Developmental Pediatrician

I hope everyone is doing well and having a happy holiday season.

Bob saw the developmental pediatrician yesterday. Actually, he saw the pediatric nurse practitioner for part one of his evaluation. He will see her one more time for another evaluation before he sees the developmental pediatrician. (She broke her foot and needed surgery, which is why Bob's appointment was postponed) Part one of the evaluation took about two hours. They gave me a packet of information to fill out at home, as well as a packet of information for his teacher to fill out. I have to return those two completed packets before I can make the next appointment. She said the wait is only a week or two for those appointments - and she needs at least a week to "grade" the paperwork we give her.
There are many surveys. One of the things they are ruling out is autism - which I am 99.9999% sure that Bob does not have. One of the surveys asks "What makes you think this child has autism?" I had to answer "nothing". The whole page dealt with the answer to that question, so I had to answer "n/a" on every question.
She said she noticed that Bob does some things that are common with autistic children during the evaluation. He tends not to give eye contact - but that is with strangers, he has eye contact with people he knows. He also does "hand flailing" when he is excited. He also likes to line up his cars and he gets upset/throws a tantrum if someone disturbs his lineup. But just because he does some things that are characteristic of children with autism, that does not mean he is autistic. They tend to overdiagnose autism. Besides, Bob is one of the most sociable children I know. He goes up to strangers in the store (or calls out to them when he is sitting in the shopping cart) and says hi and strikes up a conversation with them. He tells them that "this is our stuff" and "We have a Q dog at home" and things like that. Some people ignore him, but most people respond to him. If they ignore him, he says "Excuse me, I am talking to you!" and "Please speak to me!" I joke that he did not start talking until he was almost three years old, so now he is making up for lost time. He does not shut up. But, I have yet to get tired of hearing the word "mommy" from him. I am so thankful that he can talk, that my heart still skips a beat every time he says "mommy".

We did buy the Polar Express, but Bob was too tired to watch it last night, as were we. I am unfortunately working the next three nights, so we won't be able to watch it until Friday. I want to watch it as a family. It is playing at the IMAX theater, and I had the idea that we could go there to see it, but it would be about $50 just for the tickets (and we have to buy popcorn at the theater). It was $9.99 for the DVD at Costco, and we can microwave some popcorn. Not quite the same thing, but Bob will love it none the less. Bob has two versions of the book already - one of them came with a poster of the train that is hanging in his room. The other one you can shine a flashlight through the pages so the images appear on the wall in front of you. Bob really likes that one. Bob likes to see the trains on the wall in front of him. Thank you 99 cent only store.

I will keep everyone updated on Bob's progress.
Talk soon!
Elizabeth