Random updates

Remember when I told you about applying to be photographed for When Mothers Nurse? Well, I heard back from them:

Just wanted to let you know we are getting closer to finalizing the trip to Asheville. If you could organize more moms in the area for the project it would be a big help to us.

Hmmm, so not only do they want to photograph me, they want me to do a little marketing. I do know plenty of nursing moms through LLL so garnering interest for the upcoming project in my area shouldn't be a problem but I can't help but imagine myself walking up to nursing moms asking if they want to come with me to Asheville to have pictures taken of them breastfeeding. I wonder if the folks at When Mothers Nurse would post bail for me if I decided to go that marketing route?

Gavin has his appointment with the developmental psychologist yesterday. As you may remember, we were referred to the psychologist after his evaluation with the developmental pediatrician in April. You know, the pediatrician appointment where we never actually saw a pediatrician. The one where I flashed my boobs at my former coworker. This appointment was definitely our best one yet! And not because I didn't flash my boobs at anyone because I did flash my boobs a couple of times while nursing Grace and then a few more times for good measure because I really liked this doctor! The psychologist spent over two hours with us and while he did refer to several questionaires we filled out at our previous appointment, he didn't go down a set checklist like some Dr. Robot, MD and he talked to us! He asked us how we felt about Gavin's behavior (just wonderful, doc. Don't you know every parent dreams of giving birth to the antichrist?), what our goals were for Gavin (for him to become a self-made billionaire by the age of 9 and support us), and what books we had been reading to learn more about Gavin's behavior (the Old Testament of the Bible). The doc validated all of our concerns and acknowledged that while Gavin does demonstrate many behaviors that fall on the autism spectrum, he does not believe that Gavin is autistic.

He described Gavin a being social, intelligent, and a problem solver. (side note, the social and intelligent he gets from me. The problem solver? Perhaps a long lost gene has been turned on or something?) Based on the doc's experience as a psychologist and having seen children with speech delays who also exhibit this type of mixed bag of behavior difficulties, he feels that Gavin's autistic/OCD/SID behaviors are related to his expressive speech delay and that they will resolve as his speech improves. We also discussed discipline and I confessed to using bribery with Gavin and the psychologist laughed and told me there is a medical term for that: contigent reinforcement. Apparently I don't bribe Gavin, I contingentally reinforce him. I like that and hell, people can't knock my parenting if they can't understand what I'm saying. I have a meeting with the doc on June 19th to further discuss his findings and he will more than likely track Gavin's progress at bi-annual appointments. In fact, there was already a lot of progress from his appointment with the developmental pediatrician (the one where we never saw a pediatrician) in April to now. I'm just bursting with pride!

Oh, and Karrie, I wore my gauchos to work again today and FOUR people have complimented me on the already. How you like them apples? :)