Docter, Docter, give me the news

Today Parker and I ventured to a place where we thankfully do not frequent - the pediatrician's office. While I do like Dr. Ellerine, I am also happy to note that Parker has not been there since June and not since his two-year check-up last February before that.

If you ask Parker about his visit, he will tell you two things:

1. He got a "shot" on his finger (a finger prick for blood), a shot in his arm and a shot in his leg, though when Daddy came home he had forgotten about his arm and claimed instead to have gotten a shot in his face! We quickly corrected him... don't need him spreading that story!

2. He also got a green lollipop.

The visit included a little more than that, so here are some additional highlights. After ushering him into the little room and stripping him of everything but his Spiderman undies and baseball socks, he happily headed to the weigh-in area.

At age three Parker weighs in at 30 pounds and 38 1/2 inches (75th percentile for height and 30th percentile for weight.) Dr. Ellerine was pleased with the "long and lean." She asked him a series of questions, and he complied easily. He told her that his favorite foods were blueberries and egg salad, that he is a boy, Mommy is a girl and Daddy is a boy. He informed her that Mrs. Plaugher is his teacher and correctly named a few quizzed colors as well as some spacial relation questions. He also proudly told her that he pee-pees and poo-poos on the potty, though he told her that he still pee-pees in his pullup at night. She assured him that was OK.

He jumped, counted and drew a circle. When asked to sing a song he chose "Colors, Colores" (a Spanish color song) during which she looked at me for interpretation. Parker's English can be tough enough to understand, let alone his "second" language! He did however have the rhythm and the beat, so she was pleased.

She was happy with his vocabulary and sentence structure, agreeing that his articulation issues appear to be developmental and should continue to subside as he grows. I told her that in December Parker had been tested by a Cobb County Schools speech pathologist and (based on their developmental charts) he had the vocabulary and cognitive level of a four year old and that his articulation was NOT poor enough to qualify him for services within the school system. Thus, we were denied speech services. She agreed that the level of delay the school system requires in order to provide service generally falls beyond what many parents would tolerate and encouraged me to continue with Miss Kim as long as our insurance would cover it - which we hope to do until we suspect he will get dropped from coverage at the end of May.

All in all, the visit was enjoyable and uneventful... minus that shot in the face, of course.