How cute is this?! My darling Smarty made this all by himself. (Well the foam shapes were already cut, and I broke the toothpicks in half, but other than that...)
Anyway, this proved to be quite a job for my little motor skills-challenged son, but he had a vision and he stuck with it until he figured out how to do it. I really admire his patience with his not-so-strong points. He sets a good example for me.
He went in to the doctor for his 5 year exam yesterday. He is growing so well. He's still on the short side (no surprises there, given his gene pool), but he is growing consistently and following his curve.
He did okay for shots, and was so exited to receive a new book for his bravery. I'm relieved to have all that Kindergarten stuff over with, so we don't have to worry about it next fall.
But the highlight of the visit came when the doctor asked him if he knew his alphabet. Smarty said yes, but I couldn't resist and added, "He can read, for heaven's sake." (With a bit of help he can count to 100 too, but I managed to keep that to myself) The doctor replied politely, but I could tell she was skeptical. So before I could stop it, my big mouth added, "I'll bet he can read all the words on the wall behind his head!"
After that the doctor was curious, or ready to call my bluff, so she invited Smarty to try. He promptly turned around and without much more than a slight pause between words he read, "Don't feed the animals." Then I had to go to the front desk ask for a jack so I could hoist the good doctor's chin back up off the ground! (Forgive me for bragging, but this is one moment I definitely want to remember!)
The thing that baffles her, and me too, is how Smarty can be so far ahead of his peers scholastically, but just light-years behind them physically. I know that his physical problems stem from his apraxia. That all makes sense to me, but I haven't studied enough to see if there's a connection to the intelligence factor too.
The other thing we decided is that Kindergarten may prove to be a bit of an adjustment for Smarty. He gets sensory overloaded easily, and the noise level alone from 25 little bodies in one room may prove to be a difficult thing for him to get used to. So at the doctor's suggestion we are planning to request that he have the same teacher as his cousin who is a little socialite and is happy to mother Smarty through overwhelming social settings.
Sweety just recently went in for a check-up too. He's doing well although he's completely stopped growing. Again. The doctor says he probably just has a dramatic plateau kind of growing style. Which makes sense when you view his overall history.
In his first couple of months of life he skipped a clothing size and maxed out around the 65th percentile for height and weight. Then he didn't grow
at all for more than a year. (You probably remember that very, very stressful year if you've been keeping up with us) Then again last summer Sweety began a period of the kind of growth that Wallstreet only dreams about. By July he'd battled all the way from -17% up to 25%! Mind boggling by anyone's account.
Well, here we are 6 months later, and he hasn't gained a millimeter or an ounce since then. But I'm not too worried this time. Our pediatrician showed me that when you average out his growth chart, he actually is following his curve pretty well. I guess he just gains
all of his height and weight in very short spurts.
However because of this extreme pattern of growing and his abnormally small pituitary gland
(click here for details) it looks like we will be tied to the endocrinologist for a while yet. At our check up with him last week he said his major concern is that a pituitary as small as Sweety's may not be able to produce enough hormone for growth spurts in the future, especially into his teen years.
He wants to keep a close eye on Sweety's bone-age and hormone levels so we're off to the hospital for
more testing and xrays next week. (Happy holidays to us, grrrrrrr.)
Other than all that drama, Sweety is doing well. His large motor skills are on target. His small motor skills are quite high, in fact they're not too far behind Smarty's. This actually helps them play well together.
Sweety's speech isn't progressing very well at this point, but I'm okay with that. I remember Smarty didn't really take off with speech until he was under the watchful care of the brilliant speech therapist at his pre-school, and I'm hoping that will be the case with Sweety too.
I don't mean to down-play all that our Early Intervention speech therapist has given to my boys. She has lain an important foundation with both my kids, but the speech therapist at the pre-school has almost caught Smarty up to his peers at this point! Her influence on Smarty's developement is invaluable to me!
In the meantime Sweety is imitating so well. He's attempting to say most everything we ask and has added several new words to his vocab including: cookie, sippy, phone, train, home, seat, eat, grandma, and grandpa. Some of his new signs are: work, school, more, and train. He's also making lots of adorable animal sounds: moo, quack, woof, gobble, neigh, baa, tweet, he also howls at the moon, crows like a rooster, and makes a kissing sound to reference a cat.
Would you be surprised to hear that Smarty is an enormous positive influence on Sweety's speech? Even as I write this post, Smarty is taking Sweety though the word "meat." He's isolating the sounds for Sweety, helping him say them in the right order, and slowly picking up the pace, so that soon Sweety will be saying that word too! Perhaps we have a budding future carreer happening here. And Sweety is such a willing student in Smarty's hands. I LOVE it!
He's also finally pushed through his bottom two-year-old molars. (but he sure took his sweet time to do it!!)
All in all we're happy and healthy here at the Bardwell house. We have a lot to be grateful for as we head into the Christmas season. Hopefully you have just as many blessings to count as we do!
