Keagan's dr visit

As many of you know Keagan has had some developmental problems since he has been born. He started off not holding his head, sitting up, crawling and not walking until a lot later than "normal". He didn't start walking until he was 22 months old. When he was little we took him to several Dr. appointments, a mri, cat scan, etc. trying to see if anything was wrong. They luckily ruled everything out. Still now he can't ride a bike ( and we have tried), can't really well tie shoes, and is slow w/ catching a ball, etc.
We have had him in the birth to 3 program and then he qualified for free developmental preschool. When he started school he qualified for special ed services (speech therapy and occupational therapy) Every year when he gets tested he improves steadily, but still is just lagging behind a little. This year he improved and doesn't need speech therapy anymore, but they felt he still needed OT(occupational therapy) The way the school system works is that you have to qualify in 2 or more areas to get special services unless you are diagonoised with something. That lead his OT therapist to really look for something so he could get special services. She found a disorder called developmental coordination disorder. After reading what information she gave me and reading online it sounded to me what he has. Here is a little of what I found on a medical website: http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic2640.htm

The 4 diagnostic criteria for DCD are as follows:
1. Performance in daily activities that require motor coordination is substantially below given the person's chronologic age and measured intelligence. This change may manifest as marked delays in achieving motor milestones (eg, walking, crawling, sitting) and as dropping things, clumsiness, poor performance in sports, or poor handwriting.
2. The disturbance in criterion 1 substantially interferes with academic achievement or activities of daily living.
3. The disturbance is not due to a general medical condition (eg, cerebral palsy, hemiplegia, muscular dystrophy), and it does not meet criteria for a pervasive developmental disorder.

Little data clearly define the parameters of motor coordination difficulties in children. Various grades of severity and comorbidity seem to exist. Some children have only a relatively minor form of motor dyscoordination, whereas others have associated learning disabilities, attention deficit, and other difficulties.
In 1996, Fox and Lent found that, in contrast to the common belief that children grow out of these difficulties, they tend to linger without intervention. Early intervention is beneficial while the brain is changing dramatically during the first years of life and new connections and abilities are acquired.

We made a Dr appointment for Keagan and I went in prepared w/ the print out of this article and all the testing the OT had done w/ Keagan. We got a diagonoise w/ the developmental coordination disorder so now he can get OT in the fall.

Keagan :)

I am trying to get the kids to write in their journals and/or read for at least 1/2 hour every day, here is Keagan's journal page. :)
Translation:
My mom is so mean that she makes me read for 15 minutes. Is that horrible! She thinks I need to read, but I don't want to. Reading is so boring that I can throw up on all of my books.



Completing the bad boy image - Keagan's new haircut all spiked up. I couldn't get him to smile, the haircut must be rubbing off on him.

Great minds think alike?!!

After doing our yard project and lack of sleep from the fun 4th of July festivities, Ray and I were exhausted! We had to run to the store for a couple of things before Sunday. We went to Target and all decided to get icees, it is one of the kids favorite treats.
Melissa and Keagan had already gotten theirs, I was getting mine when "he" came up and started re-filling his icee cup. I touched his arm and said, you don't need to refill it, and then I looked into his face and it wasn't someone I knew, I thought it was Keagan. (He did have on a dark shirt like Keagan and a mohawk, close enough, right) So this boy looked at me strangely and I apologized, saying, "I'm sorry, I thought you were my son."
So, then, (I know it gets better) I was telling Melissa at the tables how embarrassed I was, she was laughing, and then covered her face, and said, oh no, and witnessed this -
Ray got done paying and went to get his icee and saw this boy who he thought was Keagan overflowing the icee cup, and the Ray took the cup from him and threw it away, and said, "they just told you not to fill it up so full."
I asked Melissa, did Dad do it, too, "Yes!" Then we heard Ray say, "Oh, I'm sorry!!! I thought you were my son." (Ray got him a new cup!)
(There was no parents around to apologize to, so we hurried up and got out of there, (to go home and get some extra sleep) dying laughing and Melissa mortified..... ahh we've done our job! :)

Front yard project

This is what we did Saturday. We're not quite finished, we need to pick out what we're going to put in between the stepping stones, I'm thinking about recycled tire scraps, but I've got to go price them first. The black stuff underneath the stepping stones is ground cover, so hopefully weeds won't grow!

Hopefully this next week we can actually plant the grass!

Fourth of July

We had a really good 4th. We started off going to our Ward's breakfast - it was a little early, especially for a paper rt and non school day (8 a.m.) but we had a really good free breakfast. Next we took Melissa's friend Daneah w/ us and went to the Tumwater parade. The weather was perfect, not too hot and not too cold, it was a little cloudy, but thats ok! Melissa and Daneah got a lot of compliments on their hats.

One of Keagan's favorite things in the parade.

Then my favorite part of the day, we went home and took a nap! :)

That evening we went back to Tumwater to see the Fireworks. We really like being out on the grass and having all of the fun things to do, although my kids are getting to big for some of the things. They had a rock wall, magician, and lots of blow up toys.

Melissa goofing around, she didn't want her picture taken. She was waiting for her friend Maleah to get there.

Keagan climbing on one of the blow up toys.

They had people jumping from an airplane w/ their parachutes, too. That was really cool to watch. The last guy that came in had a huge American flag.

The only bad part of the evening was we thought we wanted french fries, we got into line, and it didn't seem tooo long, we waited for @ 20 minutes or so, but after we got our order taken, it took around another 1/2 hr to get it! I got back to our chairs just a few minutes before the fireworks started.

OOh, AWWW

(I know, the camera never does it justice, they quite a variety of fireworks.)

Marysville

Monday we drove up to Marysville, Wa, the city where I lived and graduated from High school. It is @ 2 hours up north from us. My friend Darri bought a car and needed a ride to go pick it up in Bothell and I had just found one of my good friends from High school and wanted to see her, so w/ Bothell only being a 1/2 hour away we drove up to msvl. Melissa was laughing at me.... it has been soo long since I have been there (almost 9 years) that it was pretty exciting and I had a lot of good memories.

We met my friend Lynda and her 3 kids at Jennings park and then drove around town and saw our old house. The tree used to be really small and thank goodness they painted the house.

I guess I'll have to go back to visit sooner than 9 years!

cub scout camp

The crane that drops the egg for the egg drop contest. The boys have to come up w/ some kind of container that a raw egg can be dropped down into and not break.
Luckily they position the boys in the right spot and put "protective" gear on them.
This was his container, a basket that had bubble wrap on the bottom, then a pillow, then plastic bags. He got a gold egg for his egg not braking. (His 2nd year in a row) Someone forgot their egg drop container and used Keagan's and it worked for them too.

Keagan and Landon ready to go to camp!

Waiting to go to camp, day 3, and really hot outside.


The theme was fairy tale heros, and this day they were suppose to dress-up w/ something of Paul Bunyon. This was also the day it was 90 degrees out and Keagan wanted to wear his long pants overalls, so this is his ax that Paul Bunyon carried around. Keagan had such a good time at cub scout camp! He even got a badge for shooting a bb gun! All those fun boy - things they do there. Shooting gun & arrows, going down the water slide, burping, farting, you know all the fun boy things! :)