News in Brief

David saw his pediatric endocrinologist this week. She's nice and knowledgeable and all, but I'm glad his next appointment is not for 6 months. It's an hour and a half drive, and he always has to get his blood drawn ahead of time. This is not a complaint, because the (tedium?) of the visits is an indicator that he is doing well. David's hypothyroidism is very mild, his medication dosage is low and is apparently quite effective, and there are no other major health concerns at the moment. So all that is excellent, so no complaints whatsoever. But maybe next time if all the lab work is normal, we can do this by phone?? Or perhaps Matt can take him, I keep telling him the (young, female) doctor is quite attractive :)

Developmentally, we are working on changing David over from his bottle to drinking milk out of a (regular, not sippy) cup. We started on the cup transition with water maybe 6 weeks ago, at the behest of his speech therapist (speech and OT do their regular stuff with David, but they are both also feeding resources for infants/babies). He actually did quite well with managing the cup himself with the water, but hey, water is free and doesn't make much of a mess. Since we started doing milk in the cup, we are holding it all the time, so far. The first session, while the speech therapist was here, was awful - David cried the entire time. And by that I mean, the entire time, like an hour. The ST kept saying, he can do this (he is developmentally/physically capable), it's only a matter of how much you guys can deal with. Fortunately he only cried for the first couple of days, and we are pleased with his progress. We're still holding the cup for him, but he's much more agreeable. But it takes forever. I guess we shouldn't be too surprised; after all Simon is almost 5 and has no developmental issues, and it usually takes him a really long time to drink from a regular cup, if he's not really thirsty. Sometimes a meal takes about 45 minutes, so we are still doing a bottle if we are in a hurry or have an appointment. and his last bottle at night is still a bottle, every night - I imagine that'll be the last one to go, and I'm in no hurry. But it is a great step toward being a big guy!