Happy 21 months Owen Elijah!

Wow- How did a year and 3/4's pass by so fast? Seriously.

Owen is full of personality. He has the most expressive eyes and says a ton just by the way he looks at us;-).




Here are his 21 month stats:



Weight= 18 pounds 15 ounces...could the kid just hit the 19 pound mark please? He is dropping off his own curve and trying to drive me to an early grave with concern. He's holding steady at the weight of an average healthy 7 1/2 month old-Geesh! I'm seriously surprised CPS hasn't been brought into our home due to his lack of growth;-(

Height= 30 inches...finally a chart he might be catching up on a little...he's actually now the height of an average healthy 12 1/2 month old.



Head size has stayed steady at 47cm...which is also falling off the growth charts...down from just at the 25th percentile 2-3 months ago to now just hovering over the 10th percentile. Now, I'm not super worried about this and it's way better than excessive growth since he had that mild benign hydrocephalus we were watching a year ago. Speaking of a year ago...I can't believe we were trekking back and forth to Chicago each week for his Doc band just a year ago. That seems like forever ago and I really feel that God gave me an unreal peace about those travels and times as I now shudder to think of doing that all over (but when we were doing it, it wasn't that bad;-).




Anyway, all this growth stuff to say, Owen is still small. Big shocker. He looks bigger to me though. He doesn't look like he is in only the 3rd percentile for weight for length charts (a chart that does not take age into account, just size:-). I even plotted him on the SGA (small for gestational age) charts just to try to make myself feel better but it didn't help since he still wasn't landing on their smallest curves. Why do I do this to myself month after month? I guess I'm just always hoping he will "catch up"...what I would give to know how tall he will be someday. My other issue is since he is so Small in the weight arena, I struggle to know if I should try to force calories (like high calorie drinks and such. I know this is a question for his MD...I'm just venting here.

As for communication, he is saying more words and can sign about anything we ask him to now-he's been a very fast learner of signs. He still gets frustrated at times trying to communicate with us-for example wen he knows what he wants to eat but doesn't know how to convey pop tart since he can't say Pop tart. We let him point a lot;-)

He has 10 teeth-or is it 12, I can't remember about those upper molars, but it's 12 if he has those too. So he's just missing the canine teeth. His smile is so precious and we LOVE his belly laugh. Speaking of bellies...he's into them-a phase I hope passes very soon or I'll lose friends over him continually picking up my shirt to make sure my belly is still there. I try to assure him-it is indeed still there-I wish it were gone, but it's definitely here;-)



He loves our neighbor kids Hannah (7), Gracie (4), and Chase (9) and will pretty much come out of any mood to play with them. He hugs and kisses them. He waves and such. It's a very cute relationship and they love him too!




Onto boo-boos...remember the head injury from last week...well, it was healing pretty well but I've caught him picking at it a lot so now I'm tyring a band aid to see if he will leave it alone-if not, he'll end up with a heck of a scar.

He has his appt with the orthopedic MD this week. I figure nothing will come of it but feel it's prudent to make sure the pt we are doing is enough. And I guess I didn't mention it but he got cute new little nike's shoes since he is now in a size 4 shoe! I just got him some jeans and the 6-12 month jeans from old navy are a little long but will hopefully work out this fall. He's pretty much in all 9-12 month clothes. We put him in size 4 diapers but really the 3's were fine.

He starts childcare in ONE MONTH! He will start right in with the 2's classroom;-( Oh, where did my baby go? I've talked alot with the director of the facility and she is not at all concerned about his small size and believes other kids at most will call him a baby, but I don't think he'll even care (for now). She said they will correct kids when they do that and of course teasing and such isn't allowed-not to mention how much can these 2 year olds really say? Here's what I'm saying...can you say potty training? I'm stoked that maybe someone else can do that yucky job;-)

Alright, I better scoot since his Speech session starts shortly-)