What a Week

This has been a full week. On Wednesday we had a make-up, followup urology appointment (the first having been canceled because I got stuck in construction traffic). I suppose I'd been blocking out this possibility but it was put to me in no uncertain terms: Elias needed surgery. He started off with undescended testicles, and although one had moved down since our last appointment, the other was still spending too much time up high, and the higher temperature would damage his fertility--even so young. He said it was important to do the surgery (an orchipexy) before he turned 2 years old. It turned out he had a cancellation, so we scrambled to schedule a pre-op with his normal clinic for the next day, and then surgery Friday morning. Perhaps as much as anything, the suddenness of it--less than 48hrs from the exam to the surgery--had me pretty discombobulated. It was about an hour, then a couple more to recover from the anesthesia (he had both a general, and a "caudal" (local from waist down)). Thankfully, it went very smoothly. Elias of course charmed the staff with his chattering and hardly a cry throughout the whole scary (and food/water-deprived) morning. The only time he really cried was when we got home and I set him down and he tried to take off running, but fell because his legs weren't really working yet. After a 3 hour nap he woke up pretty much his old self. He has two incisions with stitches and some swelling, but doesn't seem in pain at all, and certainly hasn't restricted his movements. They sent us home with Tylenol/codeine, but we haven't had to use it at all. Apparently it's a "non-issue" from his perspective. So, I guess that's about as good as could be hoped for.

In the midst of this, we had another long-standing followup appointment for the Birth-to-Three program. They sent a speech and a development(?) therapist out to our house to check his progress. Back in December (when he still couldn't hear) he was way behind on verbal development but wasn't deemed eligible for the program because he was doing so well in the other areas, and it was hoped that the ear tubes would resolve things. In May, another speech therapist, after hearing him talk, urged me to have Elias tested again "ASAP," which sort of concerned me; hence this appt. Although I don't have their report back, I get the impression that the B23 people have absolutely no concerns. I felt the silly bragging mom, proudly answering their questions virtually all in the affirmative, and Elias enthusiastically performed all sorts of tasks put to him. I mentioned the alphabet thing a few times, but that didn't really fit into their questionnaire--surely, way too advanced! They were more concerned with things like knowing colors, drawing, and pretend play, which he's done for months.

These same 3 momentous days saw two more Elias developments. Firstly, he started sticking his hand in his mouth. He sorta sucks, sorta gnaws, sorta licks it--basically a big mess. This really exacerbates his drooling and hardly encourages adult contact. It's also started spreading to his wanting to lick or just mouth at me at every opportunity (ick). It seems borderline obsessive. I suspect this will be a long discipline issue because it's so hard to get him to stop, but I haven't made a huge deal of it yet. Secondly, more pleasantly, he started reciting the alphabet now, not just pointing out letters (which he does all day now, when he sees text on books, boxes, and signage), but can say many in order. I say "A" and he says "B! C! F!" (he likes getting the F in there as much as possible). He also does E-F, H-I, KLM, OPQ, and WXYZ . We enjoy yelling out the alphabet when we're in the car.

The week's not quite done yet. This morning we went to one of the smaller farmers' markets, and this afternoon we plan to go to the Ethiopian Madison Adoptive Families picnic at the zoo.