That sound?  That’s the other shoe dropping.

Fortunately it’s a very little shoe.  A Shoshanna-sized shoe, even.

We have been keeping an eye on Shoshanna’s gross motor development for a while, and noting that her left side still lags significantly behind her right, and that there is noticeably less muscle mass in her left calf than in her right.  Longtime readers may recall that for quite a long time she would only use her left hand if we forced her to.  After months and months of that, she’s definitely still right-hand dominant but she does use her left hand more or less appropriately for a right-handed person.

The same thing goes for her legs.  She can hop well on her right foot without support; she can’t even conceptualize standing on just her left foot without help.  With encouragement and support, she can hop on the left foot, but we have really force her to start on that foot and she needs to be holding on to someone or something.

So at her 4-year checkup (other details below), I asked the pediatrician about it.  He tested her strength and noted that there is definitely a difference between the two legs (it was so, SO obvious) and opined that getting her back into PT was the best course of action.  Fortunately, Shoshanna thinks that this is the best idea EVER because as far as she’s concerned, PT means getting to play on the trampoline, bike, scooters, and roller skates at school.  We’ll have to see if she qualifies for services through the school district (and I am NOT looking forward to the headache of navigating that part of the school district along with the kindergarten paperwork maze); if not, our health insurance will cover it up to a certain point but then the services won’t be part of her school day.

As for the rest of her checkup, it went brilliantly.  Once she got comfortable, she talked Dr. S’s ear off, telling him all about school and her friends and informing him that she knows how to do math (which she does).  He told me that he didn’t think we needed to test her lead levels despite our house almost certainly having lead paint somewhere… I said, “Is there any way this child has lead poisoning, really?”  He said, “Well, maybe she does, and without it she’d be a super-genius!”  I figure that if this is our kid on lead, we’re better off that way, because if she was any cleverer, we’d be in some pretty deep trouble.  She also had her hearing and vision checked, both of which were perfectly normal, and she showed that she has a FREAKILY good memory – she remembered the “race car game” from when she had a tympanogram two years ago.  That’s just SCARY.

Oh, and her size.  You know that you all want to know how big she is.  She weighed in at 36.6 pounds and was 39.5″ tall.  For those playing along at home, that’s 50th percentile for height and 65th for weight.  She really is a big girl.