Henry is 18 months!

Henry is one and a half and looking every bit of it! Our nurse with Dr. Woody commented that he'd shed his "baby" and looked "all little boy"... which made us smile. Time flies when you're having fun:) We had a wonderful vacation in Des Moines and St. Louis last month! We had a long week together just being a family and happily surrounded by extended family and friends along the way! Henry saw tons of animals, butterflies, and pool time and was entertained at some of the fun kid-friendly places in St. Louis including the Zoo, Grant's Farm, Faust Park's Butterfly House, and the Magic House. Mommas got some kid-free time with Aunt Coco, Uncle Bob and Uncle Tom during the afternoons (when Grandma and Grandpa graciously took the boys home for naps- thanks again guys!) and we took tours of Anheuser Busch Brewery, the Cardinal's Busch Stadium, and even went bowling one afternoon. It's amazing how fluid conversation can be when you're not chasing after two little boys! We all had fun and Henry was awesome in the car with the help of Elmo & friends via DVD:) Now we're working on breaking him of this "elbo" addiction- Good times!

Henry had an 18 month appointment with Dr. Woody and she had all good things to say. Henry loves to play with her "sticks" (tongue depressors) and even gave her some smiles this time. Henry had a speech and hearing evaluation with CMH the very next day- busy little man! Henry's hearing checked out within normal limits which we were very pleased with. The speech pathologist evaluated Henry on both what he was able to verbalize and what she perceived he was able to understand and estimated he is about at a 6 month delay. She made the recommendation of ongoing speech therapy to help Henry progress with a return scheduled in one year for follow up. Luckily, at a recommendation from Henry's wonderful OT, Sherri, we had already met with a speech therapist earlier this month to discuss possible future services. Kari, the speech therapist with First Steps, will start working with Henry on a weekly basis for help to encourage progress with his speech and comprehension- all while in our home. If I haven't mentioned to you how amazing the First Steps program and their service providers are, I definitely need to. Henry would be a different little boy without their support and services and we are a better family for having crossed paths with these wonderful providers over the last year and a half. We are very excited to see how he responds to Kari... so stay tuned! Oh, and Henry was wonderful through the long morning and, as always, made his mommas proud!

Henry is walking on his own now! He started with the "three steps" from the couch to table, then became more and more daring as the weeks went on. Check out flickr.com for some big smiles (he even cheers "yeah!" for himself:) New additions to the vocabulary this month are "baby", "okay", "elbo" (Elmo... this one is quite frequent since the road trip!), "up", "tractor" (thanks to Baby Einstein!), "more", "bubbles", "water" and "all done". Henry is a big fan of ice cream these days- yeah! You can only imagine Julie just has to pull me down the street some evenings to go to the Miami Ice cream shop with him for a treat- ha!! Happy Summertime it is! Hope you are all enjoying it as much as we are!