Update on Hughes

Hughes has been growing up and maturing so fast that it's hard for me to realize that he's at the end of first grade.  Here are some stories/updates of our Mr. Hughes.

*Hughes does not like writing.  It's his absolute least favorite thing to do.  One day during journal time, he told his teacher "you can't make me do it".  Thankfully, his teacher is calm and played the "I'm going to call your mother and see what she says" card.  He ended up writing in his journal and getting an earful at home.

*He lost another bottom tooth.  His adult teeth are coming in behind his baby teeth so we haven't gotten any snaggle tooth pictures because the moment the baby tooth is gone then the adult tooth is right there.  No telling what his top teeth are going to do.

*He came upstairs one day and told me to check him out.  He then lifted his arm and said, "I'm a man". He has glued brown fuzz underneath his arm to look like armpit hair.  GROSS!  I cracked up laughing because it was out of the blue.

*Hughes has been doing pretty good at baseball.  When he played catcher, the coach told him that it was some of the best catching he had seen all season.  FYI, PopPop played catcher for Auburn

 baseball :)

*Hughes had his end-of-the-year reading assessment.  I knew it was coming and Mrs. Wightman had given me the heads up about it being timed and she was concerned if Hughes would make it in the allotted time.  Of course being the teacher that I am, I discussed with him about reading faster.  And when that didn't work, I told him when his teacher took him out of the room to read then that was the time to read as fast as he could.  So, the time came and he read as fast as he could and then he saw Mrs. Wightman stop the timer.  He then told her "oh, my mom told me about this"  Whoops!  It worked, however, because he did it in the allowed time frame.  Sometimes, he just needs a little push.

*At Hughes' yearly check up with our new pediatrician back in October, Dr. Russell detected a heart murmur.  I told him that I had never been told that Hughes had a murmur.  With all of Hughes' other quirks (cleft lip, hypospadias, speech delay, etc, etc) he wanted us to see a geneticist to see if there was a bigger picture connecting all of these little dots.  So, today was finally our appointment.  It only took 9 months but I'm glad we waited because I really like Dr. Rosenbaum at Children's National.

Dr. Rosenbaum talked with us for a long time discussing Hughes' background and checking him over.   He told us that a child born with a cleft lip, hypospadias, and a speech delay was about a 1 in 30 million chance and then add the heart murmur just added a couple of zeros to that last number.  He confirmed the heart murmur and has referred us to a cardiologist.  We go next Tuesday so I should have an update then.