To Speak or Not to Speak?...That is the question!

This past summer, I had written a post entitled Doubt where I disclosed my concerns regarding Mo and her speech or well, at the time, the lack of speech. I never really had put too much concern in the area until my mom made a comment in passing that made the proverbial wheels to start turning in my head. As the months have passed, I have continued to harbor some concerns as to what and how much she spoke.
My best friend Ash, has a son A who seriously at 2 sounded like a first grader. He spoke in complete sentences most of the time and had intonation and vocabulary that made him almost sound like a little adult. Mo's other good friend, G, is a little under two months older then she and has been putting two words together for sometime and affectionately calls Mo and I- Mojackie. I guess being around these two brought up my worry about Mo's speech.
She has really great receptive language, in that she can follow multi-step directions with ease, and really has no trouble with understanding or comprehension. Her expressive language, however is another story. I feel like I'm playing charades with her a lot of the day when she is trying to talk. She often only says the initial sound if the word has more then one syllable, leaving either Bry or I to list as many things in the genre that start with the letter. For example, if she's in her highchair eating and she asks for "sp", we'll rattle off "spaghetti", "spoon", "sparkly cup", etc... until she says "un-huh".
I started sign language with her when she was about 8 months old. Now, at almost two, she still uses a few of these signs appropriately throughout the day. Sometimes in isolation, sometimes as she speaks the words. She also has taken to creating her own signs for some words, like putting her open hand over her head like antlers for Rudolph the red nosed reindeer.
The concerns finally overwhelmed me enough to call early intervention services to schedule an evaluation. I had the number in my planner for a good 10 days before I actually called. I don't know what I was afraid of, because logically I knew if she did have a delay, the earlier she received services the higher the likelihood her issues could be resolved. I guess part of me was worried that if something was wrong, it was somehow an indication that I wasn't doinsg something right.
So, last week, I bit the bullet and called. I was surprised how quickly they were able to schedule an evaluation. After speaking to them on Wednesday, they came this past Monday at 8:30 am.
Lucky us, Mo woke up on Sunday with a runny nose and low grade fever, leaving me again to wonder if things would be skewed because of her illness. After dosing her with Motrin on Monday, she met with the speech therapist and occupational therapist and was pleasantly compliant. She interacted fairly well with them as she completed various tasks to assess her cognitive functioning, her gross and fine motor skills, her self-care, and what we were most worried about, her speech and language development. Prior to this assessment, Bry and I met with them to answer various questions about her everyday life and experiences. They informed us that by the end of the meeting we would know if Mo qualified for services and would have a detailed report indicating their findings. She needed to be either 33% below the norm in one area or 25% below the norm in two or more areas to qualify for services and....


she scored in the normal range for everything!
Well, not everything. She was on the lower end of norm for cognition which at this age is basically ATTENTION span. Hmm...my kid wanted to do things her own way? Why does this not surprise me? She also scored 4 months ahead of the norm for gross motor skills.
In the end, she's developing perfectly fine, and now I have the paperwork to support it.

She's not starting pre-school until 2011, so my worries can subside until then.