Dear Drew ~ Your typical day when you are home goes something like this:
- Get up around 8:30am and eat breakfast shortly thereafter (give or take 30 minutes)
- Lunch at 12:30
- Nap from 1:30 - 3:30 (sometimes you get up earlier, sometimes later)
- Snack
- Dinner at 6:30
- Bath at 7:15
- Snack at 8:00
- Read books
- Bedtime at 8:30
That's right, you typically sleep a full twelve hours at night! You have been a great sleeper since the beginning and I continue to *believe* wholeheartedly that you inherited my side of the family's sleep gene!
You still eat in your highchair, which is more like a booster seat with a tray. Keeps me from having to chase you allover the place! And we always try to eat dinner together at the kitchen snack bar. You are really good at drinking out of an open top cup, so that is usually what we give you when you are in your highchair. Of course sometimes you like to see what happens when you tip the cup a little too far over... You're also really good with a spoon and fork and are using your left hand (like your momma!) most of the time.
Some of your favorite foods are: waffles, Cini-mini's from Burger King (thanks to Grandma), oatmeal, grilled cheese, fish sticks, chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, spaghetti, carrots, corn on the cob, sweet potatoes, bananas, grapes, and apples. Most of it is typical toddler food! You go back and forth on whether or not you like green beans, peas, broccoli w/cheese, and eggs but I keep giving them to you pretty often anyway! You still choke at times, but it has gotten so much better. I use to dread meal time because I knew that you would almost always end up choking, getting mad, and then not eating anymore. I'm glad that phase has (almost) passed!
You are still seeing Jaci for speech two times per week. It is coming along slowly and I have probably self-diagnosed you with every speech disorder there is! But everyone assures me that your speech will pick up soon -- we just have to keep working on it. Right now, most everything you say (or try to say) is in a CV (constant vowel) combination so we are working really hard on getting you into the habit of using CVC (i.e. mom) or CVCV (i.e. momma) sounds. The speech therapist at St. Louis wants us to continue working on p, b, and m sounds and on getting you to use your lips more. We have become pretty creative on turning any object into something that begins with one of those sounds -- i.e. dog is pup or puppy, rabbit is bunny, etc.
Your favorite things to play with are your little animal figurines. You have a set of farm animals and a set of wildlife/zoo animals. They are the first thing you go for every morning. And you always like to have them in pairs. So you'll find the two cows, or the two elephants and play with them. It's always funny to watch you make them dance and give them bites and drinks of pretend food from your kitchen!
You also love anything you can ride on; especially 4-wheelers and lawn mowers. Colby and Whitney both have 4-wheelers and you like to ride the red one, then the yellow one, then the red one again...well, you get the point! You still haven't figured out the tractor we got you for your birthday, but I'm sure that by next summer, you'll be all over the neighborhood!
Where do you spend your time at these days? Well, the weekends you are at home with me and your dad and then I don't work on Monday's so we spend the day together. On Tuesday, you go to daycare. On Wednesday, you spend the day with Nan and Aunt Barrie. Then you are with grandma (and grandpa, Colby, Whitney, Mama Mary Kay, Mama Lorene...) from Thursday mornings until Friday night.
You know almost all of your colors. Even though you can't "say" the color, you can definitely identify them. Your receptive language overall is great! When Jaci last evaluated you, your reception language scores were above average!
When you are at home, we try to keep the TV off. When you do watch TV, I would say that your favorite show is Wonder Pets. You still get a kick out of the Baby McDonald Baby Einstein video too. You also love watching Barney at Grandma's house! (Daddy won't allow it at our house - ha!)
One of my favorite things is getting hugs from you. If daddy gets you up in the morning, then when I come in there, you run straight for me and give me a big hug! When I say "give me a kiss," you turn your check toward me so I can kiss it!
We haven't started potty training yet because you are still at the point where you don't really care if you have a wet or dirty diaper on. You will sit on the potty, though, so we usually do that before bath time. I forgot to mention that when we were in St. Louis last month, you were running around the hotel room with no diaper on because we had just gotten back from swimming and all of a sudden you #2'd in the floor. (Hope that wasn't TMI!) The look on your face was PRICELESS!! You could tell that you were thinking..."What in the world is that?" -- ha! Although I do think it made you make a connection because the next couple of days you would point to your diaper whenever it was dirty. Maybe I need to let you run around without a diaper more often!!
Last of all, I love your bedtime routine. We sit in the same rocking chair every night with the same pillow and same blanket. We read exactly 4 books, then you go over to the couch to give daddy a hug and then you run back over to me. When I pick you up, you put your head down on my shoulder while I say your prayer and sing you a little song. Then I lay you down and cover you up and you are asleep in no time. (The Ferber method, while tough, was the best thing we ever did!)
Well, this turned out really long, but now that I've written about everything you've been up to, I can know focus on just writing about the new stuff each month!
We love you Drew!
