7 Quick Takes Friday

-1-

Maggie had a doctor's appointment today and I had another one of those moments where my eyes just about rolled so hard that I nearly fell over (or they would have if I hadn't exercised an incredible amount of self control).  

I feel like I've written this post before.  I almost did two years ago when this child,

was four and the doctor told me that the BMI chart said that she was overweight (insanity).  

Today our doctor (who I really like) showed me the graph and explained that the BMI chart says that Maggie is not just overweight.  It says that she's obese.  

I paused and let the words sink in and then said "That's so strange because I can see the outline of the muscles in her stomach."  The child basically has a six pack.  

And she said that that absolutely could be it, because she is incredibly strong and incredibly muscular.  But we still had to have the talk about how I need to encourage her to be more active, get her into sports and watch what she eats.

Hold on.  I think I found an appropriate use for this picture:

More active?  I find myself amazed when she holds still for five minutes.  She's spinning around and jumping on roller skates through my house all day long.  She's climbing and jumping and whirling and running all. day. long.  She never holds still.  At least not when she's awake.

And it's not like my gluten free and casein free kid can sit around eating junk food because, let's face it, even if I wanted to purchase junk food for her GFCF junk food is ridiculously expensive.  

Anyways, I just had to share a picture of the kid who the BMI chart said was "obese" today:

And while I totally get that there are tons of kids that do have these problems I also wonder how many parents put perfectly healthy kids on restrictive diets because they've been told that they are unhealthy.  

-2-

Before Mae's doctor's appointment she had an OT evaluation.  At one point during the eval I was asked if she knows her colors and shapes.  I answered that I know she knows her colors (because she points out colors to be constantly), and then paused to think about how well she knows her shapes (I was having a hard time remembering because they've really been focusing on numbers and letters lately, but I'm 99% sure that's because she's mastered her shapes).  

As I said: "I think she knows..." I looked over at where she was sitting next to the therapist and saw that she was holding her hands up in the air in the shape of a diamond (her favorite shape) while smiling hugely at me.  

Yes, she knows her shapes.  And she was happy to show me that she knows them when I couldn't remember.  

-3-

Patch has a hearing test and a speech evaluation next week.  

A couple of weeks ago I saw a statistic that said that children who have an older sibling who are autistic are more likely to receive speech or occupational therapy when they're in preschool, even if they aren't on the spectrum.  

As I sat in Patch's pre-evaluation evaluation this past week I couldn't help but think that that is because by the time many of us have gone through all the tests and evaluations with our older kids we're way more likely to seek out an eval at the faintest hint of a delay, because we've learned that early intervention can be really, really helpful.  

Now here's hoping that Patch's hearing test goes far more smoothly than Mae's did last week.  

-4-

I've just discovered the Divine Mercy Chaplet and I realized that I had all the parts I needed to make one.  But when I went through my beads I discovered three that I wanted to use and I just couldn't decide which one to make the chaplet with:

So I finally decided to use all three:

-5-

I've been steadily trucking along with putting together my 40 bags in 40 days.  Yesterday I tackled the horrible wreck that our utensil drawer had slowly turned into.

I actually thought that almost all of our knives were lost (and I was baffled by how it had happened).  Instead I discovered that knives can just really blend in when there's forty pounds of junk on top of them.  

Here's the after:

Look!  We have knives again!

-6-

Oh James...

-7-

I stepped into the kitchen with James while Patch was eating a bowl of oatmeal.  When I walked out of the kitchen this is what I found...

For more Quick Takes head over to This Ain't the Lyceum!