I took Conner in for his well child check last week. I am happy to report that he is a healthy boy. Here are his stats:
35 3/4 inches tall - 85 percentile
weighs 27 lbs - 40th percentile
head 51 cm. - 95th percentile
His motor development is great but his language skills are not. Before you go in you have to fill out a questionnaire about your child's development. They ask questions and you answer "yes, sometimes, or not yet". In the language development section there were 6 questions and I put 2 sometimes and 4 not yets. He is not putting any words together yet and one of the questions was "Does your child refer to himself by name (or 3rd person) or does he use "I" and "me"? I had to laugh because he does neither. He doesn't refer to himself at all. He does say "mama" and "Dad" but he doesn't have a word yet for Alan. So as I expected the doctor said he has some significant delays in his language. She suggested going to see an audiologist to get his hearing tested and a speech therapist so that he could be assessed.
So a few days later we found ourselves sitting in the audiology waiting room. The lady did a test and then she asked "Does he have an ear infection?" I replied "No". At his well child check our pediatrician had checked his ears and said they were fine, plus he has been acting normal. She tried the test again and said that it sure seemed like he had an ear infection. She called the specialist doctor in to have a look and sure enough he had an ear infection in both ears! It is so weird, he doesn't have a fever and he has been happy and cheerful and he has been sleeping just fine (all of those things disintegrate when he has an ear infection). The doc said he has at least a 20 percent hearing loss in both ears because there is fluid trapped in there because of the infection. I told him that Conner has had ear infections before but he hasn't had one for almost a year (at least not one that I knew about). The doc said that it is possible that he has had several but not had any symptoms and that could explain why he has speech delays. At first he recommended putting tubes in his ears immediately but then he said it might be better to wait 6 weeks and do another hearing test and look at his ears so that is what we are going to do.
Then we headed over to visit the speech therapist. She did a quick assessment and said his receptive language (understanding what people are saying to him) is within 3 months of where it is supposed to be. However she said that his expressive language (him talking) is 4 or 5 months behind. She said he had to be at least 6 months behind to qualify for help so she gave us some things to work on at home.
1. Get his ears figured out. Obviously if he can't hear clearly he won't be able to communicate clearly.
2. Get him some things that help him work on developing the muscles in his mouth. She said blowing bubbles was good, or blowing a pinwheel, or buying those party favors at a store where you blow into them and something uncurls. She also told us to have Conner use a straw when he drinks. She said if he masters a regular straw to use those crazy shape straws and those narrow coffee straws because that makes their mouth muscles work harder.
3. She said we were being too easy on him. When we told her that Conner has an older brother who is very vocal she asked if he actually asks for things or if he just kind of follows Alan around and when Alan asks for something he just is standing right there with his hand out. He definitely does that, now that I think about it. He also just grabs my hand and drags me over to an area of the house and points at what he wants. He will point at the tv if he wants a movie or he will point at our cupboard with cups in it if he is thirsty. She said that we need to start insisting that he say something to get something that he wants. She said to give him choices like "Do you want milk or juice?" and if he doesn't respond then give him water. Or try putting one sock on and leaving the other off and see if he says something. I have been trying to focus on getting him to ask for things and I have already seen an improvement - he will sometimes say what he wants. I think his ears must still be plugged though because when he does say something it is not very clear. He says "faff" for fish and "wa" for water and he makes kind of a "ss" hissing noise when he wants juice.
So I guess we are going to wait 6 weeks and see how he is doing and then we will decide on putting tubes in his ears.
These picture don't really go with the post but they are the most recent I have of him. I came in to see him trying to lick the syrup off his plate like a dog.
He was pretty happy with himself.
A close up of Alan with his kite
Alan is my gardening helper. He has been asking when we could plant our garden since February. Last week I finally told him we were ready to plant our seeds. Here he is helping me plant peas. We also planted lettuce and carrots. There are already chives and rhubarb and strawberries growing and I planted 4 tomato plants. I told him that we are going to plant pumpkins in a different spot in our yard and that he is going to be in charge of them. He is so excited to take care of the pumpkin patch. 
We went to Billings this weekend and Alan and James got to play for a while. Grandma was making a cake while we were there and the boys got to try some of the frosting. Here they are showing off their blue tongues. 
One of Alan's favorite phrases right now is "I know that already". When he doesn't seem to be listening and I repeat things to him that is what he says (in a very frustrated voice). This is not my favorite phrase.
