18 Months

While we were in Pittsburgh, yet another milestone passed. Emma turned 18 months. Each passing month seems to fly by faster. Although, somehow each day seems to pass by a little slower. Maybe it's because Emma only takes one nap these days, which is usually in the morning shortly after she gets up, leaving all afternoon for me to entertain the little one. Living through a New Hampshire winter doesn't help either.

We've been spending a lot of our days coloring and painting with water. Emma's getting quite proficient at scribbling and has been learning her colors. Most of the time, everything is either blue, red or orange ('oh-ange'), but every now and then she gets purple, yellow or brown right. As long as she doesn't eat the crayons, which is often a problem, I consider the coloring successful.

Monday we had her 18-month well-baby check up. We seem to be gearing up again for around of doctor's visits. It's funny. I used to go to doctor's appointments constantly and looked forward to the day when the load would be lighter. Doctor's appointments were easier back then though. I don't know why, but it was just a routine we were in. They didn't really stress me out and I didn't dread each one. Now that the day has come when they are few and far between, I have a much harder time dealing with them, imagining all the things they could tell me were wrong even though I didn't see any symptoms.

Anyway, her appointment went pretty well. She weighed 22 pounds. They weighed her naked this time which I was happy about. At her 15 month, the weighed her in a sweat suit with a very full diaper and shoes on. I'm not sure how they thought that would be a good comparison to her previous weights, but whatever. So although it seemed that she gained less than a pound since October, she is actually still on her growth curve, right in between the 10th and 25th percentiles.

Her head circumference was about 19 inches which was the same as 3 months ago. I'm not sure how much of an indicator of a problem head size is for her anymore since her sutures are fusing together not allowing her head to expand the way it used to to accomodate a pressure build up, but I supposed it's still good to know that she isn't having huge changes. She's still about 90th percentile for head siez, but like I've said before, she comes from a long line of big heads.

The big surprise was her height. She was almost 34 inches putting her in the 95th percentile. She grew almost 3 1/2 inches in the last 3 or 4 months! I guess it shouldn't have been a huge surprise. I had noticed that her pants were all a bit short all of a sudden.

The doctor was happy to hear about all of the things she is going developmentally especially her vocabulary. He asked if she was building a vocabulary. I said, 'Oh yes'. He asked is she was using 7 words or so regularly. I wasn't really sure how to answer since there aren't many words she can't say. I told him that she is more in the '100 +' range of regularly used words, that she speaks mostly in phrases and a few sentences, and can identify the numbers 1 - 8 along with almost all of the letters of the alphabet. He was quite surprised by all that and simply said that she was clearly accelling in that area.

The only thing he was a bit concerned about, as were we, was that Emma's left eye tends to wander outward when she's tired or thinking hard about something. So we're going to see a pediatric opthamalogist in March. He didn't seem overly concerned, but felt like it was worth looking into. I don't think it is much more than strabismus which I THINK is fairly easily treated. Maybe some eyedrops or a patch for short periods each day until the eye gets stronger. Of course, in the back of my mind I wonder if it could be neurological, but she isn't giving me any other signs that she's having a problem with her shunt. So we'll see ...

On the 8th, she has an MRI to see how her ventricles look. Then on the 24th, we see her neurologist and a neuropsychologist for a cognitive evaluation. I think it's just to get a bench mark so that if she were to have a decline in cognition, we would be able to catch it. I suppose if the eye wandering is shunt related, they'll be able to tell us. I don't suspect that will be the case though. Hopefully, the MRI and neuro appointments will just be routine and will tell us what we already know - Emma is doing REALLY well.

I've really noticed a change in Emma lately. She just seems so grown up. She eats with a fork and a spoon. She feeds her baby doll a bottle. She wants to constantly climb up the stairs instead of being carried. She really is a little kid. She doesn't even look like a baby anymore. I know before I know it, July will be here and we'll be celebrating her 2nd birthday!