New Year, New Challenges

This new year started out with some excitement (of the bad sort). We put one of our chickens down on Wednesday. Little Ruby, our blue laced red Wyandotte, started to go blind a few months ago. I believe it is the ocular form or Marek's. At first she seemed to do fine despite her condition. She was much slower and missed out on all the treats we brought to the birds (the others got to them before she even realized they are there); but she found the food bin and water container fine. We thought she might well be with us for a while yet. Unfortunately, we came back from our vacation to find her ostracized and bullied by the others. The other hens pecked at her and kept her from eating and drinking. We took her out of the run and let her wander the yard. She was happier out for sure and even ate some weeds, but wouldn't drink and was starting to show signs of diarrhea. We thought it is probably more humane to put her out of her misery rather than have her die through emaciation. It is probably the right thing to do, but part of me now wish that I cuddled her more and perhaps try to make her more comfortable or gave her more time before putting her down. A lot of it has got to do with lack of time. I don't have the time to try to coax food and water into her. She might have lived longer under that sort of intensive care conditions, conditions I am unable to provide. Life is so short. I thinking I am starting to cope with illnesses and death amongst our backyard flock better. I wept for nearly two weeks when we gave away (to unknown fate) our roosters.

That's one excitement. Now to report on the challenge: Evan has made very little progress on his speech development. We are - or I am - starting to think that he might have Apraxia. According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, apraxia is a disorder of the brain and nervous system in which a person is unable to perform tasks or movements when asked, even though the request or command is understood, they are willing to perform the task, the muscles needed to perform the task work properly, and that the task may have already been learned. I brought this up with the speech pathologist today and she said it is a possibility, though at this stage, it is not clear if Evan simply has a speech delay (a developmental issue) or has apraxia (neurological issue). Since the treatment (or methods to encourage and teach language) at this age is basically the same, we will continue with the methods and speech therapy classes for now and observe Evan further. I have to confess that I haven't taken speech therapy very seriously. The feeling was that every child has his own developmental curve and Evan will speak eventually, nothing to worry too much about. Then, on New Year's Eve, it dawned on me how little progress Evan has made and how far behind he is to even the "slow speakers." Thinking about it, I also realized Evan can't ask the why and how questions Zoe was already asking by two years old. I imagine Evan is learning about the world around him nevertheless, but without the power of language, he is inhibited from more. I also worry that unless this is corrected, he would have a hard time in school, could develop low self esteem, and have trouble playing with other kids (cannot be understood and thus have social issues). It is quite one thing to be an introvert, a watcher, but quite another to be one whose voice is trapped inside his head. In short, I'm going to have to ramp up my efforts at using the methods I've been taught at the speech therapy sessions. If I had other big goals forming in my head - starting a business, forming a transitions group for Encinitas - they are now going to be on the back burner for now.