Author Archives: Jeni

Jeni

About Jeni

Creator of Little Sproutings, Written by Jeni Taylor, MPH MSN RN. I'm a nurse, public health advocate, and new mom living in Los Angeles, CA. I created Little Sproutings to share my experiences as a mom and discuss relevant baby-health topics through well-researched posts to help parents (new, experienced, and expecting) learn the why and how.

Identifying Jordy’s Speech Delays (and Videos that Helped)

The first photo I took during the pandemic

As Jordy and I were driving home from speech therapy today, I was playing my favorite preschool videos on my phone so he could listen to something enriching. Then I thought that it would be nice to write a post about how we identified his speech delay, similar to how we identified when Jia had a soy and milk protein intolerance back in the day (Jordy had the same when he was an infant).

The 2-year checkup

So right at Jordy’s 2nd bday January 2020, he had his well-child exam, the 2-year checkup. I filled out the questionnaire they make you do about food insecurity, if your child can perform certain tasks, and then of course, how many words they use. It was a tough one. Over the previous few months, he’d say a couple key phrases, like “I see sky” and “I see tree” which I thought was great. His verbal skills didn’t really expand beyond that, and I was not entirely sure if Jordy was speech delayed or if he was just “a boy.” As a young parent, it’s pretty common to hear how verbal and mature girls are, compared to boys being more physically capable. Jia was extremely verbal as a young child, and today I even glanced back at my last WSDW post from March 2016 when Jia was 2, and I was loving how she said her first 6-word sentence, which was “No Mei Mei, go in kitchen!” (However, yknow I really think that counts as a four- maybe five- word sentence at best).

Continue reading “Identifying Jordy’s Speech Delays (and Videos that Helped)” »

Last Days of this Mama’s FREE SUMMER

Today is Jordy’s last day of what we’re calling “summer camp”! In his SpEd Pre-K, he has (for the last 2 summers) been qualified/chosen to continue the school year in ESY, Extended School Year. Kiddos who’ve been identified as those who are likely to regress academically/developmentally without the structure and learning environment during an entire summer, get to extend the school year for an additional 5 weeks. It’s 4 days a week, 8a-12p and started June 13 and the last day is today.

Jordy has been in district Pre-K starting at age 3 at Canyon Vista Elementary School, due to his needs and an IEP (Individualized Education Plan), which made his preschool absolutely free. The summer “ESY” program is also free. Kiddos have to qualify developmentally to be included in these programs, and he had to go through a series of assessments with the district psychologist and nurse. He receives speech therapy and occupational therapy during school hours, working towards goals to set him up for academic success. The overall goal is to essentially get him in General Ed once he’s in early elementary. Ideally that would be Kindergarten, but we’ll see how he does progressing through this next year of TK. He’s in what’s called STARS TK, which is that lower ratio supportive program on-site at the (different) elementary school, in its own classroom. Speech Therapists and Occupational Therapists come into the classroom and work with these kiddos one-on-one and in little groups, simultaneously working on these kids’ goals from their IEPs.

In Pre-K, his special program was called SEALS (I can never remember what the acronyms mean), and at the elementary age (TK and up) his program is the STARS program. More about what TK is in our school district, here. Because of Universal TK (UTK) legislation becoming active this upcoming fall, they shifted the birthday timeline from turning 5 on or after September 2 through December 2nd, to NOW September 2 through February 2 (quite a jump) which essentially meant Jordy qualified by 3 days before the cutoff. Now with UTK, there are TK programs at every single elementary school in our district. But there are only a couple locations in the district for the STARS TK program. We also moved to Mission Viejo, so our closest STARS TK program shifted. This Fall, his school day is 8a-12p also, and Jia will be 8a-2:30p. At least the same Elementary though.

BACK TO SUMMER: It’ll be a bummer to no longer have the four hours to myself (especially since last summer and this summer, Jia has been with her grandparents during that exact timeframe), which means I have to actually figure out what the kids and I do on my non-work days. Other than playing Mario Kart all day.

You’d think with a private pool, he’d be eager to get all the wiggles out in it every day being that it’s such a great sensory experience for kiddos on the spectrum (jordy loves splashing and jumping off the sides of the pool), but it’s actually kind of hard to convince him to get into it. I think I’ll make it my goal today to get him in the pool. Or at least, maybe I’ll hold off and see if Jia being home will help that. Being that she’s gone into about half a dozen different pools on her road trip…

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Since I’m not at work today…

Restylane-L dermal filler, one of my favorites to use

My regular work schedule is Wednesdays and Fridays at a medical spa in Irvine. I work when there are patients scheduled for me, and today was not that day. I think I had one patient scheduled for a laser scar treatment, but her work schedule has been pretty busy so she rescheduled and that was all who was on my schedule for today. Friday is a big day of training on our new Motus AZ painless laser hair removal, so this week is pretty chill. So I figured I’d make use of my momentum and post again.

