Day at the Zoo

Me and Micah Moo just love the Zoo!  One of the many things I will miss if we end up taking a job somewhere other than Peoria.  It's not a huge zoo, but I'm surprised at how many animals they have.  We saw the sea loin, tigers, loins, rhinos, monkeys, giraffes, and so many more animals!  We particularly like the new Africa exhibit and today we watched at the giraffes were let out.  Micah points at the animals and calls all of them "du"  which either means "dog" or "duck". 

Snack Time!

Another fun outing that we just discovered is the East Peoria Farm Park.  It's only a few minutes from our house and we had so much fun visiting there on Father's Day.  It's this cute little farm area that has geese, ducks, fish, goats, a horse, donkey, cow, and chickens.   For $0.50 we bought a feeding cone and had a blast feeding all the animals!  Micah loved watching the ducks and goldfish come up to feed.  We will definitely be making more trips to this park!

Do you ever stop worrying about your child?

So they say, "a little knowledge can be dangerous". Well, being married to a doctor only makes that worse. In medical school they call it "medical student syndrome" when the students think they have what condition they're reading about. The same is true when they have a family and start assessing their children. I always wondered what kind of dad Nathan would be. Would he be overprotective knowing the things that could happen? Would he blow things off thinking "I've seen worse"? Would he worry about every cough, cold, bump or bruise? I think it's a little of everything. Nathan has great intuition when dealing with his patients and the same is true with his son. I'm the one that worries about everything. Nathan will say, "well it could be this, or this, or this" and then I start to worry and research everything it "could be".

We did noticed some weird behavior in Micah a few weeks ago. He wasn't his usual smiley, happy self. He was distant, distracted easily, and seemed to be playing in his own little world. This started right around 1yr when he was into everything and wanted to do everything himself. He would explore things and be oblivious to anything going on around him. We were backing out of the driveway when I looked back and he was doing this weird staring thing. I call his name many times and he wouldn't look at me. He just stared straight ahead. Finally, i grabbed his foot and shook it like crazy to get his attention. He snapped out of it, but it had us concerned. Nathan asked "well does he ever look when you call his name". My answer was no, he really doesn't. Not a good thing. This is one of the first signs of autism in young children. Nathan even went over to Micah's day care and observed him playing and other children his age. The other children were wanting to play with Nathan but Micah was still in his own little world and could care less that daddy was there to see him. Many of the children even looked to the call of Micah's name but Micah never acknowledged him. Now we were even more concerned. We prayed a lot about it and called his pediatrician to schedule an appointment. We worked with him daily to try to get him to make and keep eye contact. After a week it was like we had a new child. We were a little embarrassed when the doctor came in the room and Micah walked up to him with open arms as to say "pick me up". Dr. Beaty did and laughed. He said we need not worry about his social skills at this time, but that this is only a slice in time and he can't speak for what the future holds. We were happy with this and consider it an answered prayer!