Bennett Update

Bennett has added more words to his vocabulary than we can count, but here are some of them:
house, poop, dance, baby, mom, sock, bubbles, and peas (please)
He and Ethan race in the family room and he always says: ridy (ready)...go!

He is doing SO MUCH walking now. I can't believe I don't have a video on here yet. I need to stop beating myself up about my lack of blogging, but I can't help it. It will get done someday, right?
I would say he is walking over half of the time now. He is choosing to try to walk rather than crawl!

We had an appointment in Iowa City this morning for Bennett in endocrinology. I am a little discouraged because his doctor feels like he is becoming more disproportionate. She took his measurements, so we will know for sure when we get her report in the mail. He is at the 5th percentile for height at 31 inches and the 4th percentile for weight at 22lbs. 11oz. We will just continue to wait and watch him grow...and love him regardless!:)

19 Month Little Man

We had an appointment with Dr. Nau last week. It went great! Bennett is 32 inches tall. He is now in the 32nd percentile for height! He weighs 22 pounds, 12 ounces... still a little pip-squeak. His percentile for weight dropped down to the 4th percentile but Dr. Nau is not concerned because he is moving so much he is probably just burning additional calories. His head circumference is 46.9 cm, which is at the 22nd percentile.
All of this + all of the cool words he is saying = adorable!

Bennett is talking up a storm saying: Thank you, all done, down, duck, uh-oh, hot, balloon (ba-oom), pup, ki (kitty), ball, snack, juice (uice), si (paci), blanket, ba-ba, bite, book, mama, dada, apple, up

He continues to sign "more" and started signing "help" tonight!

We still go to physical therapy every week. Bennett has taken up to 5-6 steps independently now and Adam and I catch him trying walk away from a table or couch all on his own. He knows he wants to walk now, he just isn't quite strong enough yet.

Bennett is, I'm pretty sure, the LOUDEST child on the planet. Seriously loud. And, he is almost always at his loudest when we are in the car. Ethan will tell him he is hurting his ears and to be quiet, and we all laugh because Adam and I are feeling the exact same way. How do you teach a small child the concept of an "inside voice" when it seems physically impossible?! What he lacks in size he makes up for in noise!

Pictures to come, I promise. My homework is killing me!

3-5-8 and a Bunch of Words

Bennett went from 3 teeth to 5 last week, and by the end of this week he will have 8, I'm sure of it! I feel awful for him, his mouth looks like a bumpy, swollen mess. Bring on the tylenol!

Also, Bennett's speech is blossoming so much right now. Some of his new words are: yuck, down, I want that, car, duck, kee (for kitty- or anything that comes remotely close:), and pup.

I have tons of cute fall and Halloween pictures to put on here, I'm getting there.

Oh, and I forgot to put on here that Bennett took his first steps!!!! I put it on my Facebook page, but not here. Anyway, his physical therapist is letting Leia borrow a small bench for him to do exercises on. He was sitting on the edge of it last weekend, stood up, and took a couple of steps towards me. He did that several times, but hasn't attempted anything like it since. He is such a chicken! :)

18 Months!

Bennett turned a year and a half last week! We are so proud of him...little sweetie:)

He finally cut his 3rd tooth, his 3rd tooth!!! I was starting to wonder again if he had anymore than just 2 in there! But now we can see that his top chiclets are about to pop through too. I'm pretty sure there is just going to be an explosion in there soon. Poor thing.

Elmo's getting smaller and smaller, isn't he?! Bennett weighs around 21 pounds right now...we know because we have frequented the doctor PLENTY lately. He has now had 6 ear infections. He has been on antibiotics 30 out of the last 40 days!:( I don't even want to imagine what that has done to his system, although, I don't really want him to get tubes yet either.

Tooth-less grin!:)

Favorite face he dishes out...

Yeah, I'm cute, so what?

Bennett is making progress towards walking too. He can walk fairly well holding onto one of our hands and then an object in the other hand to give him security. I see him getting stronger each day, but am getting impatient for him to start walking! He wants to be able to keep up with his big brother in the worst way.

New words: hot, pumpkin, balloon, apple, up. We know he is saying a lot, we just can't understand it all.

Signs: all done, more, drink (on a good day)

Favorite toys: anything that Ethan is playing with at the moment...I'm pretty sure just the "act" of stealing the toy from Ethan is play enough for him. He loves the stereo equipment, VCR, DVD player, cell phones, and Playstation too. That's what we spend the majority of our time distracting him from right now anyway!:) When he isn't stealing toys from his brother he is imitating him, so I would say that Ethan is his best favorite toy of all!

