Drum Roll Please!

...................We are officially, finally, and completely moved into our new house!! Wooo hooooo!!

I can't tell you how good it feels to say that we are home and even more so, how good it feels to be sleeping in our own beds after a month and a half of bed hopping. (Although, poor Colin is still in a pack-n-play). It is going to take a long time before we are settled, but we are working on it slowly but surely (I'm not even complaining about that either!)

The past few days have been some busy ones for Colin as well. Unfortunately, we had to throw in some doctor's appointments and therapies right into the mix of closing on the house and moving, so it made things a little bit hectic.

First, we had Colin's 1-year follow-up at the eye doctor.

His appointment was for 7:15am, so Colin didn't even get a chance to eat breakfast before we got there. Last year, we were somewhat happy with the experience because the doctor explained things thoroughly and as far as the check-up went, Colin's eyes looked great. He used the term "Downs baby" in reference to Colin, but he was only 2 months old at the time and we were still getting used to everything so while it affected us, it was in a different way.

The doctor started doing his assessments and after a few minutes, he told me that everything looked great: his eyes were tracking, following the objects, dilating, and everything else that eyes are supposed to do during the assessment. After this he said to me "since he is a Downs baby, I'm going to dilate his pupils to check for some other things". First of all, most people's eyes are dilated during their check-ups so it has nothing do with (second of all) the fact that he has Down Syndrome. Ugh, I was so thoroughly disgusted. We were sent back out to the waiting room for 45 minutes so that we could get called back in to check the last bit of things. At the end of the appointment, the doctor said to me, "I can understand why you want to continue doing follow ups of eye exams. These kids tend to have problems with their eye sight." I just about fell off my chair.

You better believe I will not be continuing in the future with this doctor. I am going to speak to our pediatrician (who referred us to him) and I'm also going to send a letter to the doctor explaining why he should not be using those outdated terms as a MEDICAL PROFESSIONIAL! Nope, I couldn't say anything to his face, but I will handle this my own way.

Later in the day, we went for our first time to an ENT doctor.

Holy cow was this a totally different experience. First of all, the office was beautiful, the doctor was incredibly professional and explained EVERYTHING. We were referred to him because Colin had failed his hearing screening with the audiologist several months back and we needed to find out what the cause of this was.

He started his evaluation by looking in Colin's ears. He showed me several different tips to the scope, told me what sizes they were, and which size corresponds with which type of person. He told me that children with Down Syndrome often have narrowing of the ear canals (which I already knew, but was happy to have him explain everything thoroughly) which requires a very small tip in order to perform an evaluation.

He felt that Colin did have some narrowing, but it wasn't as bad as it could be. He saw minor fluid build up in the ear that Colin failed in, and performed another test to evaluate how "fluid" his ear drums were. He said they looked great and did not feel that there would be any major concerns with Colin's hearing. We will be doing a hearing test with him in 6 weeks (which I'm excited about because now I can do everything in one location) and he will rule out several other things before finally giving me the whole breakdown.

I was so encouraged after that experience and was very happy to hear that Colin's ears looked so well. Colin loved the ENT doctor too!