Lots of Appointments

Somehow I scheduled three appointments for Leah this week. I need to remember not to do that again! But they're done, and we survived.

On Tuesday, Leah had a tooth pulled at the dentist. Greg took her to this appointment. He said she was a bit scared when she had to lay back, but after that she did great! They gave her some happy gas, so she didn't feel a thing. We gave her a couple doses of pain reliever that night, but she has been fine since then.

I took Leah to the International Adoption Clinic on Wednesday. We went over her lab results. Thankfully, there were no surprises. We got a list of the vaccines that the blood tests showed she has had already. The next step there will be to schedule her first appointment with her regular pediatrician to start getting her caught up on the rest of her immunizations. We also met with an occupational therapist, and she put Leah's gross and fine motor skills around the 18-24 month level. Of course we all expected her to be behind, so this actually isn't anything we're too concerned about right now. Since Leah has not said any words yet, the therapist suggested we start some basic sign language for communication, so we're working on words like "eat," "potty," and "please." She was also very happy that we have Leah enrolled in a preschool program because she thinks that will significantly help her development. She suggested that we contact our local school system to see about their pre-k programs and services for this fall. It would be nice if we could get the school system involved with Leah before she reaches kindergarten.

Finally, yesterday I took Leah for a hearing test. Those results were rather inconclusive. She responded to most sounds, but not the relatively quiet ones. Also, the machines that push sound waves into her ear and then measure the response could not get a good test. They believe she probably has very small ear canals and fluid in her ears (apparently both common for children with DS). This will be another thing to address with the pediatrician, and we could very well end up getting tubes in her ears. The audiologist advised us to be aggressive with this to give her the best chance possible at picking up language and learning to speak.

Whew. Now we have a small break from appointments until the eye doctor in early February!

The rest of the kiddos are doing very well. They are happy to be back in school and all the other activities of the school year. We loved Christmas break, but it is nice to be back in the regular routine.

I was going to end the post with pictures, but went to my camera and realized that I haven't taken any recently! I will try and make up for that this weekend.