Ian's 18 month stats

Ian went to the pediatrician today for his 18 month check up. Here are his stats:

Weight: 27# 13oz (75%) - 6# 4 oz at birth
Height: 33.5" (75-90%) - 18.5" at birth
Head Circumference: 48cm (50%)

Luckily there weren't any shots administered this visit. He will need a flu shot this fall and then another booster Hep C on his 2nd birthday. Otherwise, our boy is in great health!

We were given the go-ahead to back off his twice daily pulmacort nebulizer treatment to once a day. Unless he needs it more in the cold and flu season he can stick to that. We'll be adding a daily vitamin to his daily routine as veggies aren't in his vocabulary. (He takes after his Pops in this regard.) Dr. Jen was pleased with everything else and gave our boy a clean bill of health.

If he stays healthy he won't have to be seen by the doc until his 2nd birthday. Good growing buddy!

Bubba's New Wheels

Bubba has new wheels! Granted it's not a Porsche 911 with a Targa Top (daddy tells him this is what he wants), but it's a good start. Can this kid get any cuter? Ask us tomorrow.

Of course, his favorite part of the new trike is the bell. Go figure. Our little noise motivated boy.

Charlotte is on the move

Our little Squeaker is on the move! We figure she'll really be crawling by the end of the week. She spent most of her day on the floor today with Ms. Debra (her infant teacher) working on crawling. She's pooped out today for sure. Go Charlotte go! Here's the video for you to watch.

Speech Therapy Approved

We heard today that Ian's speech therapy has been approved. The therapist will see him four times a month starting in August. She will begin with seeing him at home and when she feels that everything is going well there she'll transition to the daycare and work on communication with his peers. We're very glad that he was approved because it certainly won't hurt for him to have these services. Best of all, it's free because it's through the CCB. Pretty soon Ian will be a world class orator. At this point we'd be thrilled with "plane" as he's called airplaines, "bobo." Why "bobo?" We have no idea.

Had a great weekend

We had a great weekend! Our new washer & dryer was delivered and installed. Talk about quiet! The entire top floor doesn't shake when the spin cycle runs anymore. Ian is getting used to the new signal when the washer and/or dryer is done running. Right now it freaks him out a little bit.

We were happy to have Tina (Casper, WY) & Curvin (Belize) visit Friday night and Saturday morning. The timing was perfect as Curvin was able to help Robert get the old washer/dryer (stack unit) out of the laundry room prior to the new stuff being delivered. Curvin brought several of his new paintings for an art show up in Casper. He's done some beautiful work that he's brought with him. He also had a good time playing with the kids. Charlotte was quite taken with his neck chain and dreads. He's a very gentle soul and we always enjoy seeing him. Of course, we love having Tina. She gets right in there with the kids and gets her baby fix. It's Tina...what's not to love?

Charlotte crawled a couple times on Saturday and was doing more Sunday. I'll see about getting a video & uploading it. I got video of it last night, but it was getting dark and I'm not sure that you can even see her. She's also working on getting to the sitting position on her own. She's very happy about being able to get to things on her own. Silly girl, had a ball rolling around some sheets from the laundry. It cracks us up that the toys the kids enjoy the most are toilet paper rolls and laundry.

Ian is being very helpful. He likes to help load the washing machine and dryer. He's also enjoying sweeping the floor. He's tried to sweep his sister several times, but that didn't exactly go too well. He had a fun weekend and went swimming in his pool with Ms. Debra (the infant teacher at the daycare also baby sits for us) on Saturday. On Sunday he got to run around the park for a couple of hours and tired himself out - much to our happiness come bed time.

While Ms. Debra was over on Saturday I went to see Mama Mia! with my mom and Robert saw the new X-Files movie. I had fun seeing Mama Mia! It was a kitsch movie and Pierce Brosnan should never be allowed to sing again. It was painful! Other than that it was just a fun movie and absolutely a chick flick or only for the avid ABBA lover. Robert said the X-Files movie was good and not too over the top with the alien stuff. How's that for a movie review?

Hope everyone is geared up for having a good week. Ian goes in for his 18 month well baby visit on Thursday so I'll be able to post his recent stats then. In the meantime, hope you are well and have a good week.

