Happy 22-month Birthday, Rowan!

Yeah, this post is a little late. But, better late than never, right? So, without further ado, here's the update on our little man. As usual, he keeps us laughing and marveling at his cleverness all the time.

• Likes: Doing things for himself; Being the boss, especially to the cats, and sometimes to Mommy and Daddy; talking - we have quite the chatterbox on our hands; singing Jingle Bells; scratching others when he gets excited (the good and bad kind)
• Dislikes: Going to sleep at night and waking up in the morning. In the mornings, he'll grab his rag ("Guy"), squint his eyes shut and pull the covers up to "get cozy". Or, he'll claim that it's too cold and scrunch under the blanket.
• Vocab: I think he's on the verge of a language explosion. In the past couple of weeks, even having been sick, he's progressed from 2-word phrases to complete sentences. Some of his favorites are: "I'll get it." "Whatchu doing?" "Go away!" and "More please." I can tell that he sometimes struggles to think of the right words to say, but he definitely knows what he wants to communicate. He also has some new vocab words that are funny: itchy, jingle bells (kee-koo-buhs), timber (like a lumberjack yells), and pickle. There are tons of other new words, but they aren't as interesting.
• New Skills: He's getting a lot better at coloring. He can control his hand movements much better and he likes to use several different colors. He's also cutting back on eating the crayons. He also like to "read" books by himself. He points out various things on the pages and then says "All done" at the end. He's also getting really good at identifying letters and singing a more complete version of the A,B,C Song. And, he can count to 10 with some assistance.

We've been trying to get him used to the fact that a baby will be coming to live with us soon. I don't think the news has sunk in yet, as he keeps referring to himself as "Baby". It will be interesting to see how he copes with being the big brother.

Down with the sickness

Yep, the cooties have returned to our house. Maybe they never left. They just go into hiding for a week and then pop out and infect us all over again. That's my germ theory (conspiracy?). For those of you who want the gory details, here they are. Rowan just recovered from an RSV-induced bout of bronchiolitis. That was fun. I got to give him albuterol via inhaler. He took it like a champ, though. I think the novelty of the contraption made it fun. You want to know something weird? Our health insurance, which is pretty awesome, paid for the medication but not the spacer thingy. It only cost around $20, but still. That sort of seems like charging for the eye dropper dispenser that comes with liquid medicine for kids. Is it remotely realistic to think that a 22-month-old could use an inhaler without the spacer doodad? Really people.

Anyway, Rowan has kicked the bronchiolitis and now has his first ear infection. We went to the doctor yesterday and she said that some kids develop ear infections following bronchiolitis. What? That would have been good information to know beforehand. Then we could have been on the lookout for it. Aiyeee.

While all this was going on with Rowan, Jeremy, my mom, my dad, and myself all got sick with some version of the bronchiolitis crud. Hopefully we will all be healthy for Christmas.

Now that you know what I've been up to I hope you can forgive my negligence in posting. Now, if you excuse me, I'm going to try to get some work done. And, I need to blow my nose.

Baby 2 Update

I had my 20-week check up yesterday and am very happy to report that everything looks great. The baby is exactly 1lb. and all of her organs are developing as they should. Did you catch that? I wrote "her". You got it... We also found out that our sweet baby 2 is a GIRL!

It's been a long time since we have had a little girl in our family circle. Let the adventure begin!