Kid's corner

Today, Elias went for a 6-monthly checkup to the orthopedist. After the last checkup, we decided to buy him regular shoes and see how his feet develop. It seems like that was the right decision. His support surface on his soles has increased, and on the right (the worst) foot, the only part that is still turning inwards is his big toe. So, ordinary shoes from now on. This is a great relief in two aspects. First and foremost, it means that the odds of Elias having trouble later on are getting smaller.

Today, September 1st, traditionally marks the first day of school in Belgium. This year, Elias is going to the second year of kindergarten (typically, age 3.5-4.5). His teacher is juf Christine, who is supposedly strict, but fun. From what we heard, everything well very well. Lunch was spaghetti, which supposedly is liked by most kids, so Elias did eat.

When we asked where his glasses were (we were afraid they were already broken), they were still in the classroom, because they had to evacuate the class because on kid threw up somewhere in the afternoon, and even after cleaning up the mess, the smell lingered. And juf Christine feared Elias would more easily break his glasses when wearing the during playtime. But because he needs to adapt to the shapes of objects as they really are, he should wear his glasses at all times. So we'll see how long they last ;-)

Yesterday, Nathan was examined by our pediatrician, and was found to be in good health. He weight (while holding on to Doc Hudson) 11.960 kg and measures approximately 84 cm. Head circumference is 48.5cm.

Today we had an appointment to have Elias' eyes checked. At the yearly check-up at the CLB in his school, he received a note claiming his sight was not very good (borderline normal) and his eyes we not positioned correctly. Because we wanted to make sure there actually was a problem, we consulted a specialist today. The first thing he said was that his eyes were positioned correctly, so that CLB claim turned out to be false.

This weekend Nathan took four steps all by himself, without any means of support. After that, it turned out to be faster when going down to all fours :-)

He also got new shoes, as the old ones were clearly too small. Two sizes too small.

June 27, 2008. The last day at school for Elias. And I was late picking him up :-/ As in 30 minutes late. Somehow my brain thought I needed to pick him up at 15:35 instead of 15:05.

Somewhere around 5 AM this morning. Rain had been pouring down hard the past hour, and we were slumbering and gently falling back to sleep again after Elias had woken us up because he removed his bandage from his finger and wanted a new one (that was somewhere around 4 AM).

Suddenly a noise, footsteps in the hall, shuffling toward our bedroom door. The door creaked open, and lo! there stood Elias, asking if we wanted to read him a story :-)

Luckily, after some encouragement, he shuffled back to his bedroom and tucked in again. Needless to say, he was too tired to get up this morning.

The last weeks, Nathan has steadily increased the times he tries to walk around. He is mostly still holding on to his surroundings, but he does manage to stand up all by himself. The first step following that ... not quite yet. But when a man cannot walk, he can surely climb. He can get up the staircase all by himself (with either me or Veerle standing behind him, just in case). And today he demonstrated why it is not a good idea to leave Elias' (small) chair in the vicinity of the table. Clearly, if the table it too high to climb onto, one needs to use the object in the middle: the chair.

The highest tower Nathan built today, before deciding that allowing gravity to exert full control over the blocks used, was 5 blocks. The trick to keeping him building lies in providing him with new blocks before his brain can decide that his hand needs to hit something. Preferably something near the base of that cool tower.

Nathan is really, really happy to see his mom when she comes home after a hard days work.