I took Spencer to see Dr. Walley on Friday for his 18 month old checkup and all looks good!  BIG and good!  🙂  As Dr. Walley said, Spencer’s the height of a nice sized 2 year old!  😉  He’s 34 inches (98th%!!) and 27.5 lbs (95th%). His head is 19.25 inches (95th%). That means he’s grown 2 whole inches in only 3 months and gained 2.5 lbs. My sweet, big boy.  For comparison, here’s Maxwell’s 18 months stats: 33 inches tall (75th to 90th %) and 24 lbs, 13 oz. (50th %). Needless to say, little brother may not be the littlest one forever!  🙂

He’s got a nasty cough again with a little bit of wheezing so we’re going to try putting him on Singulair for a while to see if that will help open up his airways and let him breathe a little better.  No way to tell if he’ll end up with asthma or not but Dr. Walley seems to think that if we can control it with Singulair now, we should be ok. He had to get 3 shots which is the only reason he got to have puppy with him at the doctor!

Dr. Walley isn’t concerned yet with his (total) lack of words. I think I mentioned earlier that we have started the Early Intervention through the state to get speech therapy. Here’s the quick version: At 15 months, Dr. Walley mentioned that if he wasn’t talking by 18 months, perhaps we should look into Early Intervention. With no words at 17 months I decided to go on and move forward. I called the state to set up an evaluation which was done at the AL Department of Rehabilitation which is about as nice and welcoming as it sounds…as in not at all.  We had a 30 minute “evaluation” done by 3 ladies, one of which was a therapist sitting on the floor with a bunch of outdated toys, all trying to get Spencer to do things he could do, but didn’t want to. He just wanted to get out of that room. Period. But, we made it through and I burst into tears afterward. Not surprisingly, he qualified for Early Intervention because he has a greater than 25% language delay.  They then sent his case to UCP and we got assigned to a totally lovely, really sweet therapist named Carrie who will come once a month until it’s no longer needed.  Our first session was last week and, honestly, it was kind of a big nothing. She basically just gave us some encouragement and reminded us to be very intentional in all of our interactions with Spencer and use every moment as a teaching moment.  She wants us to start teaching him some signs to use and focus on using short phrases, i.e. “put in” instead of “put the toy in the box.”  She expressed no concern over Spencer catching up eventually and I really don’t have a concern either.  He babbles ALL THE TIME and is a very vocal baby. It just doesn’t come in the form of real words yet.  Well, not real words to us but I’m positive that the sounds he’s using are very real and attached to specific things in his head.  All that to say, he’s getting the help he needs now because I pushed it forward and I’m glad about that.

Also, I’m going to record his first real word as Nana. He has a picture book and several times he has pointed directly at the banana and said “Nana.”  So, nana it is.  Go Spencey go!!

Real words or not, this kid has no problem communicating his wants.  And he may not say “I love you Momma” but he sure does know how to show it!  🙂

See you tomorrow!