A Long Hiatus - Sorry

It's been a while and a lot has happened. Let's start with Christmas first. We had a wonderful holiday, and the girls got lots of nice toys and a few cute outfits as well. They completely don't "get it" yet, so next year will probably be the first Christmas around our house with the huge excitement. Nonetheless, they enjoyed this holiday. And they're enjoying all their new toys.

Nicole playing with an ornament. This one survived. (See below.)

Kaitlyn with her pom poms. Santa left those in their stockings.

Wow. We each got Cabbage Patch twins this year!!! Here's Kaitlyn looking at hers.

Grandma with her three grandkids. What a photo!

Nicole playing with ornaments on the tree. Kaitlyn wasn't too into the tree, but Nicole sure was. We ended up putting our play yard fence around the tree but finally had to take it down Christmas morning. I think she broke 4-6 ornaments this year in the short time that she had access to the tree. This particular one she's grabbing right now was a Christmas gift to me from my mom this year and it lasted all of about 4 hours on our tree before she broke it. Oh well.

Seond thing to update is their 18th month checkup. Both kids lost in percentiles for weight.

Nicole still gained weight but just not on a proportionate basis which is why her percentiles declined. She in the 78th percent which is great. And she's 97th in height!!! She may be one tall cookie. A good balance between height and weight. The strange thing with Kaitlyn is that she not only declined on the percentile scale, but she actuall LOST weight from her 15 month checkup. Needless to say, the doctor wasn't crazy about that. Kaitlyn is now in the 3rd percentile for weight and 50th for height. The doctor has insisted on a very high calorie diet for her (but obviously not for Nicole which presents an interesting cooking challenge). Specifically, our doctors said Kaitlyn should have a pasta with butter and cheese every day!!!

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Also, the pediatrician still agrees with me about the few oddities that I've noticed with Kaitlyn, so we will proceed down the path of going to visit a developmental pediatrician who will evaluate her. She still has her bouncing stim and she's still not talking at the rate she should be. I think Mike and I are talking ourselves out of the fact that she might be autistic and instead think she might be on the autism spectrum but somewhere very mild where it's called something else. And I don't even know if Mike agrees with me on that. We'll see what the doctor says in March (it takes a long time to get these appts).

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On a postive note, we do have more words than we did for our last post. Kaitlyn continues to say many animal noises: duck, horse, bee, owl, snake, and lion. She also says baby, bath and ball. And recently she's begun to say circle and I swear I heard the word cookie yesterday. There are a few other words too, but I can't remember right now.

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Nicole on the other hand is really starting to babble. She says: uh oh, oh boy, oh my, oh no (lots of phrases with "oh"), and my favorite...Oh Toodles (anyone who has watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse will get that one). You can say to her, Nicole do we need a Mousekatool, and she'll respond, Oh Toodles, which is exactly correct. That's what Mickey will say on the show. She also says shoe, night night, bubble, and touchdown. Now, here's what's really impressive!!!! I don't think this is normal...I could be wrong, so pardon my excitement if this isn't impressive...my 1 1/2 year old child can count to TEN already!!!! WOW!!!