Full-time toddler

Ian has officially graduated from the infant room (ages 0-18 months) to the toddler room. He even took his nap on the mat like all the other toddlers. We're completely thrilled by his permanent move as he will now be with kids his own age and will be learning all the things a toddler should like hitting, biting, scratching and throwing things. Baton down the hatches! :)

Speech Therapy

Ian recently graduated from physical therapy and is well on his way to running. While we still had him in the system with our community board we decided to have his speech evaluated. We can understand most of what he says, but we're with him all the time. A lot of what he says is not clear and he mumbles a lot.

The speech therapist came over last night and spent close to two hours with us, observing Ian and watching him play. She was pleased to see that he wants to communicate and is trying to communicate verbally. She was also pleased to see that he's using sign language. The therapist was clear to explain that Ian is very bright and tries to figure out many things on his own. He's exhibiting a lot of independence, and clearly interested in learning new skills.

The therapist can also help us from an occupational view, meaning that she feels one of the reasons why he's having trouble articulating is that his mouth, cheek, and jaw muscles may be weak. She feels that he may also have some sensory issues revolving around his mouth as evidenced by his "squirrelling" as we call it - where he stuffs his mouth full of food. He may not know that he's stuffing his mouth and she can help him learn more about the senses in his mouth.

We were very encouraged by her 30 years of experience in children's speech therapy and how quickly she was able to get Ian interacting with her. It's not just anyone who can walk right up to Ian and have him be positively responsive. The therapist is also a pre-school teacher who works with children every day. We're hoping the community board will approve her suggestion of weekly therapy to take advantage of the timing in Ian's current developmental window of opportunity. Cross your finger that they'll approve.

We have homework in the meantime. Robert is to learn 10 new signs for things he wants to communicate with Ian on. I'm to learn more emotion signs and work with Ian on expressing his feelings when he's upset. I'm also charged with helping him say words in the songs that I sing to him by pausing at the one-syllable words to encourage him to say them. For example, "The itsy bitsy spider went...(sign "up" and pause giving him an opportunity to say the word)...up the water spout." The therapist noticed that Ian responds to music well so we'll be using that as a learning tool. It also turns out those sign language DVD's I bought were a good idea!

That's the speech therapy update. We'll keep everyone posted on our little guy's progress.

Our little reader

If you know Ian, you know that he LOVES to read. Mostly he likes to pick the book, but wants us to read it to him. On rare occasions he likes to read to himself or to us.

Friday night while we were waiting in the car for Robert to get our order of tasty Mexican food I handed Ian one of my magazines to keep him occupied. The video below is the result. This is the cutest little boy on the planet, I swear!

Triple-digit weekend

Hi there everyone. We hit triple-digits this past weekend here in the Mile High City. We had planned on meeting friends at our local tot pool, but those plans went out the window with the super hot weather. Instead we went to my company picnic on Saturday and ran errands & went to a local water fountain on Sunday. We tried to lay low and we think the kids appreciated not be run around all over town for once.

Miss Charlotte is so close to crawling she can hardly stand it! She's also wanting more texture in her foods so we've started giving her things like rice cakes & fruit in the meshy bag thingy. She's loving it! She's particularly fond of nectarines. Makes sense since the entire time I was pregnant with her all I wanted to eat was fresh fruit.

Before we know it she'll be crawling, eating everything we forgot to leave out because Ian was past that stage, and watching what Ian tries to shove in her mouth. Charlotte thinks Ian is the best thing since fast-flow bottle nipples and anything he hands her goes straight for her mouth. Let's just say that Legos are illegal in our home for the time being.

Mr. Ian loved playing in the fountain up at Northfield. Good thing it's treated water because there were a ton of kids there. We were ill prepared and didn't take a swim diaper (lesson learned!). We ended up stripping him down, getting him into a new diaper and he rode home in his skivvies. He didn't seem to mind it at all as long as the banana cookies kept coming. ;) Our little food disposal!

