Merry Christmas

We wanted to thank everyone for the wonderful gifts this Christmas! We had a great couple of days with grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles all over town. Matthew really enjoyed his Christmas too, tearing into wrapping paper with gusto this year. He loves his new toys, books, and clothes! We hope everyone else had a wonderful day too! We have new photos posted too, see them here!

Getting Bigger!

We took Matthew to his 18 months check-up today. He now weighs 26 pounds (50th percentile), he is 31.5" long (25th percentile), and his head is 19.5" (75th percentile)! In just six months he has gained six pounds and grown almost three inches! Everything else checked out with his visit and he got only three shots in his thighs. Our doctor was very pleased with Matthew's progress on his growth chart and so were we! After I got home from work, we took Matthew to see some real reindeer. Of course he was petrified of Santa, but he LOVED the reindeer. They were as soft as Norm and Matthew just wanted to stay and pet them all night.

Only two more work days until I have two weeks off for break. I am looking forward to relaxing and spending time with Matthew. We plan on playing a lot outside over break and already have some play dates scheduled at Jungle Joes and Bounce Land with some friends. We put some pictures of the reindeer and Matthew on our photo site. Enjoy!

18 months!

Matthew had his 18 month "birthday" yesterday! He is growing into such a big boy. He now will only eat if he is the one doing it, meaning he will not allow us to feed him with a fork or spoon and he loves drinking his milk out of a straw. He is surprisingly doing very well in the area of self feeding. He is getting better every day. Tonight we went to the mall to see Santa and at dinner he fed himself applesauce and macaroni and cheese. He only dropped one piece of macaroni. I don't think much misses his mouth.

Visiting Santa was a completely different story. Last year was a great experience, he could care less about who he was with. Tonight was different. He started getting restless waiting in line, we were the second people might I add. When it was time to get on Santa's lap, he did everything in his power to get off. He never cried though and once he was off, he was all smiles...little stinker! I should add though that he is weirdly afraid of every man with glasses, a beard and mustache, except Donny (Deah's husband), so we were pretty much preparing our self for this reaction. We have one more Christmas party to attend that will have a surprise visit by Santa himself, maybe that day will be different?

Happy Thanksgiving

We hope everyone had a very nice and relaxing Thanksgiving! We spent the day with Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma Chenery, Uncle Mark and Aunt Julie, and Uncle Bruce and Aunt Joene. After that visit we had dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Genisio's house. We did another non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner (sorry Debi!) and opted for southern fried chicken, twice baked potatoes and cornbread! Boy was it yummy. Matthew enjoyed eating and trying all the different flavors. His favorite though was pumpkin pie, whipped cream and ice cream! It was also nice to have Ryan home for Thanksgiving. Work is picking up again and he is working twelve hour days this past week, including this entire weekend. So, while Ryan was working, Matthew and I put up our Christmas decorations today; inside and out. All we need now is our tree, which will hopefully be here soon.

Kalamazoo Valley Museum

Ryan is on his annual hunting weekend up north, so Matthew and I were looking for things to do. Since it was snowing and too cold to play outside, Grandma Genisio had the idea to go downtown to the museum. Matthew had a ball! The museum is small, but very kid friendly and best of all it is free! We played in the 0-5 year room with tons of other kiddos. Matthew was quite upset when it was time to go to lunch! The rest of the museum is very kid friendly, offering many different options for other children of all ages.

It was very neat to see how Matthew's mind works while we were there. He was quite fond of an activity where you get a rubber ball and it rolls back and forth down a couple of ramps until reaching the bottom. He quickly figured out how to get the ball out of the hole and where to walk to drop it back in. He also did a great job of sharing with the other children wanting to play there too. He was also quite fond of the crayons and paper. They had a camping room with a tent and outdoor themed murals and a table for crayon rubbings. Matthew loves to climb just about anything right now, including chairs and he really enjoyed coloring and playing with crayons. We were so busy with that little room, that we ran out of time to even visit the top floor to see the mummy and the older kids room...next time for sure! After the museum, we went to lunch and then to the mall for a ride on the carousel...another one of Matthew's favorite activities! Visit our photo site to see more fun pictures from the museum!

Ear Update

I took Matthew to the ENT yesterday for his six month follow-up for his tubes. Luckily we had record's day because of the election, so I didn't have to take a half day from work! Matthew's tubes are still in place...yeah! The doctor thinks they may fall out by the summer, but we have to wait to see. We are keeping our fingers crossed that as we enter cold and flu season, the tubes will do their job. On the bright side, since getting his tubes in April, Matthew has only had one cold!

His language is delayed, which we already knew. Not only is he a boy, but he couldn't hear normally until about 11 months; he is delayed in his expressive speech. Right now he is saying about six words, three of which have started in the last week or so. Our goal for him is 50 words by our next appointment in April. We are not worried at all that he won't reach this goal. His receptive language is right on target. He understands much more than he can express. If we tell him it is time for bed, he will walk to his door. If we tell him to get his shoes on, he will walk to the laundry room, sit down and try to put his shoes on. If Deah asks him if he is thirsty, he will walk to the kitchen and sit down for a cup of water. He understands what we want him to do, now we have to work on getting him to tell us. His last hearing test showed that he was within the normal range. I believe he will have another hearing test in April.

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween! We had a gorgeous day and wonderful weather to celebrate Halloween! Matthew was an adorable monkey and surprisingly he loves being in his costume. He didn't fuss one bit and kept the monkey head on too. Grandma Debi brought him to school in the afternoon to see my kids and be in the school parade. Then he got to play on the playground with Grandma while we finished up out day at school. We decided this year to drive Matthew to some houses for a Halloween visit. First we saw Ann, Wally and Sadee, then we drove to see Aunt Sarah, Uncle Cory, Grandma Julie, Grandpa Dave, and Grandma Phyllis. After that we saw Deah and Sonja from daycare and lastly we saw Pat from school! It's nice that Sarah and Cory's house is in the same neighborhood as daycare and Pat, so it was very easy. Once we got home, we let Matthew help pass out the candy to all the neighborhood kiddos. He really enjoyed that job. He tried the whole one for me-one for you thing with the candy, but he didn't get very far. He kept tying to eat it all so we had to put a stop to it. Thank you to Grandma and Grandpa Genisio for staying at our house and handing out candy while we were gone! As usual we took a ton of photos. Enjoy the Halloween pictures of our monkey!