This last week I took Acroboy into our favorite medical center to have an evaluation with a developmental pediatrician. She talked to me, went over his history, diagnosis (PDD-NOS and ADHD), then tested his skills in a few areas. Acroboy read a story to her and answered her questions. He showed his memory recall abilities. She looked at the homework book Acroboy has been doing and saw his poor handwriting. She had him write some things for her and then do exercises like skipping, running, and catching a ball. She told me that Acroboy has hypotonia in his hands. This explains why he has a difficult time with buttons, snaps, zippers, and handwriting. Finally, she gave me an ADHD evaluation form for Acroboy’s teacher and my husband and I to fill out since he was not in school when he received that diagnosis.
I wonder if the other boys have hypotonia too? It would explain the exceptionally hard to read handwriting they have.
I have been running lots of errands too. I went to the post office, returned some things to the store, and I have been running my kids everywhere. Firstborn has Bible study class in the morning. His usual ride was out-of-town and so I had to take him to another friend’s home to catch a ride with them. I also had to run the other children to school because we had to transport Whirlwind’s musical instrument which is too big to carry on the bus. They three oldest had extra rehearsal’s for the Large Ensemble Festival in the county. This was in addition to scouts and music lessons.
We also had to go to our regular doctors because I came down with pinkeye, and Baby Girl came down with a cold. She was running a fever of 101.2° and was pulling on her ears. She was not sleeping well, was not eating well, and wanted to be held all of the time. It turns out she had a pretty bad ear infection.
When we weighed Baby Girl, we found she weighs about a pound less than the last well check-up one month ago. I talked to the doctor about my suspicions for food allergies and we decided to run a blood test. She is just about old enough to need the lead test, and the doctor thought we should run that and some allergy screening tests as well.
I am concerned about the rash she gets when she eats any grain except for rice. I spoke with a friend who has celiac disease and her children have celiac as well. The symptoms sound similar, and so when we rule out any food allergies, our next step will be to look possible celiac disease. I hope that is not what it is, but I am concerned with Baby Girl’s weight loss. She is my sixth and I’ve never had one lose weight like she has. (Plateau as they get active, sure, but not lose weight).
Now we wait.