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and the blood work came back normal! yea! I’ll keep you updated on Lauren’s appt with pediatric orthopedist.

Lauren’s 3rd birthday was yesterday and we had so much fun at her party!! I’ll do a full recap with pics later, maybe tonight:). She had a blast and told me so many times “thank you so much mommy, I love my party”. Does she know how to melt my heart while working me or what?

Lauren had her 3 year well child visit on Thursday. Here are the stats:

weight: 29lbs even (fully clothed) - 25%
height: 35.5 inches - 20%

She passed all the mile markers they wanted her to pass. We asked about her nail biting (she bites her nails when she’s nervous or when she’s uncomfortable in a situation and we always tell her “fingers/hand down”)….her ped said the best thing to do is to ignore it. She said that it’s a tension thing (some kids pull their hair out, or twirl their hair, etc) and that they don’t want anyone to notice them doing it (it’s not for attention) and that if they get called out for doing it (like we’ve been doing) that it makes them more nervous and the nail biting worse. Makes sense. When we say something to Lauren about it, she always removed her hand and said “sorry”…so I’m sure that’s the case. She said she won’t permanently damage her nails. Good to know!

Then for the last few months if not more, we’ll be walking and Lauren will grab her leg in pain and ask to be carried. We’ve always thought she just was using it in order to get carried but it’s become so frequent, decided to ask her ped about it. The ped actually took it very seriously and said a 3 year old doesn’t have the emotional maturity to fake pain as a way to get what they want…so Lauren is either emotionally advanced or something is causing her pain and the ped said if we didn’t do some testing and found something later, we’d be kicking ourselves. Totally agree. So, we did some quick finger prick blood work in the office and her red blood cells, white blood cells, and platets were fine…so things like leukemia were ruled out, thank goodness. Then they sent us over to Childrens Mercy Hospital (love that place, they are so great with the kids of course) to get further lab work done looking for things like infection, and xrays of her knee (she complains of her right knee hurting). So, we went Friday morning. Lauren did SO SO SO great. Lab work was first and she sat on my lap and they actually took blood out of her arm..she flinched but that was it, watched the entire time. I really won’t be surprised if Lauren becomes a dr or nurse…we constantly play dr (her and Billy are playing that right now actually) and she LOVES going to the dr whether it be her ped, ENT, allergist, the hospital or even the dentist. Then we did the knee xrays and again, she did so awesome.

The lab work is still pending, but we heard back on the xrays yesterday. Lauren has a 1.2 cm benign tumor on her knee and the condition is called “non-ossifying fibroma”. Basically it’s a benign growth on her knee that occurs in kids that usually resolve by adulthood. From what I read, the only concern is that it can cause stress on the bone and cause a fracture, especially for children involved in sports….so an option is surgery but it sounds like there’s a pretty long recovery time…about 3 - 6 months. So, we’ve been referred on to pediatric orthopedic surgeon and I’ll call tomorrow to make the appointment.

Birthday update coming…