Growing

You always hear how each child can be so different, but you don’t really grasp it until what everyone has been telling you is proven true. I mean, how can a child by the same two parents, raised in the same environment, be complete opposites of their sibling!? Well, that’s Lake and Kaydriana for sure!

I took Lake to his 15 month well child check up on Thursday. Unlike his sister at this age, he is only "saying" two words: "Wussat?" and "uh oh". Dr. Schrier was not concerned. She said that between now and 18 months, he'll really start picking up on vocabulary and told me how I can help teach him to add to his current vocabulary, such as say, "ooh, what's that?" She said, she'd consider, "ooh" a word when used together with "whats that". 

She was pleased to hear that he hasn't gotten any fevers since his 12 month check up when he had a bad reaction to the MMR vaccine. He was due for three more vaccines, plus the flu shot. And so far, no bad reactions! 

Ironically, Thursday night as I was putting Lake to bed, he really seemed engaged in wanting to learn. It's like he knew I was concerned about him being a bit behind. He had one of his animal books, so we went through it and I tried to make the appropriate animal sounds and have him copy me. It's pretty funny right now because he growls when you ask him what something says. When we went to LaSheika and Asa's house the other day, it was fun for Asa to ask Lake what something says, including, "What does mommy say?" and he replied of course with, "Roar"

So we get to the frog and I make the, "ribbit" noise over and over again and I can see his little mouth is trying to figure out how to form the noise. Then we get to the monkey and I make the "ooh ooh aah aah" noise and after a couple of tries, he finally makes the, "aah aah" sound and starts giggling, he was just so tickled with himself! So we go back and forth for about a 1/2 hour and he is loving it, and so am I! Then he grabs my nose! The reason I was so excited about this is because I've been trying to teach him where his nose and ears are, but he would never copy me. So then I point to his nose and then he grabs his ear. It's like all of a sudden a light switch went off and he wants to learn! I loved it!!

Then last night, watching the Hawks game, we raised our arms up and said, "touch down!" and guess what he does? He raises his arms up and says, "touch down"! It's officially his third word! 

Watching my kids learn and grow is by far one of my most favorite parts of parenthood. Even though Lake isn't as verbal as Kaydriana was, I know he'll get there. While she might become an actress or some sort of performer, Lake has quite the arm on him and will probably be a pitcher or a bowler ;)