing things like this for myself to improve my mental, physical, and spiritual health (I’m not sure where the physical part will come in – maybe I’ll lift weights while I journal).

So if these entries seem a bit disjointed, a little on the disorganized side, so be it. I apologize for any confusion, but hey, that’s the nature of journalling anyway, right? I promise not to self-edit (too much, anyway), but I do promise to proof-read (call me a typo-phobe).

I thought I would start off my first journal entry by talking about something that I LOVE to talk about – my son (we’ll call him Bunker Monkey). He was born November 25, 2003, and is about 3 1/2 months old (check out his pic on the gallery – isn’t he the cutest?). He has been a total and complete joy from day one; two weeks overdue, 11 pounds weight, and all. He’s been going since before he got out of the womb, and he hasn’t slowed down since. He’s a definite handful, and sometimes a challenge, but when I show up at preschool to pick him up, the huge smile and the “Mommy!” I get makes it all worthwhile. That, and the hugs and kisses, and the times when only mommy can sing him to sleep, and, well, pretty much everything else.

I mentioned a challenge – well, one of the aspects of Bunker Monkey that we are learning about is exactly what challenges we need to help him with. Ever since he started talking (late, and at a lower level than his peers), we’ve noticed he has some delays in his verbal abilities. That, and a stint at what my friend Amy likes to call “Nazi preschool” (I’ll go into that more some day), made us realize that we needed to find out exactly what Jacob was struggling with.

We had him evaluated through the county, and they told us that he did struggle with some receptive language delays and some motor issues (as in, too much motor activity). We enrolled him in a preschool at the local Center for Disabilities (don’t get me started on how much we love that place, all three of us – they do an amazing job with all the kids they have, and Jacob just adores going there), and have since discovered that he, in addition to his language challenges, most likely (pending actual diagnosis at his developmental pediatrician’s evaluation on April 23) has Sensory Processing Disorder (I promise to post some more info on what SPD is, as well as some links to related sites, when I’m not 10 minutes from having to leave to pick up the monkey-boy). Basically, his central nervous system has trouble interpreting and modulating the signals it gets from his various senses. For Bunker Monkey, the sense most affected are tactile (the sense of touch, input from skin receptors about touch, pressure, temp, pain, etc.); vestibular (the sense of movement, input from the inner ear about equilibrium, gravitational changes, position in space); proprioception (the input from the muscles and joints about body position, weight, pressure, movement, stretch, and changes in position); and a little oral (he likes to put things in his mouth).

Essentially, Bunker Monkey is what’s called a “sensory seeker”. This means that he is, as the term implies, always seeking out sensory input (mostly through muscles and joints). I came across the phrase, “the world is his ladder” in a book about sensory seekers who have difficulty in the vestibular sense, and if you know Bunker Monkey you know how true that is. So it’s been a challenge, but then raising any child is a challenge in its own way. And Bunker Hubby and I know how lucky we are – Bunker Monkey is a smart (smarter than us some days), charming, sweet, energetic, lovable child who just basically loves to run and jump and swing, etc etc. He is easy to love, and he is well-loved by family and friends. I’ll take that challenge any day of the week.

Well, the clock is chiming, time to pick up the monkey-boy. To be continued…