polarbear - he's now a lot better once he's asleep than he used to be. His room is on the second floor the furthest away from the stairs and any noise and I still have a cd player in the hallway playing the same CD every night (classical lullabies we've played him since he was a baby and always wants them on) ... and we still had to till just recently tiptoe around the house anytime he was asleep ... even had to install an extra set of french doors down on the first floors in the hallway to block off enough noise so we could at least use the microwave when he was asleep! We couldn't even flush the toilet in the house without him waking up! lol ... the CD player blocks a lot of it out for him these days but those times were really trying!
as for the possible LD ... you're right ... I am going by my mother's instinct ... so far I have always been right. It actually seems to be getting worse as he's getting older. While he had no problems recognizing the alphabet and numbers way before he turned 3 ... now at age 4 he confuses W and M, or 6 and 9, etc. ... he has days when he can easily read sight words that he's learned from tv yet the next day he can hardly tell me the letters in that word in the right order. Same with math ... he can do a better job with a math problem in his head than if it's in front of him on the paper. It's just that feeling you have when he's looking at something that he's not seeing it right (and I am trying really hard NOT to compare him to DS2 whose first letter at 18 months was W and he has never once confused any letters or numbers ... as I know he's not the standard)
