Many Checkups

  With all the rain we've been having, the mosquitoes are out in force -- poor Mattie is their favorite!

In addition to his ear procedure last week, James also had a visit with peds surgery to check his growth, and his much-delayed 4 year old checkup.  He now weighs somewhere in the ballpark of 31 lbs, and his height is somewhere around 38 inches (at the peds surgery visit, it was 39 inches; at the pediatrician a couple days later, it was 37, which strikes me as a surprisingly large margin of error). In any case, he's still on the charts, roughly between 5th and 10th percentile.  (Woo-hoo!)

His body mass index was down a little from the last peds surgery appointment, so they want us to try using the feeding tube for a month or so at night and see if that helps him put on weight; they'd ideally like to see him a pound or two heavier.  Their current thought is to try to take the tube out before he starts kindergarten (presumably next year). 

It seem like lots of people around here hold back their kids (particularly boys) and have them start kindergarten at 6 rather than 5.  I asked the pediatrician about that in general, and it turned out that they held their son back, because the son was having a hard time with separation issues at preschool.  He also said that he'd never talked to a parent who regretted waiting, but he had talked to parents who regretted not waiting.  Ugh.  We don't have to decide about that for a while yet, fortunately. But it just seems a little crazy to hold back a kid who is already reading and doing addition, and is perfectly fine with trying new things.    

James and I also went to the audiologist today, to pick up the new transmitter system for his hearing aids.  They also did impresssions for the ear molds, so by the time we get back from the beach, the poor kid should finally be able to be back wearing two hearing aids!