It seems that his vocabulary is increasing by leaps and bounds on a nearly daily basis. Today, he can answer "yes" or "no" to a question and typically means what he says. He says cookie, but only in a Cookie Monster voice. He calls Elmo, "Melmo." He is very clear about "Daddy" and "Mama." Lately he's taken to calling Charlotte, "CeeCee." Makes sense. As long as he's not calling her "turd" I guess we're on the right track.

In the words of my dear friend in Ann Arbor, "I am not raising a son. I'm raising someone's future husband." We are quite pleased at how Ian is picking up on what we're trying to teach him. Recently he's wiping down his tray after dinner, taking his spoon to the sink, and has been trying to sweep the floor after dinner - just like mommy. The only problem with a nearly 18 month old sweeping is that the broom is double his height and he likes to wield it like a sword making it hazardous work where our television, Charlotte and our eyes are involved. We'd determined to find an Ian-sized broom for him to sweep with. We looked for weeks to no avail. Finally we ran by Toys-R-Us. I had a $3 off coupon for something I wanted to get Charlotte for her birthday in a few months. They had the perfect broom for Ian. Call me cheap, but I had a $15% off coupon for that too. Ian still wields it like a sword and the television may still be in peril, but he gets to help mommy sweep the floor after dinner and he's happy. He does a poor job, but free help is hard to get these days so we'll take it!

Have a good week everyone!

Here's the undeniable evidence that men have the ability to sweep AND empty the dishwasher. Look out world, here comes Ian!

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Sending TGIF wishes,
Laura

Babushka Bubba

Babushka (Russian: ба́бушка, Russian pronunciation: [ˈbabuʂkə] listen (help·info)) is a Russian word meaning a type of headscarf tied under the chin.

Ian discovered one of my many scarves and had a lot of fun wearing it last night. At one point it ended up being tied around him so that he couldn't drop it. We had to distract him with fruit snacks to take it off to make way for putting on PJ's.

Lately he's been more into trying to put on his own clothes & shoes. He gets a HUGE kick out of wearing one of Daddy's t-shirts and flapping the arms as if he were a penguin. We think he's just about one of the funniest kids we know.

Sitting up

Charlotte is now sitting up. As you'll see in the video it isn't always for very long and is purely dependent on how much her brother is doing around her. Ian happened to be in his highchair flinging mac & cheese so Charlote was content to sit & chew on stuff. She's trying very hard to sit up on her own and the physical therapy exercises we learned with Ian in this same regard are back in use! Charlotte is also very near crawling as she's getting up on all fours on her own and finds it terribly amusing that she can make herself rock. CHARLOTTE ROCKS! :)

Here's a video of our girl sitting and then doing a wonderfully executed face plant.

Teething madness

Ian is teething. By teething we mean TEETHING! He's waking up at 5AM most mornings crying and is pretty whiny the rest of the time. Poor kid. He's just cut his bottom first molars and we're sure the upper ones are not far away. Thank heavens for ibuprofen!

He'll have his 18 month well-baby visit with the pediatrician later this month. No shots this time. We like to do it a few days early so that we have stats to give his birthparents in their update letters. The next one is due at 18 months, then again at 24 months and then each year thereafter until he's 18.

What do you think of Mr. Jazz Hands & his new summer do?

A day in the life...

Here's a video for you to enjoy of a day in the life of our little rays of sunshine. Ian's favorite song is, "If you're happy and you know it." His second favorite song is, "Itsy Bitsy Spider." Charlotte doesn't have a favorite song just yet. She's mainly into chewing on anything she can get into her mouth and rocking on her hands & knees. Enjoy!

Our Little Picasso

We are the proud recipients of Ian's first work of art. Isn't it glorious?

We see some real talent blossoming here.

Welcome, welcome!

Greetings earthlings! Welcome to our family blog. In an effort to keep everyone updated on the happenings of the kids, we've created this blog. Now you can check up on us whenever you want and not just when we send out mass emails. We'll be updating you on what we're up to and how the kids are doing. We promise to include pictures too. :)

Save this blog to your favorites and remember your login information! Because we'll be posting photos of the kids we've chosen to allow access to the blog by invitation only. Sorry for the inconvenience. We're just protecting our kids.

Sending only good wishes,

Laura