Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

You can’t get your healthcare provider to talk to itself.

Some background to explain.  Upon moving to Florida, I took a job at the University of Tampa with Ryan, where I had good health insurance.  A large chunk of that insurance was covered by the University and we didn’t really worry about the insurance that much.  Our insurer: BlueCross BlueShield of Florida.  But upon the termination of my contract at the University of Tampa, we had to decide what we were going to do about insurance.

Turns out, the insurance at the University of Tampa is far from perfect.  Ryan is covered under a minimal insurance option, at no cost to himself – he literally pays nothing to cover himself.  To add Toren with the minimal coverage plan costs about $60.00 per month.  To add me to his plan (and not Toren) would cost $80.00 per month.  One would think, then, that to add both of us to his plan would be something like $140.00 per month.  And thinking that would be wrong!  Nope, it’s closer to $340.00 per month for a family plan.   Now, if we had 5 or 10 kids, that would be a steal.  But couples with 1 kid are charged the same as couples with 10 kids, or 20.  So, what did we do?  I ended up getting insurance as a student at the University of South Florida for… $80.00 per month!

Here’s where it gets fun.  The plan Ryan is on is kind of a minimalist plan – there are high deductibles and you pay a percentage of every visit or prescription, but the premium is low.  But here’s how BlueCross BlueShield of Florida describes their student plan that I am on:

A health care plan providing limited benefits

You know a plan can’t be very good when the best the insurer can do when describing it is to call it a “limited benefits” plan.

Of course, the transition from BlueCross BlueShield of Florida to BlueCross BlueShield of Florida couldn’t go smoothly – this is a health insurance company after all.  To begin with, I was denied coverage for a pre-existing condition because I did not have evidence of prior coverage.  Yes, you read that right, BlueCross BlueShield of Florida denied me coverage for a pre-existing condition because they had no evidence that I was covered prior to switching to the student plan by… BlueCross BlueShield of Florida.  After getting the correct form from the University of Tampa HR department and sending it to BlueCross BlueShield of Florida, BlueCross BlueShield of Florida denied my claim that I had pre-existing coverage, again.  So, what does this say about health insurance providers?  BlueCross BlueShield of Florida can’t communicate with BlueCross BlueShield of Florida.  It’s the same fracking company!!!

Do we need healthcare reform in the U.S.?  Duh!

This is actually Debi posting!  Therefore don’t expect this to be very funny.

I am only posting because I haven’t done a very good job keeping track of Toren’s developmental milestones and I am feeling some maternal guilt about it so here are some approximations.

Sitting upright without support (not leaning forward on his hands in a tripod or leaning back against the couch) ~ 5 months.  He was sitting on his own(tripodding) at four months.  I credit this to the reflux he had the first three months of his life since I always propped him sitting upright in the corner of the couch after eating (with me there next to him of course!).  Perhaps the bumbo helped too though!  Now we use the bumbo mainly for showers.  Yep, we put him in there to play with his rubber duck, his bath book, and his shampoo bottle while he showers with us.  He loves it.  Cleaning his bottom requires that we take him out at the end and hold him, but otherwise it is very convenient because our shower head comes off and we can squirt him down.  He did pee while showering the other day and it shot up and over the bumbo (luckily it missed me).

Transfering objects from one hand to the other~ 5 months.  I credit this to him playing with his binki all the time.  He got very good at manipulating it and passing it back and forth and in and out of his mouth.  He does this with all sorts of objects now.  While Ryan was gone to the UK, some of his favorite toys to manipulate were the two dry erase markers Ryan left behind on his desk.  He loved passing these back and forth and dropping them.  He also chose to give up his binki while Ryan was away.  He still will play with the binki occasionally  and suck on it like a toy but not like a binki.  Along with the binki he gave up his swing (which I never thought he would want to give up).  He just would cry and scream and arch his back every time I tried to put him in the swing.  Even when Ryan came home and we tried again a couple of times he was determined not to be in his swing.  We had relied on the swing too much for naps, but it saved me while I was finishing up the semester so I am glad he waited until I was done to give it up.

Pincer grasp ~6 1/2 months (he can pick up cheerio halves but they remain the one and only thing he does NOT put in his mouth).  He likes cheerios when we feed them to him though.

He began drinking from a sippy cup well at about 6 1/2 months. Though he can drink from it alone just fine, he still plays with it and sucks on the tip more often than he actually drinks from it.  Much to my chagrin he makes a really awful squeeking sound by rubbing the tip of the cup against his gums (it is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me).

I don’t remember when he rolled over from his stomach to his back for the first time, but I am pretty sure Ryan blogged about this already. He is only now rolling onto his tummy in the past couple of days (and he does this only occasionally when he really wants to get to something he loves like pictures of himself.)  Yes, we have a little narcissistic baby.  We finally got pictures of him printed to hang up around the house and he can’t stop looking at them and smiling at them.  Realizing how much he loved looking at his pictures, I took one set of pictures down to see if he would try crawling to it, and stay on his stomach longer while looking at them.  Sure enough this worked.  (As an aside, we finally swapped out some of the pictures in our stand up picture frame that we had used to announce our wedding 10 years ago.  I still can’t believe it was our 10 year anniversary on the 31st).

Toren has been standing and supporting his own weight (which is pretty impressive given his size) for at least two or three months now.  He really likes to stand on his own holding onto the cupholder in the couch or to the changing table when he is in his pack n play.   He can also go from laying on his boppy (inclined) to sitting up on his own (when he is not being lazy or too grumpy and tired).  He began doing this while Ryan was in the UK.

Ryan has documented and video recorded when Toren really started babbling (mostly to his animal mobile).  He continues to babble and it is beginning to sound more and more like he is really talking.  I think he really thinks he is talking sometimes and he gets frustrated when we don’t understand what he is saying (or when we don’t do what he wants).

Anyway, that is all for now!