Poor Scott

Last weekend, Scott was upstairs with Dougie and walked into the bathroom door. He was in quite a bit of pain but was certain his toe wasn't broken so he opted to not get it looked at. He went to Houston as usual this week but by Thursday was concerned that the pain had not subsided at all. We made him a doctor's appointment for today.



It's broken. In fact, it was so broken that they brought in the intern to see it as a example of a very clear break. Scott will have to see an orthopedist to see what needs to be done from here. His toe is turning out quite a bit and the doctor wanted a specialist to check it out. He'll also need to wear a rigid foot brace for a while. Fortunately, he's not in a cast - his toes are just taped together to try to get the broken one to stay straight.

Scott is taking the entire thing in stride.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Dougie's doctor asked us to bring him in to get his hearing testing. With his speech delays, he wanted to be sure that there wasn't something physically causing it. So, this morning we braved the icy rain and brought him in for a hearing test.

The test itself went quite quickly. The technician had him sit on my lap in a soundproof room with two speakers on either side of Dougie. First, she talked to him and watched for him to look at the speaker. After a few rounds of that, she played noises out of the speakers at different volumes. If he looked at the speaker, a toy inside lit up and moved. The entire test took less than 10 minutes.

After the test we waited around for what seemed to be forever for the doctor to come in and chat with us. He told us that Dougie measured within range. We expected that would be the case but it was very nice to have it confirmed.

So, now we know it's just regular old speech delay. Dougie is making progress on his speech already even after just a short time in speech therapy. He is definitely trying to say a lot more words and will even repeat back a two word phrase (though not spontaneous yet).

Back in the Groove

It's hard to believe the holidays are over. We have a bunch of posts to catch up on to share how it went. Hopefully, we'll get those out over the next few days. We're making an effort to Blog a bit more often this year.

After a break for Christmas, we got back into the swing of toddler activities today. We've switched to a program for older children (2-5) that is a bit of an adjustment for both of us.

We started with "math" which, for Dougie, is just counting. We had 10 cups each marked with a number. We counted out the correct number of balls for each up and then we counted them again as he put them in the cup. He had a great time and got very excited as we finished each cup but tired of the activity when we got to seven.

Putting the balls in the cup


Cheering for himself


We talked for a while about the color blue and looked at blue things. Then Dougie did a matching exercise. For some reason, this always surprises me that he does well at it but he has become quite adept at matching.



Finally, it was time for art. Dougie loves making "art." Our project today was to use a balloon to make overlapping circles that would look like a snowman.



As you can see, Dougie didn't quite get the concept. He had fun anyway though and when he was finished we added some sparkles to make it look like snow and hung it on the wall.

All in all, a good start to our new program.