Bennett is quite a firecracker, which I wouldn't imagine him any other way based on the way he came into this world. He has a quick temper and almost appears as if he is going to literally blow up when he wants something or is trying to communicate something. I love this about him, it just reminds me what a fighter he is.

I'm sure there is a ton I'm forgetting to mention about how fantastically wonderful my second born is. We love you to bits Bennett!

Bennett's First Haircut

Bennett got his first haircut at the beginning of September. Unlike Ethan, he sat like an angel on my lap while the stylist cut it. Ethan is doing much better with it now though...in fact, that day all three of my boys got their hair cut at the same time. Bennett looks a lot more grown up now!

Handsome little man.

My cuties:

Whistle While You Work!

Bennett can whistle! This week we have finally confirmed that yes, indeed, we are hearing Bennett whistle. He does it when he is playing really hard and concentrating on something. It is on the intake of his breath. So cute!!!

Cute Pics

We LOVE going on walks with the kids, usually after we clean up supper, even if for only 15 or 20 minutes. Here is where we capture our cutest pictures of them.

Peek!

By the way, Bennett is waving now. It is adorable, if waving can possibly be adorable! We also heard back about his lab results too. His iron level was in the low end of normal, his Vitamin D was in the low end of normal, and his ferritin (which is the body's storage of iron) was at 23 with normal being at 24...the last time this was checked it was 6! Great improvement, Dr. Nau was very pleased with this.

So many posts to write..so little time! I'll get there, be patient! :)

Done Nursing

Bennett did not want to nurse this morning. :( I think he is growing up. It makes me a little sad, but also happy for him!

Don't Turn Your Back

This is what you will find if you leave the kids in the living room for a second to check on supper just around the corner in the kitchen....
Bennett is a climbing fool!:) You can tell he definitely wants to put his new skill to work as he is constantly climbing our 3 sets of steps. We put a gate on this set today so that I can actually leave the room to finish supper if I need to. He is getting so strong.

We went to University of Iowa Hospitals today to see a pediatric endocrinologist. These are the specialists who look at growth hormone levels, your thyroid and other glands. We were super impressed by the doctor that we got to see. She was so gentle with Bennett and open to our questions. She feels that Bennett does not have a growth hormone problem because most of the time babies with growth hormone issues are proportionately small, but she says that Bennett has "disproportionate growth" where his legs and arms are shortened. This is what the previous doctors felt as well.

She feels that he is doing very well as he is following a growth curve of his very own. When she measured his length from belly button to foot and belly button to top of head, it was about where it should be (his belly button right now should be at around half of his height), so that is great news. She tested 8 different things today- I know I can't name them all but many of them were just basic vitamin-levels, like calcium, phosphorous, and vitamin B.

Again, we know nothing, but I don't think I'm supposed to know anything. Bennett is Bennett, just the way that God made him, and he is doing really well right now. We will just take one day at a time and if we eventually have a diagnosis, that great, but if we don't, I'm fine with that too!

Also, I have now realized that I haven't posted month pictures of Bennett for 2 months now. I'm horrible!! Maybe next month, but I still wanted to update you about other things he has been doing lately:

What he is saying: ball, trees, Dada, bye-bye, hello

What he is eating: EVERYTHING- we have yet to find anything that Bennett will not eat. He is still nursing once a day in the morning, but otherwise he eats whatever we eat- even steak with barely two teeth!:) He really likes to feed himself and uses a fork when he is feeling patient enough to work that hard!

How he is sleeping: Great! He sleeps through the night and takes 2 naps during the day. We still get concerned about how tired he gets so quickly at times- this is something we talked to the doctor about today. His physical therapist shares that concern as well. Bennett's endurance is quite short, obviously when he is working hard in physical therapy this is understandable, but even when he is just playing he needs frequent breaks.

What he likes to do: Bennett likes to climb stairs. I can't think of anything else.

Just kidding!:) He likes to play with cars and blocks, he loves to take anything he can "in and out", he loves to follow his brother around and bug him- I'm serious, I really think he knows that he is bugging him and does it on purpose!:), he loves to be really silly- this is hard to describe, but hopefully I will catch it on video someday soon, and he loves to ride the blue dog- see below:

And this is after falling off of the blue dog and Ethan immediately stealing a turn:

We are so blessed! Take a look at our video bar ont the side too, I added a couple of new videos today- the one of Ethan putting on his own pants cracks me up even though it is sideways.

2 Teeth!

Bennett has officially cut his two first teeth- his bottom front ones. Finally! :)