Christmas

I know it's been quite a hiatus and i don't have pictures downloaded from the camera yet, but i wanted to post and let everyone know what a nice Christmas we had. We thoroughly enjoyed hosting both my family and JT's and i think everyone enjoyed Henry's antics very much.

We took advantage of the mild Chicago weather to head down to the Christkindlmarket on Christmas Eve. Henry liked looking at the extensive train set, huge Christmas tree, and decorated windows at Marshall Fields. He made out with a few pre-Christmas gifts and had quite the giggle fest on the drive home while his new squirrel finger-puppet pretended to eat his crackers.

JT did quite the cooking bonanza on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and we had enough baked goods and sweets to more than cover everyone's dessert needs. We discovered that Henry loves muffins which is nice because at least we have one more food item we think he'll eat, but not as good as if we had discovered he loved asparagus or protein shakes.

The one thing that wasn't so great was Henry's health. It's not that he's particularly sick (although today his little cough was sounding pretty horrible) but he's had lower GI upset for over a week now. The nurse told me to expect this-- that it can take 2 weeks to totally go away. But untold diapers and wipes later, we're still bracing for particularly gross diaper changes, and now he's got a horrible diaper rash to boot. I've rounded up some rash treatments from fellow moms and hopefully some of them will start to work. Henry's new bath toys aren't getting quite the workout we thought they would because the bath just hurts his irritated skin.

I will mention that Henry went back to physical therapy for the first time in a month (he was out because of the surgery and guests) and it was a particularly horrible session. He cried and cried hysterically when we tried to get him to walk up the stairs and when he wasn't crying he was just completely dead-set against whatever we wanted him to do. We're back to once a week sessions until he can get back to where he was and JT and i have redoubled our efforts to work with him so that hopefully he can make some progress.

One thing that he started doing while everyone was visiting was saying a few more words. He had the bare-minimum of words at his 18 month ped. appointment to be counted in the "normal" range. The words he had however, were "spontaneous" in the sense that he didn't pick them up mimicking us-- he just started saying them one day. In the past when you tried to get him to say a word he would just stare at you or say "yeah." This week he started trying to repeat words after people and he picked a funny one to start with-- Yellow. He loves this word and now says it all the time. He seems to really like making his mouth contort because he says it really exageratedly. He also says red and blue and tried to repeat blueberries and a few other things after me. Hopefully this will be a trend and he'll also make the "normal" cut at his 2 year appointment.

Pictures coming soon i promise...