One and a Half Years Old!

Whoops! Jeremy's eighteen-month birthday wooshed past without the milestone blog entry. Here it is, belatedly.

The best news is that Jeremy was well for his well-baby visit on the 25th. His pediatrician, Schery Mitchell, enjoyed playing with him for a change, rather than poking and prodding to find out what made him sick.

First, the numbers:

• Jeremy is 33.25 inches tall, which apparently puts him on track to pass the six-foot mark. He will probably pass me up when he is eleven.
• He is 23.2 pounds -- not quite what he was before he went into the hospital. He is regaining his strength and muscle tone, though.
• His body mass index (yes, they record this for babies which is silly) is 14.1%, equal to an elite athlete.
• He seems to have all of his teeth. Even his upper cuspids are cutting through slowly.

Jeremy's vocabulary is growing. Words he says regularly include:

• Bottle ("ba-ba")
• Ball ("ball")
• Bubble ("buh-buh")
• Bye-bye ("bah-bye")
• Mama ("ma ma" or "ma ma ma")
• Dog ("dog")
• Cat ("cat")
• Duck ("duck")
• Dirt ("dirt")
• Done ("done")
• Down ("down")
• Go ("go")
• Go downstairs ("go down")
• Goldfish ("go")
• Cracker ("crock")
• Hat ("hat")
• Hot ("hot")
• Uh-oh ("uh-oh")
• That ("dat")
• Yes ("yeah" or "yup")
• No ("no")

There's probably more, but he is very good at communicating what he wants with these core words. He also uses the signs for "more," "shoes," "milk," "owwie," "potty" and "home."

He has been well for almost two weeks now, and he is learning in leaps and bounds. He is mastering more and more complex tasks on a daily basis, and I love being with him to watch him blossom. We keep an active schedule. He enjoys his weekly Gymboree class where he crawls through tunnels, climbs up a small climbing wall, runs across bridges, plays with parachutes, and shoots hoops. The women's basketball season began a couple of weeks ago, so we have been attending the Sacramento Monarchs games, where Jeremy's dancing routinely gets featured on the Jumbotron for 10,000 fans to enjoy. Over the Memorial Day weekend , we went to Plumas County in the Sierra Nevada, where he twirled through the unseasonal snowfall, kicked rocks and splashed in the mountain streams. We also are on a mission to enjoy as many of Sacramento's wonderful parks as possible. When he tires out, he likes to explore the interactive books "Where the Wild Things Are" and "Guess How Much I Love You" on his Little Touch Leap Pad. And when he sleeps, his Mommy and I revel in what a beautiful spirit he is and how blessed we are.