Speechless

Jonas's appointment at the pediatrician's went without a hitch today. We did all of those routine things, height, weight, noggin sizing, physical exam, discussion of motor skills... and of course, the dreaded speech discussion.

So here's the deal. Children tend to focus on one area of development at a time. If they're highly advanced in one area, they tend to lag behind in others. Jonas is incredibly coordinated when it comes to fine motor skills. He can sort small objects, hold a pen correctly (not in a fist, but with the fingers) he can use a fork and spoon to get food to his mouth, he can stack block towers and place complex shapes into their respective holes. The fact that he can do all of these things with no problem is pretty impressive, and it's also part of the reason that he doesn't say a whole lot.

Since his last visit three months ago, he has begun to babble more, certainly no words, other than the occasional "MA MA" or "KA" (his word for dog) sometimes even a "EES" (his version of "this" said while pointing at an object he wants. These are all improvements from where he was back then. It shows that he understands language, hears language, and is making an effort at producing words. He's still behind, but he's on the right track.

So essentially, I have three months to teach my son 20 new verbal tricks. By 18 months he's supposed to know and use 20 different words. That seems like an incredibly huge amount of words, but who knows. Heck, he picked up the whole walking bit overnight, right? So, in order for insurance to cover any sort of speech/hearing evaluations he has to have at least a 25% delay in his development. That means that less that 15 words by that time means we're going to therapy.

As I told Vickie in a response to my earlier post, I'm not opposed to taking him to either of those things, nor would I be ashamed if my son truly did have a problem. I'm just sick of people who treat him like he's stupid because he doesn't talk. It's also difficult because both of my nephews have always been incredibly advanced for their ages, and it makes my "average" child seem incredibly "slow".

I'm just glad to have a few milestones to aim for, and to have reassurance that he's on the right track.

He didn't get all of the vaccines that he was supposed to get today. Apparently we did them late last time because of a cold he had at the time, and they have to be at least so many months apart. So we'll be making another trip just after Thanksgiving to get him up to date.

We did go ahead and do the flu shot today, just to get him prepared. I do NOT want to spend another January in the hospital with a severely sick baby. Ugh.

So that's the news from the doctor's visit, as if many of you were on the edge of your seat about it.

That flu shot must have had some sort of drowsy effect on the poor kid. He conked out at about 6:30, and it's blissfully quiet in Casa da Martinez. I think I'll go enjoy it.