A Crabby Kind of Day

No, I'm not talking about myself again. Our day revolved around crabs.
First, Chris took his hermit crab, Scaredy Cat, to school for Show and Tell.
Here's Chris with his crab in it's travel carrier and his friend Maxwell.

Then, Maya and I drove Riley and 4 of his classmates on a field trip to Mud Bay. Riley's teacher is Mrs. Demers. Her passion is science. Her husband is retired from the Fish and Game Dept. He set some crab traps yesterday and the class went to check the traps today. They are part of a surveillance team monitoring the bay for green crabs. Green crabs are an aggressive alien species of crabs from the Baltic Sea who are making their way up the coast. They have been spotted along the coast of Vancouver Island, Canada. They have already destroyed the crab fishery along the East Coast. They are very destructive to the local indiginous population of crabs and other marine life.

Fortunately, we did not see any green crabs today. This helmet crab was in our crab trap.

Mrs. Demers watches on while Wyatt, Ravi and Riley measure the crab with calipers.

Malina records the data.

Our team: Wyatt, Malina, Lauren, Riley and Ravi.

Maya was a trooper as usual.

Lauren and Malina dote on Maya in the back seat.

Then Maya went to see Dr. Sitenga for her eye exam. Our pediatrician in Seattle wanted her to get a good ophthalmology exam to rule out eye problems that premature babies are prone to. When she first got into the exam rooms she cried and cried because she thought she was going to get shots again. After he put drops in her eyes to dilate her pupils, we went back to the waiting room for 15 minutes. She walked around telling everyone about it. She pointed to her eye and said "Eye".

When we ran out of things to do and people to talk to in the waiting room, we went out to the entry way and played with my camera. Maya loves books. She brings us books all day long. She climbs into a chair, slaps the space beside her and tells us "down" and "book".

Dr. Sitenga said she has a mild astigmatism but nothing to worry about. He was able to see 80% of her retinae and did not see any problems. He wants to recheck her in a year. That completes our fourth referral. She had a hearing screen two weeks ago and our audiologist said she seems to be hearing just fine.

Overall, I think she is doing very well. She is not terrified of animals anymore. She is napping more consistently. She takes a long time to fall asleep but sleeps all night. She seems to be less scattered during the day time and will actually attend to a task for more than 3 seconds. Her favorite activities are playdough, taking things apart and anything to do with water. She loves to feed the dog, the cat and the fish.

She is not eating much better but I've learned to be more relaxed about it. I still feed her pureed rice porridge with meat and vegetables 2-3 times per day. She seems to be ready to give up the bottles of toddler formula but doesn't take enough milk or any other fluids from a cup to make me want to stop the bottles. She doesn't seem to care for cow or soy milk. She likes juice boxes but squeezes half the juice out. She likes yogurt drinks and ice water. She hates sippy cups. We give her high calorie snacks like whole milk yogurt, ice cream, chips and cheese. When we sit down to family dinner she tries everything, chews it up and spits most of it out, except for spaghetti. She still loves spaghetti. I give her peanut butter on a spoon whenever I think of it. She likes to lick ranch dressing off her vegetables.

We meet with our occupational therapist, Susan, once a week. We meet with our speech therapist, Martha, every other week. Susan and I are starting the process of transitioning Maya to the special needs preschool at our local public school in January, when Maya turns 3.

She weighs anywhere between 19 and 20 pounds depending on the time of day and how much clothes she has on. She's finally outgrown the 6-12 months clothes and is now wearing 12-18 months clothes. Her speech is improving nicely. She says many words now and some 2-3 word phrases like "where'd it go?", "there it is" and "watch this!". Last Sunday when we walked into church she shouted "Hi Gamma!" loud enough for the whole congregation to hear. When Nanna goes up to sing with the choir she shouts "Hi Nanna!". She won't stay in the pew or in the nursery but nobody seems to mind her wandering around too much. I'm thinking about getting her into a toddler dance/movement class since she loves music and has trouble sitting still.