I’ve spent so long searching my dashboard to find out how to change the header photo of this blog and I couldn’t figure it out or the server wasn’t responding to allow me to revise. So I changed the theme of the layout so that there wasn’t a header. Oh well, that was my semi-solution for the time being. And as for yesterday’s post, apparently I was creating a bulleted list and I didn’t even realize it until I saw my post today on my phone, and it showed it as bullets. I also noticed that my previous posts cut off after a certain point and it continued on with a click to expand the post. I forgot how to do that. Geez. Guess I’ll have to dive back into my old posts to see what sort of command I used for that. I really really don’t remember jack since the pandemic has eaten away at my brain.

So cosmetics huh?

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What We’ve Been Doing in the Last…. 6 years??!!!?

Literally don’t even know if I’m writing or posting this correctly because it has legit been 6 years since I have logged in. Thank goodness for those Apple passwords and the iPassword app for remembering how to log me in to my hosting site because I wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to even log in to my hosting email… (I still don’t).

So it’s been almost 6.5 years since I’ve last posted here. What brought this on? Well, last year, around April 2021, my public health bestie Darren pointed out to me that the blog wasn’t loading. He’d been referencing the teething posts and a couple others, since he’d been seeking out answers for baby Hayden.. maybe the introducing solid foods infant feeding posts (?) and he realized that one day the page was drawing a blank. I’d assumed it was a fluke. Thankfully I’d saved that Lactation Cookie post recipe because that one was golden! Soooo fast forward 15 months of inaction on my part for checking on here because… well, life… and I find that it was a glitch in some plugin that I enabled. I don’t even know what the plugins do that I chose back in 2015 when this whole thing started, to be honest. And as tech savvy as Jeff is, I really didn’t even seek out his help because — again, life.

Here I am. Most of you who read this know me IRL (Preeeeetty sure that wasn’t a “term” back when I left the blog) know what’s been going on in our lives for the most part, because I’m an over-sharer on facebook, so let’s summarize in the most concise way possible. < also, those of you who know me IRL also know I am awful when it comes to being concise> And no joke, I don’t even know how to do a bulleted list, this is how blog-illiterate I am:

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What’s She Doing Wednesday: What We’ve Been Doing… for a while!

wsdw what weve been doing 3.23.16It’s been a hot minute since I last wrote a post of any kind so I’ll try to catch you up to speed on what we’ve been up to! I’m sure I’ll forget a huge handful of things I meant to update you on (photo dump at the end of the post, PROMISE), but I’ll try my best in this post before I need to hit the hay: Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: What We’ve Been Doing… for a while!” »

Day 3 of the “3-Day Potty Training” Method (+video)

Blog Post 12.29.15 Day 3 of 3 Day PottyBy no means do I feel like this means we have reached the finish line. We have definitely not. Our adventure with “3-Day Potty Training” seems to be turning into “3-Day x 2 x 2 (?) Days of Potty Training” and that’s being optimistic – let’s keep hoping in “days” and not “weeks” or “months”! 

So today felt like we were treading backwards up until about 6:30 PM. Throughout a majority of the day, we were dealing with hefty accidents (large puddles) and running her over to the toilet only for her to quickly say “all done” with nothing to come from it. On the one hand, she was going about 4 hours between accidents, which told me she was holding her bladder somewhat, but on the other hand, we weren’t communicating effectively with one another. 

I started to really think this Lora Jensen is bonkers despite her track record with her 8 successfully trained children. Then something changed. 

Continue reading “Day 3 of the “3-Day Potty Training” Method (+video)” »

Day 2 of the “3-Day Potty Training” Method (+video)

Blog Post 12.28.15 Day 2 of 3 dayToday has been a bit less traumatizing. I write that with a big headache (as I wait for the Excedrin to kick in), since today I’ve been holding my own pee and forgetting about hydrating myself, haha. How appropriate! 

The method doesn’t change from Day 1 to Day 2. Same ol’ same ol’. Don’t leave the house, don’t ask “do you  need to go potty?” (though we are guilty of throwing this phrase in on accident, a couple times), offer rewards for successful potty visits, keep a close eye on your child, keep them busy right next to you, and slather on a good healthy heaping of positivity, praise, and love.  Continue reading “Day 2 of the “3-Day Potty Training” Method (+video)” »