Pirates, Pacifier and Pre-school
Just when we thought things were going to begin to slow
down….. they didn’t. Vaughn recently saw the eye doctor and since he has been
pretty good at wearing his glasses, she told us to start patching his right eye
(the good one) to teach his brain to use the left eye. Imagine how confusing it
would be to have a stigmatism in only one eye. Then we are going to put a patch
over the eye that one would use to see and put his glasses on top of all that.
He is such a good sport. We patched for the first time yesterday while watching
TV and it went ok right until I had to take it off.
We saw Dr. Mary last week (our Pediatrician) as Vaughn was
struggling again to eat and his balance and equilibrium seem to be worse
lately. We made an appointment to see her after our screening with Child Find
for Pre-school. Yes, I said Pre-school, can you believe it? We can’t….while we
were there the Audiologist tried to do a basic hearing test on Vaughn and
wasn’t able to do so because she discovered some fluid in his left ear. The
boys haven’t been sick for months so I was concerned but she said it wasn’t an
infection so he should be fine. Later in the screening, Vaughn tripped over
nothing in particular and bumped his head pretty bad, a great example of our
concerns. When I am telling our OT the details of the event she mentioned that
having chronic fluid in your ear can throw off your balance. Jerad and I were
already wondering about his hearing because of the huge delay in his speech so
I didn’t need to hear anymore, we were going to get a script for a hearing
test. We are scheduled to see an ENT doctor later this month to see what can be
done about the fluid and have his hearing checked. The ears, nose and throat
specialty is a new department at Children’s for us. We advanced Vaughn’s dose
of daily prevacid and are praying this will help his appetite.
Asher is starting to advance into a typical “full term”
toddler as he spends most of his days in time out or being told no. He is
exploring his independence and will and has an amazing memory. I am grateful
for his progress but find it challenging most of the time as Vaughn isn’t at
the same cognitive level as his identical twin brother.
Vaughn and Asher turn 3 in October and will be heading off
to pre-school to continue with their therapies.
Three just seems so young to go to school but I am sure it is just my
heart strings being pulled as I try to imagine them being away from me a couple
days a week. With that said, it was time to wean away from the beloved pacifier.
I say beloved because not only do the twins love it, so do I. There was no way
I was going to send them to pre-school still using a pasi, so we have started
the process. They only have them in bed or the car. They are adapting better
than I thought! One of the boy’s favorite songs right now is Head, Shoulders,
Knees and Toes and it really does apply to Vaughn right now. “Eyes and Ears and
Mouth and Nose” well so far all is well with his nose!
