Update on Mason

We now have a 2 year old!! We can't even believe it! What a trip it's been ~ Mason has been through a lot, and learned so much and so have we! He had a birthday party on Sunday with all of his Grandparents, except Grampa Cross who lives in Vermont - He had a great time - favorite part, must be when he put 4 party blowers right smack in the middle of his cake! Nice.

His favorite things right now are reading, jumping, diggers, trucks & the new tool bench that Santa brought. He surprises us everyday with new words - he's a whiz at naming body parts, colors, animals and objects, and can identify many letters as well.

He has his 2 year check-up on Monday so we're anxious to see how he's growing and where he might be on the growth charts.

If you spend any time with Mason, there are things you learn pretty quickly; number 1 he walks on his toes, and number two, he has boundless energy. And anyone who's read this blog knows that he doesn't have a good history where sleep is concerned. At the suggestion of a friend, Jay and I self-referred Mason to Child Development Services, a division of the State Department of Education for an evaluation of his toe-walking. We completed the initial assessment about a month ago, and yesterday he spent 3 hours with a team of therapists in Falmouth for a full scale evaluation.

It was a day of "play" for him while Jay and I answered piles of questions about Mason's daily activities and habits. Turns out that Mason qualifies for services. Not only are they concerned about his toe walking, but his energy level is also something they think they can help us with. Based on their clinical findings, they have determined that Mason may have Sensory Integration Disorder. In other words, he doesn't process information received in the brain via his senses. A confusing diagnosis for us, as we'd not heard the term. But as we learned more from them, and read the hand-outs they gave us and did on-line research it seems they may be on to something. It seems there are many different levels of the disorder (hypo & hyper sensative)...Mason seems to be on the hypo side...in other words, needing more sensory things going on to help him feel more "balanced". When he doesn't get what his body/brain needs he can't find a way to calm himself down. This leads not only to the sleep issues that we've been having, but to meltdowns over simple things at home (and in other public places). There are several symptoms and things that they look for in diagnosing this disorder and one of them is toe-walking. Go figure.
It's funny, one of Mason's doctor's once suggested to us that he might be on his toes as he doesn't like the way his feet feel on the floor.
They have a plan in place for 6 months of therapy so we can investigate further and try to work on some strategies to help him. They are also going to do 12 physical therapy visits to work on the tightness of his feet and ankles. They said his toe walking is something that he won't be able to correct on his own at this point. We'll be seeing a pediatric PT person for a biomechanical evaluation and may go back to the orthopedic surgeon for another check-up as well. When she did a quick check of his ankles she said they were so tight and so strong in his usual position that it reminded her of an athlete but when she moved beyond that point, he had no strength at all. So we hope the PT will help but she wants us to be prepared for the possibility of bracing or surgery if needed. She went on to say that she has seen kids with SID that have had the surgery for their toe-walking and even though they can physically walk normally, they choose to walk on their toes - Oh boy. So with the OT & PT we hope we can get him to be able to walk normally and be able to self-soothe.

Any way - I know that this is a lot of info, and it's really only the tip of the iceberg of what they told us, so we'll update on his progress as we go along.