You've Been Served!

(First an update on Phoebe)

We just finished two days of evaluations for Phoebe.

Yesterday, two ladies came to our house - a speech therapist and the child development specialist assigned to our case. They observed Phoebe and had her do some simple activities. For example, the specialist put two little red sugar pellets in a small plastic tube and shook them around. Phoebe tried to get at them with her fingers, but once she realized she couldn't reach them, she quickly dumped the plastic tube upside down, and they dropped out. This was deemed good "problem solving skills." She also had Phoebe try to stack a few wooden cubes, but Phoebe actually held them horizontally between her thumb and fore finger.

They also tried to get her to imitate certain sounds and astoundingly, she actually did! She mimicked the word "Grandma," which made all our jaws drop. She also said hi while waving and clearly babbled "Mama, Mama, Mama" while walking over to me. However, halfway through, it was clear that Phoebe was trying to communicate something as she was getting pretty upset. We didn't know if she wanted a drink or a snack, which is part of the frustration. We guessed a drink, which she sucked down. So this and some other things (like not being able to point to any body parts) puts her communication skills at about a 9 month level, which puts her exactly at that 33% delay threshold to qualify for services. The ladies recommended that we wait to start speech therapy until she's 18 months old due to attentions spans - the speech therapist usually comes over for 45 minutes at a time and there's no way a 15 month old could handle that.

Also, in order to qualify for services, our health insurance has to make a denial. Luckily, we had the Kaiser appointment today with a developmental pediatrician. This one was much shorter. I think he was looking for neuro-developmental delays or signs of autism. When the doctor called us in, Phoebe immediately started following him and giving him big grins, even though he was a stranger. He did some of the same little activities - the plastic tube and the wooden cubes - but he stopped once it was apparent that Phoebe doesn't have any signs of autism spectrum disorder.

He's going to "deny" the claim, which will start the public services. He also wants us to fill out the 18 month questionnaire at her 18 month well baby visit just to see if she's closing the gap a little more.

All in all, we're pretty relieved. We've seen so much improvement since late March that I still believe that D was not interacting properly with Phoebe or the other baby that was there.

............

Speaking of which, D's been served with papers! Finally. We had to hire a private investigator to track her down. This ended up being no small feat. She had continued to post ads on Craigslist for a nanny position, which of course made us so mad knowing she was trying to dupe another family into hiring her. The PI tried to set up an appointment with her under the guise of needing child care. She was so paranoid (with good reason, it turns out!) that she made her daughter run interference. So the PI and someone else (made to look like a couple) met the daughter, R, at a Starbucks or something with the idea that if it went well, they would meet with D the next day. It went well, but she was a no-show. R asked that they change the meeting to somewhere else. This all happened, mind you, while we were in Greece (another one of the dads handled hiring the PI). When we got back and I had still not heard anything, I emailed the other dad for an update.

Just on Tuesday of this week, we got the word that they had finally served her papers. Apparently, they had to have her meet them at a personal residence because she failed to show at any public places. She came to the house believing she was applying for a live-in nanny position and then they served her! The court date is June 24. I fully believe that she won't show up, but that's okay. We can still make our case without her.

(Of course, this woman has NO money right now, of that I am certain. I mean, she relied on a job that paid her monthly, so she likely hasn't had any money coming in since March. However, it's still worth it because we can ask the judge to add the PI costs to the judgement given how hard it was to find her - they still never figured out where she is currently squatting. Also, it's worth it to know that we can ask for her wages to be garnished, even get the IRS to show it when she goes to file her taxes. In addition, her name would show up in court records if employers did a background check on her.

Also, can you believe any sane person would agree to meet a potential nanny's daughter before meeting the actual nanny? If anything the families should be using a service to screen potential nannies, not the other way around. Uggh, this woman is crazy! I can't believe she took care of our daughters.)