Sundays in the Park

Sorry about that folks. I didn't mean to take such a long blog break. I've been a bit uninspired with my photography lately (its becoming that time of year when its harder and harder to take indoor photos without a flash), which makes for poor blog content. Plus, I've felt like we had some milestones and posts to talk about, but there never seemed to be time to sit down and talk about them...so I'll opt for a bullet point catch up post to get you all up to speed.

1. Elliott is 18 months old (actually almost 19 months now)!! Which is also kind of hard to believe that we've been parents for a year and a half already! Sometimes, I still feel like we have everything to learn and other times, it feels more like an old hat and I don't expect either of those feelings to go away any time soon :)
2. We took him for his 18 month check up, where he stayed squarely in the 8% range for his weight, making the doctor very happy. In fact, the doctor cleared him all the way until his next well-baby check up at 2 years! He also measured 32.5 inches tall (25-30%) and about 50% for his head. All in all, very consistent growth out of our boy.
3. One thing that we did learn at that appointment is that he is a bit "behind" (and I use this term loosely) in his language development. At the time of his appointment he was saying (on his own, as part of his regular speech) 2-3 words, at most. I guess they are usually saying 7-10 words by 18 months. Elliott had certainly said 7-10 words, but not as part of his regular speech.
4. So the doctor referred Elliott to a speech pathologist to review him and see what his word count really is at, as well as give us some ideas on how to encourage more spontaneous word usage...
5. ...which of course led Elliott to turn up his game! It's been like the switch got flipped on the last week or so. Elliott's now saying "shoe(s)", "cheese", "tree(s)", "ball", "chair", "pretzel", "banana", and "story" in addition to the "daddy", "uh-oh" and "iseeyou" he was saying before. So exciting! He has been really hungry for his big picture/word books and wants to know what everything is...all the time.
6. Brad had a birthday and he and I got a chance to go out for a nice dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants, Cafe 21. (Hence the weekly photo below of my stuffed chicken). We also saw the movie Inception.
7. I was able to get away for a little overnight with my girls last weekend. We went to Laguna Beach (also one of the weekly photos below) and ate a lot of yummy food, but mostly just enjoyed the down time and being with each other. Its been a long time since we had one of our retreats and we knew we had to fit one in between all this kids we've been having ;)
8. Brad started his Fall semester this week. He has two long days and one short day. So I have moved my work schedule around a bit to accommodate Brad's departure schedule and when my mom arrives to watch him for the day. I am thankful yet again, that we have been able to keep Elliott at home for as long as we have...not that we've had much choice - daycare is expensive! But its been nice. At some point next year we'll sign him up for preschool a couple mornings a week, since it will be really good for him to be around other kids (right now, he just doesn't seem to know what to do with them!)...but until then, we've decided to save as many pennies as we can! (after all, its looking like we will be able to swing buying a house pretty soon...I can almost taste it!)
9. I got a new sewing table...and it has changed my life. Okay, not really, but it has been really, really great. I absolutely love having dedicated space that takes moments to set up...rather than using nearly 1/2 my work time just to clean off and restack the dining room table. I tried to take some photos, but I'm not happy with them. So when I'm in a better position to show what I'm working on, I'll take a few more that will hopefully show off how awesome it is. Thanks again IKEA for having great space-saving solutions!
10. The downside to my new sewing space is that it was recycled from Jenny's old space. We are still getting used to the idea that she's actually gone, something we still can't believe sometimes. We miss her terribly and the Jenny reflexes are still there sometimes. I told Brad to be careful getting into bed the other night (I was half asleep), so he didn't sit on her :(
11. Okay, I totally didn't intend to leave that list on such a bummer of a note, so...Have a great weekend! We are going to go to our friends' baby shower tomorrow and its going to be a lot of fun! Its also Elliott's last day of swim class!