It has been a while since I have written a post, but I had a proud mom moment and this seemed just the way to share. But first, the back story…

Since the boys were preemies, it was assumed they would be developmentally delayed and may need help in other areas as well. Because of this, they were assessed and qualified for a state run program called Babies Can’t Wait. An Occupational therapist comes to our home to work with the boys on a range of skills. If our insurance pays for any of her visit, Babies Can’t Wait pays the balance and we owe nothing. If our insurance denies the claim, we owe a % based on our household income level.

The therapist was hit or miss as to if she brought any value, and if I am being honest it was more miss. She and I have not exactly seen eye to eye or maybe it is that we have different work ethics. However, more often than not it was a free service and I didn’t want to leave the program because if the boys needed speech therapy (or something like that in the future), Babies could provide those services as well.

Two months ago, after her end of month visit, she declared Nolan “Failure to Thrive”. I typically wouldn’t know this because although I have requested notes from her visits, she never provides more than a text message. However, in addition to this “diagnosis” and I will use that term loosely, she submitted to the insurance company a diagnosis of a sensory disorder that falls within the autism spectrum. In the state of Georgia, autism treatments are not covered under insurance. This resulted in a rather large packet of information being sent to us along with the medical claims that were originally submitted.

To say I was annoyed would be an understatement. As I read the packet I felt this type of thing deserved more than a text message. Then I started playing devil’s advocate in my own head; maybe she was just filing this way for a bigger pay day? Well it turns out she did me a favor.

Nolan has always liked a challenge. For example, when his brother was discharged from the NICU he was still on a feeding tube and on Oxygen. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought he would have come home 6 days later, off the feeding tube and off of Oxygen.

Soon after the “failure to thrive” Nolan’s vocabulary took off. His favorite words were No and Cookie, but he had lots of other words too. I tried to keep up on a word count, but was quickly losing track. Mommy, Daddy, Abbey, dog, brown bear, cookie, no, thank you, please, bye bye, hi, car, truck, keys, yummy, more, juice, shoes, outside, hot, cold, upstairs, bubble bath, duck, sit, Elmo, ball, football, golf ball, What’s it, I got it….

In addition to the larger vocabulary, which had surpassed Landon’s, he was becoming more sociable. Okay maybe that is a stretch, but slightly less shy. He is more confident, he is silly and he is happy.

Then the proud mom moment happened. We had gone to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. The boys found a container of peanut butter filled pretzels. We told them they could each have one, Nolan looked at Chris and in his tiny little voice said TWO. My 21 month old apparently can count to two. Take that failure to thrive. He might be small, but he is mighty!