birthday well checks

this year the doctor's office allowed us to schedule all three june birthdays in a single appointment. it is nice to only have to make one trip, but it was a long appointment! we were there for two hours total - and we didn't wait at all, that was solid visit time. here are the stats and summary for each kid:

manning
weight - 35 lbs. (97th percentile)
height - 37 inches (96th percentile) - almost the exact same height as mason at 2 (mason was 37.4")
bmi - 83rd percentile

manning's speech is pretty difficult to understand to anyone outside of our family. he has a few words that are clear (no, yes, thank you, mama, daddy, apple, i do, two), but the majority are more intonation and vowel sounds with no real constant sounds. i am not really worried per se, but i don't think that he is where he should be so i asked about it. he has had a history of super heavy ear wax (almost blocking the ear canal most of the time) and occasional fluid on the ear when there isn't an infection - we have discussed this at almost every appointment. i know that he can hear me. i have no concern at all there, but i wonder if he can hear me clearly enough to repeat the correct sounds. as an example - he can say "daddy" very clearly, but when you ask him to say "dog" he says something along the lines of "eh." no effort at all to give the "d" sound.

so the plan is to take him for a complete auditory screening and if that comes back fine and he still isn't speaking clearly in six months, then we will pursue speech therapy. she did say that he is clearly hearing, understanding, reasoning and trying to communicate but did agree with me that it is worth just checking his hearing. she said that he is really too young to benefit from speech therapy at this point (both a professional and personal opinion - her son started therapy at 2).

mason
weight - 48 lbs. (86th percentile)
height - 46 inches (94th percentile)
bmi - 66th percentile

speaking of speech therapy, mason's teacher had recommended that we talk to the pediatrician about mason being a candidate. i don't even notice his speech any more so i was a little surprised when she brought it up. the pediatrician agreed that mason most likely won't qualify for speech therapy through the school district - it just isn't that bad - and she doesn't think insurance would cover private therapy. what she did suggest if we really wanted to do something was to try and get him to qualify for a "typical" spot. that way, he would get the therapy without qualifying for it as a need. we aren't really that interested in that as an option because we are really happy at our current preschool and mason has been there for three years. we don't really want to move him to a new school when maddux would still attend the old one. we will see. more than likely we aren't going to do anything beyond working on him on the few sounds noted as inconsistent. several teachers have noted that he can make the sounds just fine when he focuses, it is only when he gets speaking quickly or is excited that they become a little less clear. although i did run through them with him this afternoon and he has noticeably improved from when i asked him to repeat the same words when this was first pointed out in february. we aren't really worried.

we also talked about mason's insatiable appetite. he can eat three apples, a sandwich and a pound of baby carrots and then be hungry - to the point of crying - 30 minutes later. she said that since he is growing well and not overweight at all, this isn't a concern. we just have to wait it out.

madelyn
weight - 56 lbs. (71st percentile)
height - 52 inches (95th percentile)
bmi - 26th percentile

there wasn't really too much i wanted to talk about regarding madelyn. but i did ask her about breaking madelyn's thumb sucking. she had stopped but it seems to be increasing in frequency when she is sleeping. madelyn was actually the most honest she has ever been about how frequently she is sucking her thumb and why she does it, which was nice. i don't want her to be ashamed of it but to understand that it just isn't good for her teeth. we had great success with the 'yucky' nail polish a few years ago, but now madelyn will just scrape it off when we put her to bed or cry when we talk about putting it on. the doctor recommended a thumb guard but explained that madelyn needs to want to stop since she can just take it off. and that was when madelyn lost it. she just started crying and wanted to get down off the exam table for me to hold her. it was just heartbreaking. i explained that we were only discussing options because we won't be back until she is 8 and i wanted to know our options. we will see. the doctor suggested that she made have picked up the frequency again with all of the changes from attending school. i had not even put that together before. we don't plan on pushing her to stop. we will continue to educate her and talk about her options.

mason got his kindergarten vision and hearing tests - even though he isn't going yet - and three shots. he passed the vision and hearing tests. manning also had to get one shot. they both watched and neither one of them cried! mason even cheered and offered to go first when the shots came in! crazy kids. so nice to not have any crying though.

it had been an all day doctor fest today. we had to take maddux in after a weekend of screaming that his tooth hurt and even waking up twice in the night from the pain (he won't let us put any ora-gel on his tooth). the pain was with his molar, that i learned today, is half filling at this point! the good news is that he wasn't in pain today and there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with the tooth or filling. the dentist thinks that he had probably just bit down or hit the tooth in some way that made it hyper-sensitive over the weekend. well, at least it wasn't going to be expensive.

so thankful to have healthy kids. we don't take it for granted for even one second. love.